pp 2080–2081
ES&T News
USGS budget focuses on hazards and energy
U.S. Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Proposals
- Overview
- Some new funding at EPA amid a 4% drop
- DOE targets clean-energy and nuclear technologies
- NSF sees a small increase
- USGS budget focuses on hazards and energy
- NOAA faces 6% decrease
President Bush’s proposed budget for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for FY ’07 remains close to what Congress provided in FY ’06. The administration is proposing $945 million, a 2% decline from last year’s congressional appropriation. Programs that take top priority in the proposal include a multihazards pilot initiative, the National Streamgage Network, surveillance for avian influenza, energy research, and the development of a new satellite to assess land-cover changes.
The Gulf Coast hurricanes and other natural disasters around the world last year underscored the need for timely, relevant scientific information for addressing these risks, said Patrick Leahy, acting USGS director, when he released the budget on February 6.
Certain programs would receive an increase in funds, such as an extra $2.2 million to assess and mitigate vulnerability to extreme storms, earthquakes, landslides, and wildfires. The Landsat program would receive an additional $16 million, a 35% increase, to develop and launch a new global earth observation satellite, Landsat 8, to replace two others nearing the ends of their useful lives. Likewise, the National Streamgage Network would see a 20% increase of $2.8 million. These gages measure and record the quantity and variability of surface water flows nationwide, and the additional funding “will help us to restart about 30 of the long-term gages that we’ve lost in the last few years,” says Robert Hirsch, USGS’s associate director for water (Environ. Sci. Tech. 2005, 39, 57A–58A). Some $3.3 million more is slated for monitoring wild bird populations to provide early detection and warning of possible avian influenza outbreaks, and the agency’s energy resources program would receive an additional 10%, or $2.4 million, for assessing national gas hydrate and oil shale resources.
To offset these increases, Bush has proposed a 42% cut of $22 million to the mineral resources program. Likewise, other water resources work—such as research into toxic substances hydrology and groundwater, as well as cooperative water programs—would see an overall 5% decline of $10.5 million. Biological research would also suffer a 3% cut of $6 million. Last year, Bush proposed similar cuts to these same programs, but Congress restored the funding.
Groups such as the USGS Coalition, an alliance of organizations pushing for increased USGS funding, which has been flat over the past decade, are hopeful that Congress will do the same this year.
“It’s frustrating and sad to see that once again such an important agency like the USGS is starting with a shortfall,” says Robert Gropp, the public policy director for the American Institute of Biological Sciences and a USGS Coalition co-chair. “Given the administration’s far-reaching commitment to innovation, science, and engineering, we were hopeful that USGS might’ve at least started with some gain over last year’s appropriation.” The group recommends a USGS budget of at least $1.2 billion.
