Re: SENATE CLEANUP NUMBERS

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

Lenny,

 When you say the administration's request, I assume that is the
President's budget, which is based on the requests from the Secretary of
Defense, as a result of OSD's review of the environmental restoration
requests from the different branches.

I ask because in addressing the CERCLA sites and the current prohibited
use of environmental restoration funds to address UXO (high explosive
never,and chemical-filled only when specific permission is handed down
from high above), I have learned that the Army's request for 
environmental fund
ing is not
based on actual need, but more so on higher policy (DOD I believe, likely
Office of Secretary of Defense) to address 50% of the high priority sites
by 2002. This is significant because there are sites that will not have
funding simply based on Pentagon policy not on science or clear budget
constraints. It is a DOD choice to leave 50% unaddressed until well into
the next decade, and this does not even consider the medium and low
priority sites.

I do not know how it is at other installations, but by APG's own
admission, APG will not be able to meet the 50% goal (which the tax-payers
had no say in) by 2002, based on the current level of funding
(APG-Installation restoration 27 million down from a high of 94 million in
1994).

The final results seem to be this:
The Army requests less money than they actually need to DOD based on DOD's
goal, and then these requests are submitted to the President and Congress
which get cut more, because Congress is cutting everything and believes
the DOD should share the burden of debt reduction (which is fine but does
Congress know that DOD is requesting less than what they need?) And of
course this is further complicated by the fact that the Department of the
Army has a budget of over 60 billion and only applies 2/3 of 1% to
restoration efforts. I am not sure Congress should be contributing to
DOD's effort to keep the environmental restoration part of DOA's money
small and inadequate.

Just a thought for the day.

Ted Henry
<thenry@umabnet.ab.umd.edu>