CLEANUP APPROPRIATIONS CHOPPED

When Congress concludes its deliberations on military spending this September, it will probably end up slicing $150 million to $300 million from the administration request for Department of Defense (DOD) cleanup. The Congressional Armed Services Committees, which authorize Department of Defense environmental spending, have generally been supportive of cleanup funding requests. The Appropriations subcommittees, on the other hand, have not been convinced that the requested program is necessary, efficient, or perhaps more to the point, has a political constituency.

This year, after the typical whittling down of requirements defined in the field, DOD sought $2,180,200,000 for the Defense Environmental Restoration Account (DERA). DERA funds cleanup at active and former domestic installations, but it does not cover expenses at facilities closed or closing under the three rounds of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC). The House Appropriators slashed $300,000,000 from DERA, and the Senate approved a cut of $146,125,000. Unless significant pressure is brought to bear, the Conference committee, which is scheduled to meet in September, will probably split the difference, resulting in a significant shortfall of cleanup funds.

The Senate Appropriators took another step that could inhibit remediation in the long run by reducing funds for important research and development activities that could lead to cheaper, safer, faster, and better cleanup. They deleted the $30 million in DERA environmental technology projects and earmarked most of the new Innovative Environmental Technology Systems Program (IETSP) for activities unrelated to cleanup. Both programs were to have been key sources of funding for the demonstration and fielding of new cleanup technologies that are needed to make environmental restoration cheaper, faster, and better. In particular, the Senate Appropriations Committee seeks to direct $18 million to fund a Climate Change Fuel Cell Program, to be managed by the Energy Department's Morgantown Energy Technology Center, $3.5 million to demonstrate the "Terra-Vit" hazardous waste treatment technology in Hawaii, and $3.5 million for the Natural Gas Liquifier Program. All of these programs have their own merit, but if the IETSP is dedicated to them, valuable resources will be diverted from an important, requirement-based technology program.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Congress Approves RAB Technical Assistance

Public participation in Defense Department cleanup decisions, in the form of Restoration Advisory Boards and Pentagon-funded technical assistance to public members of those boards, has been approved by Congress. The House-Senate Conference Committee on the Defense Authorization Act approved final language as Section 326 of the Defense bill, combining the House-passed Underwood (D-Guam) Amendment, (see Military and the Environment, June 1994)] and the Senate's Kohl (D-Wisconsin) Amendment. Though the Environmental Security office supported the amendment, it had not attempted to initiate such a program without a legislative mandate.

In Section 326, Congress for the first time Authorizes an expenditure of $7.5 million, from the Defense Environmental Restoration Account (DERA) and Base Realignment and Closure Accounts, to support technical assistance for the community members of restoration advisory boards (RAB's) and their predecessors, technical review committees, to help them oversee local base cleanup plans. Even before final passage and Presidential signature, the Environmental Security office has started examining how to provide such assistance, and it is expected to consult with representatives of environmental and other community groups before issuing its regulations.

The legislation also establishes a statutory basis for RAB's and directs the Defense Department to "prescribe regulations regarding [their] characteristics, composition, funding, and establishment." Thus, should the political winds within the Pentagon environmental program shift again, it will be much more difficult for those opposed to public
participation to undermine the program. Nothing in the legislation contradicts current Defense policy.

More RAB's Planned

Though at some bases disputes remain over the appointment of members or the selection of community co-chairs, the Pentagon Environmental Security Office is displaying its commitment to public participation. Within a year, it is likely that hundreds of RAB's will be in place, making the program an unprecedented experiment in direct democracy. The April 14, 1994 Management Guidance for the Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) adopts, in essence, the recommendations of the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee (FFERDC) for establishing advisory boards. The Guidance states, "A Restoration Advisory Board will be established at installations where there is sufficient, sustained community interest" or if an installation determines that a RAB is needed. Either a request from a local government or a petition from fifty local residents is evidence of sufficient interest:

The Guidance also clarifies other elements of the RAB process. For example, it makes it clear that the community co-chair of each RAB will be selected by the community members of the RAB. At bases where another process has been followed, new co-chairs are being selected.

PRIORITY-SETTING CHALLENGE

Faced with the seemingly unsurmountable task of funding cleanup at Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons production sites, key elements of the Federal government are once again raising the specter of priority-setting in environmental restoration. The existing system of budgeting cleanup includes a process for determining priorities, based upon common sense, risk assessment, legal obligations, and politics, but officials see a need to standardize the process.

This is a key focus of the White House-led Federal Facilities Policy Group (FFPG), led by Alice Rivlin (Director of the White Office of Management and Budget) and Kathleen McGinty (head of the White House Office of Environmental Policy). Furthermore, the Senate Appropriations Committee declared in its recent Defense Appropriations bill report, "A priority-based process for allocation of budget resources will become increasingly necessary as DOD seeks to balance calls for immediate restoration of all sites with continuing declines in defense spending."

When various stakeholders began meeting four years ago in what became the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee (FFERDC), their principal charge was devising a method of setting priorities in Federal facilities environmental restoration. Chapter 4 of the February, 1993 FFERDC Interim Report makes detailed recommendations for distributing budget shortfalls, based upon financial plans developed in consultation with site-specific advisory boards. Though both the DOD and DOE are implementing the other Interim Report recommendations, including the formation of advisory boards at contaminated facilities, no agency has even attempted to start implementing Chapter 4.

Federal advocates of improved priority setting see it as a way to meet legal obligations within increasingly tight budgets. However, groups representing facility neighbors and employees fear that low priority sites will simply be forgotten. Not surprisingly, they are reticent to participate in such an exercise, even though they generally have their own internal cleanup priority-setting processes.

It is likely that the White House-led FFPG will develop a new national scheme for setting or at least describing cleanup priorities. FFERDC, which represents state and local governments, Indian nations, and non-government representatives as well as Federal agencies, hopes to influence the FFPG proposals by developing concepts of its own. The FFERDC Priority-Setting Work Group will revisit its own recommendations, assess a simple (non-mathematical), community-based risk evaluation model proposed by the Defense Environmental Security Office and review options put forward by the FFPG.

To be effective, the FFERDC Work Group needs to do three things. First, it must bring more field experience to the table. National models often suffer from bean-counters' disease. In attempting to measure priorities numerically, they ignore important factors of common sense, culture, and historical responsibility. Second, it should devise a priority-setting scheme that compares activities, not just physical sites. Many individual sites require a series of activities, some of which are high priority, some of which are low. And some activities, such as removing pathways -- such as old agricultural wells -- are not even associated with contamination sites. Third, it needs to convince policy-makers that affected communities will never accept downgraded priorities unless there are iron-clad assurances that Federal agencies will take remedial action in the long run. Priority-setting should never be seen as a way for the Federal government to avoid its long-term obligation to clean up the enormous toxic, radioactive, and explosive mess its national security establishment created over the last five decades.

NATIVE SOVEREIGNTY

Congress has taken a major step in this year's Defense Authorization bill by recognizing the sovereign authority of Indian tribes to oversee Department of Defense environmental cleanup activities. Section 322 allows the Secretary of Defense to enter into agreements, similar to existing Defense State Memoranda of Agreement (DSMOA's), in which Indian regulatory agencies would participate in the environmental restoration process. DSMOA's typically provide cost reimbursement, a critical factor for Indian nations, which generally do not have the resources to operate environmental agencies. The U.S. government thus recognizes Indian authority, not only on Indian reservations, but on other lands impacting Indian nations.

There is precedent for such arrangements. Indian tribes near nuclear weapons plants, such as the Nez-Perce and Santa Fe Pueblo, have negotiated agreements with the Energy Department.

The timing of this provision fits well with other programs. Later this year the Administration for Native Americans, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, will award $8 million in technical assistance grants to Indian tribes and Alaska natives to develop programs to oversee Department of Defense environmental activities.

Implementation of this provision will not only give Native Americans a say in cleanup goals, remedy selection, and priority-setting. It strengthens their long asserted but, just as long, ignored government-to-government relationship with the United States.

ARMY CONCEALS C.W. SAFETY

The Army, hoping to keeps its chemical weapons (CW) incineration program on track, reportedly concealed critical information which would have lent additional credence to alternative disposal schemes. The Chemical Weapons Working Group, which represents opponents of incineration at nine U.S. stockpile sites, charges "the Army has now admitted a seven-fold error in its calculations for when rockets in the stockpile could accidentally detonate."

The Working Group argues that the Army should delay destruction until safer detoxification technologies are proven. It says, in a recent review of CW safety, the Army projected 120 years of safety, not 17.7 years, but it neglected to inform the public, Congress, or the National Research Council, which recently completed a review of disposal alternatives.

For more information, contact the Chemical Weapons Working Group, Box 467, Berea, Kentucky, 40403.

1996 DERP BUDGET GUIDANCE

The April 14, 1994 Management Guidance for the Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) contains data on the "outyear fiscal guidance for FY1996" for DERP, which covers the bulk of Defense cleanup operations. Cleanup operations at closing or recently closed bases -- that is, BRAC-funded -- foreign installations, and contractor-owned facilities are not included. These are preliminary figures, but they provide a sense of how the Pentagon is dividing its cleanup resources. Note that the Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) program, managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, approaches the magnitude of the active-base cleanup programs managed by each of the three armed services. Given the size of that program, it is appropriate that this year, for the first time, the Defense Environmental Cleanup Program annual report lists FUDS for the first time.

The Department of Defense has begun implementing the pollution prevention and environmental reporting requirements for the federal government contained in President Clinton's August 3, 1993 Executive Order. Executive Order 12856 ("Federal Compliance With Right-To-Know Laws and Pollution Prevention Requirements") established specific policies and milestones for all federal agencies. The Defense Department has already submitted a strategic plan on compliance with the Executive order to the Environmental Protection Agency. It will also have to submit compliance plans for each of its facilities located in the United States.

Recognizing that citizens have a vital role to play in the Federal government's attempt to prevent pollution at its facilities, the Executive Order recommended that each federal agency work with the public. To further encourage a successful planning process, eighteen environmental organizations, citizens groups, and trade unions sent a letter to Defense Secretary Perry requesting "a continuing dialogue" to discuss Defense Department plans to implement the Executive Order. Informal discussions have already begun between the authors of the letter and the Environmental Security Office to arrange an initial meeting. For more information contact Peter Tyler at Physicians for Social Responsibility 202/898-0150. 

Citizens' Report on the Military and the Environment
edited by Lenny Siegel
published by the Pacific Studies Center

September, 1994

This publication is being jointly distributed by organizations dedicated to promoting cleanup, environmental compliance, and pollution prevention at U.S. military bases and contractor facilities. To be added to the direct mailing list, contact the Pacific Studies Center.

For more information, contact any of the following groups: