Savannah River Site

Citizens Advisory Board

Recommendation 228

President’s FY 07 SRS Budget Shortfall

Background

 

At any given time SRS is working on various phases of three fiscal year (FY) budgets concurrently.   

For example, in October 2005 while the FY 2006 budget is being executed, internal deliberations are underway for the FY 2007 budget and the requirements for the 2008 budget are being assembled.  

This “annual” budget process is how the DOE budget process operates.  For the Savannah River Site the budget process follows four steps: 1) site requirement development; 2) internal DOE and Office of Management and Budget deliberations; 3) congressional action; and 4) execution. 

 

Generally, the requirements development phase starts 2½ years prior to the start of the fiscal year.  During this phase, the many and varied environmental and compliance requirements are distilled into a one year funding request.  The internal deliberations phase starts around April of each year and lasts about 10 months.  DOE’s Environmental Management Office (EM) compares the budget requests across the complex to the budget targets issued by OMB and identifies issues that need to be resolved and holds an Internal Review Board meeting to resolve issues and work towards an acceptable EM budget submission to DOE-Headquarters.  Once the issues have been resolved the budget is submitted to DOE’s Chief Financial Officer for final management decisions in early June.  At this point the DOE budget becomes part of the President's budget.  For the next several months, the various congressional committees with jurisdiction over EM’s program hold hearings and modify the budget as it makes its way through the legislative process.    The committees usually conference in early fall and EM is appropriated funding around the beginning of the fiscal year.  Once funds are appropriated, DOE-HQ provides funding to the sites and the task of executing the budget begins (Ref 1).

 

The President's budget is generally viewed as a detailed outline of the Administration's policy and funding priorities, as well as a presentation of the economic outlook for the coming fiscal year. The President's budget serves as a "starting point" for the Congress to consider. Congress is under no obligation to adopt all or any of the President's budget and often makes significant changes.

 

The President’s FY 07 budget for SRS is presented below compared to other comparable DOE sites (Ref 2).

  

Site
	FY 2006 Adjusted Appropriations	FY 2007 Congressional Request	% Change, FY07 vs FY06	$ Change
Idaho	538,083	519, 604	-3.4	-18,479
Oak Ridge	485,869	471,335	-3.0	-14,534
Hanford	1,665,471	1,803,686	+6.0	+138,215
Savannah River	1,178,720	1,084,394	-8.0	-94,326

 

The decrease according to DOE for the Savannah River Site primarily reflects completion of the deactivation of F-Canyon and associated facilities; and completion of operations in the F-Area plutonium storage facility and the consolidation in one building in K-Area. It also reflects phased completion of transuranic waste activities and lower waste stream volumes and reductions in facility D&D activities to accommodate higher priority activity.  Some of the major areas covered by the budget include the following: $24M for ongoing design and construction of a 3013 Container Surveillance Capability in Building 105-K; and $37.5M to continue design to address seismic and other technical issues and $25.7M to begin construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility.

 

Comment

 

At first glance at the President’s FY 07 budget, the disparity between SRS and the other major DOE sites is alarming.  The SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) has major concerns about funding for other programs such as the Historic Preservation issues, SREL, and operational funding for HLW/TRU/LLW operations.  Also, the SRS CAB questions if the SWPF funding is adequate to meet the needs of this facility.  Since the President must ultimately approve all future bills they propose, Congress is often reluctant to completely ignore the priorities of the President's budget; therefore, the SRS CAB has major misgivings about the $95 million shortfall in the FY 07 budget.  

 

Recommendation

 

The SRS CAB is very concerned that the President's budget for FY07, as submitted to Congress, will not be sufficient to meet the goals for accelerated clean up of the Savannah River Site. Therefore the SRS CAB recommends the following:

 

1.      The SRS CAB until 2 years ago was given the opportunity to be part of the early budget process.  The SRS CAB requests that DOE return to that previous practice.

 

2.      By May 22, 2006, DOE-SR present to the SRS CAB how the President’s FY07 Budget will affect or impact accelerated cleanup goals; identify potential impacts to current workforce levels (operational, technical and management); and provide a list of EM programs impacted, especially those committed to in the FFA.

 

3.      DOE-HQ request appropriate Congressional actions to provide SRS FY07 funding levels to rectify any shortcomings identified in #2 above.

 

4.      By May 22, 2006, DOE-SR present to SRS CAB potential secondary funding sources to offset the FY 07 shortfall and identify the sources and related activities that could be accomplished.

 

 

References

 

1.       Citizens Advisory Board Recommendation No. 149 (adopted January 15, 2002), “Stakeholder Input to SRS Budget Process."

2.       U. S. DOE Office of Environmental Management, FY 07 Budget Rollout, www.em.doe.gov/Rispoli_07_EM_Rollout.pdf.

 

Agency Responses

Department of Energy-SR