Spending constraints may leave the Energy Department $10 billion short of what it needs to follow its latest blueprint for cleaning up nuclear weapons plants.
The new estimate for five years' worth of environmental repair work is $38 billion. But current spending caps limit budget requests to $10 billion less than that.If DOE is given $28 billion for cleanup from 1993 to 1997, abiding by cleanup agreements with states and meeting federal environmental standards "would be very difficult," said Leo Duffy, director of the department's Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management.
Duffy stopped short of predicting his office wouldn't have enough money to meet its responsibilities, however. "That's an issue that we're going to be dealing with OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and Congress over the next nine months," he said Thursday.
Department spending requests go through OMB, which decides how much money the administration will seek in its budget request.
"The real test will be when the doors close and they have to justify to OMB their funding request," said Rep. Dennis Eckart, D-Ohio, sponsor of legislation that would force the government to obey environmental laws.
"If they're playing chicken, it's a high-stakes game of chicken with the White House," Eckart said. By outlining needs that exceed budget limits, he said, DOE "is going to force George Bush into a very difficult choice: either breaking the budget or breaking his promise as the environmental president."
The nuclear waste cleanup budget ran into trouble this year in the Senate, which voted to cut the department's environmental account and use $182 million to develop and test new nuclear weapons.