Monthly Review: March 2003This monthly review goes out to the leadership of AGI's member societies, members of the AGI Government Affairs Advisory Committee, and other interested geoscientists as part of a continuing effort to improve communications between GAP and the geoscience community that it serves. ANWR Debated on Two Legislative Fronts
The North Slope of Alaska is a long way from Capitol Hill, but the debate over exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) loomed large in both congressional budget and energy debates during March. Contributing to the debate was the release of a report by the National Research Council (NRC; the operating arm of the National Academies) on the environmental, social and economic impacts from the past 30 years of North Slope petroleum exploration and development. According to a NRC press release, the committee preparing the report found both negative and positive effects, but "the committee noted that is was beyond the scope of its study to say whether the benefits derived from oil and gas production justify the accompanying undesirable environmental consequences." Subsequently, ANWR was a topic at several hearings as Republicans in both houses of Congress prepared to unveil the latest incarnation of comprehensive energy legislation (see related story on energy hearings). ANWR proponents also sought to include a provision in the fiscal
year (FY) 2004 budget resolution (see related story) assuming future
ANWR revenues and charging the Energy and Natural Resources Committee
with passing legislation that opens ANWR, ensuring those revenues
materialize. In what may be a bellwether for future ANWR consideration
this Congress, several moderate Republicans joined Democrats in
a 52-48 vote to keep the provision out of the Senate's version of
the budget resolution. But the topic is sure to come up in conference
committee when the two chambers meet to draft a final resolution.
Leading ANWR proponent Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) took the defeat personally,
ominously asserting: "The people who vote against this today
are voting against me, and I'll not forget it." As chairman
of the powerful, pork-distributing Appropriations Committee, Stevens's
words carry particular weight. More at www.agiweb.org/gap/legis108/anwr.html. The House and Senate are in the process of finalizing the non-binding
budget resolution that provides an outline for total federal spending
in FY 2004. The final resolution is not passed on to the White House
for enactment; rather it is the congressional response to the president's
budget proposal, a financial plan that Congress agrees to follow
both in the appropriations process and in legislation affecting
entitlement programs, taxes and other matters affecting revenue.
Thus, the budget resolution not only determines how much the 13
individual appropriations bills can spend but also serves as a vehicle
to debate tax packages and, as noted above, ANWR. On March 26th,
the Senate accepted its version of the budget resolution, providing
a total of $791 billion for discretionary spending. A provision
to reinstate the corporate Superfund tax, which expired in 1995
and has been hostage to the long-standing debate over comprehensive
Superfund reform legislation, failed to receive a majority within
the Senate. The House accepted its $775 billion version – which
provides 1 percent less for discretionary spending than was provided
in FY 2003 -- the previous week, setting up what looks to be a very
difficult conference between the two chambers. In addition to the
$16 billion difference, the two versions also differ in the size
of the tax cut package requested by President Bush. These differences
are complicated by the fact that Congress is spending much of its
time drafting emergency spending legislation to finance the war
in Iraq and the war on terrorism. A side-by-side comparison of the
House and Senate budget resolutions prepared by the majority staffs
of the House and Senate Budget Committee can be found at www.senate.gov/~budget/republican/analysis/2003/sideBYside.pdf. Following a series of hearings in February, Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) unveiled
a draft comprehensive energy bill to serve as a starting point for
debate over energy policy in the Senate. The draft legislation does
not include drilling in ANWR but does call for building a natural
gas pipeline to Alaska’s North Slope and lifting some drilling
restrictions on public lands and the outer continental shelf. On
the House side, Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Joe
Barton’s (R-TX) draft energy legislation was passed by the
full Energy and Commerce Committee, surviving relatively unchanged
after a long mark-up in the subcommittee. Democrats attempted to
insert a number of amendments that sought to increase environmental
protection, but all of them failed. Barton argued against most of
the amendments, often stating that they mischaracterized the situation,
or were not comprehensive enough in their scope. The Energy and
Commerce Committee's bill will be combined with legislation under
consideration in the House Ways and Means, Resources, and Science
Committees to form the House version of the comprehensive energy
bill. It is expected that the full bill will be considered on the
House floor in mid-April. More at www.agiweb.org/gap/legis108/energy.html. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman
announced on March 13th that the agency has withdrawn a 2000 rule
revising how EPA regulates non-point source pollution under the
Clean Water Act. The withdrawal reflects strong opposition in Congress
and from states and other stakeholders to the Clinton-era rule that
gave EPA more oversight of state programs setting Total Maximum
Daily Load (TMDL) limits for waterways. One provision of the rule
required EPA to review and accept state and tribal programs, allowing
EPA to step in and manage programs that it deemed unsuccessful.
Congress delayed the rule's implementation to April 30, 2003 and
required that the National Academy of Sciences first review and
comment on the effectiveness of the proposed rule. Whitman noted
that the withdrawal of the 2000 rule will allow the agency to work
with stakeholders to improve TMDL programs. Expected in the next
few months is the Bush Administration's proposal to deal with non-point
source pollution. Additional information on the rule withdrawal
is available at www.epa.gov/owow/tmdl/. On March 26th, the House Science Committee held a hearing to examine
visa backlogs and problems with the federal government's foreign
student tracking system. Witnesses discussed the new security measures
implemented by the U.S. Department of State to more closely screen
foreign students and scholars applying for visas to study science
and technology in the U.S. They also discussed how the resulting
backlog, when combined with problems with the newly implemented
Immigration and Naturalization Service database to track foreign
students, is hampering work at U.S. universities and potentially
threatening national security. Committee members had a variety of
reactions to the issues. Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY)
and Ranking Democrat Ralph Hall (D-TX) sent a letter to the General
Accounting Office requesting better data on the extent and nature
of the visa backlog. The committee plans to continue to evaluate
these issues, with this hearing representing just one in what will
be a long series of hearings on how the war on terrorism is affecting
the U.S. research enterprise. More at www.house.gov/science/hearings/full03/index.htm.
Over the past three months, Geotimes has run a series of news articles
by Lisa Pinsker scrutinizing the impacts of 9/11 on the geosciences.
They are available at www.geotimes.org/apr03/NN_data.html,
www.geotimes.org/mar03/NN_sevis.html,
and www.geotimes.org/feb03/NN_travels.html. The Department of Energy's (DOE) goal of opening the Yucca Mountain
high-level nuclear waste repository by 2010 seems less likely after
the department announced another delay in the licensing process.
At a meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (USNRC)
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, DOE reported that it will submit
its construction license application for Yucca Mountain in 2005,
a few months after the previously delayed date of December 2004.
The original deadline was October 2002, 90 days after President
Bush's official designation of the site, as required by the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act of 1982. At a hearing earlier in the month, House
Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Hobson
(R-OH) told the DOE witness that, while the subcommittee supports
the Yucca Mountain project, missing the submittal deadline is "not
acceptable." The day before the postponement was announced,
the USNRC released its second draft of the formal guidelines it
will use to evaluate the DOE’s license application. While federal
law sets the licensing criteria for Yucca Mountain, the "Yucca
Mountain Review Plan, Draft Final Revision 2" outlines how
the USNRC plans to review the application material to assure that
DOE is in compliance with the regulations. The state of Nevada has
previously filed suits with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit over the regulations that define the licensing
criteria. According to Greenwire, these pending litigations recently
prompted the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to place the DOE’s
suit attempting to gain the permanent water rights at Yucca Mountain
on hold until after the U.S. Court of Appeals rules on Nevada’s
other cases, which are expected to begin in September. The USNRC's
Yucca Mountain Review Plan is available at www.nrc.gov/waste/hlw-disposal/ml030800361.pdf. On March 6th, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee
on Water and Power held a hearing on S. 212, a bill to authorize
the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to work with the eight states
that overlie the High Plains Aquifer -- Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming -- to map,
model, and monitor the aquifer. Co-sponsored by the chairman and
ranking member of the Senate Energy committee, Pete Domenici (R-NM)
and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), as well as Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS),
the bill received unexpected opposition from the administration
at the hearing. William Alley, Chief of the Office of Ground Water
for the USGS, testified that while agreeing with the need for groundwater
monitoring, the administration was concerned about the bill’s
cost and believed better local and state coordination could achieve
the goals of the bill without federal legislation. Sen. Craig Thomas
(R-WY) voiced the concern of the American Farm Bureau that (despite
previous testimony to the contrary) the bill would begin the federalization
of groundwater and stated that the legislation is unnecessary because
the USGS already studies the aquifer. Bingaman responded that because
the aquifer covers multiple states, federal means should be provided
to study its depletion and map its extent, which has not been done
in 20 years. Although the original version of the bill would have
provided funds to state geological surveys for studies and assistance
with water depletion issues, that provision and several others were
dropped from a revised bill that the committee passed by voice vote.
For more on the bill, see the Geotimes Web Extra by Greg Peterson
at www.geotimes.org/mar03/WebExtra032003.html. The Department of the Interior (DOI), in its role to provide science
to the comprehensive Everglades restoration project, came under
scrutiny last week at a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee
on Interior and Related Agencies. The hearing coincided with the
release of the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report "South
Florida Ecosystem Restoration: Task Force Needs to Improve Science
Coordination to Increase the Likelihood of Success." The report
identified gaps of vital scientific information in the restoration
project occurring on both ecosystem levels (e.g., the effects of
invasive species, pesticides, and pollutants) and project levels
(e.g., understanding water salinity in Biscayne Bay). Also, the
report found that the Everglades project lacks the proper coordination,
direction, and recourses needed to carry out its responsibility,
a conclusion that also was drawn by a National Research Council
report -- "Science and the Greater Everglades Ecosystem Restoration:
An Assessment of the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative"
-- initially released last December with a final version released
at the hearing. Many of the subcommittee members expressed concern
over the lack of scientific coordination and the appearance that
DOI is not an equal partner in the Everglades restoration project
with the State of Florida and the Army Corps of Engineers. Rep.
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) commented that DOI and the Army Corps of
Engineers have different interests in the restoration efforts, and
it was DOI’s responsibility to look out for the interests of
the nation. Ann Klee, Counsel to the Secetary of the Interior and
Director of the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force,
adamantly defended DOI’s role in the Everglades restoration
project, especially in the RECOVER program, which includes a large
scientific component. She conceded that the Science Coordination
Team was underutilized, but stated that this was because the past
two years have been spent developing a legal framework for the Everglades
project. The GAO report is available at www.gao.gov/new.items/d03345.pdf
and the National Research Council report at www.nap.edu/books/0309087287/html/. The Department of the Interior has announced that it is accepting
comments on its draft strategic plan. This document is required
by the Government Performance and Results Act (better known by its
acronym GPRA). For the geoscience community, one of the key issues
is how the document portrays the role of science -- an indicator
of how the department sees the role of the USGS. Although not one
of the department's strategic goals, science is listed as a "crosscutting
tool" along with partnerships. Last January, AGI provided testimony
to Interior on the proposed plan. That statement is available at
www.agiweb.org/gap/legis107/interior_strategy0102.html.
Comments on the draft plan must be received by April 25th. The final
plan will be released in the fall. The draft plan can be found at
www.doi.gov/gpra/stratplan_2_14_2003.html
along with instructions in how to submit comments. On March 18th, the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) presented its fifth annual Pick and Gavel Award to Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Ted Stevens (R-AK). Hill staff and federal agency leaders joined over half of the state geologists for the banquet ceremony at the Cosmos Club in Washington. The award recognizes "individuals who have made significant contributions to advancing or facilitating the role of geoscience in the public policy arena." Both Bingaman and Stevens were specifically recognized for their long-standing support of geologic mapping and other geoscience programs in citations delivered by their home state geologists. Past recipients of the award include Representatives Barbara Cubin (R-WY), Nick Rahall II (D-WV), Jim Gibbons (R-NV), and Ralph Regula (R-OH); Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT); General Richard Lawson (ret.); National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell; and Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. More at www.kgs.ukans.edu/AASG/pick.html. The following list contains Federal Register announcements regarding federal regulations, agency meetings, and other notices that may be of interest to the geoscience community. Entries are listed in chronological order and show the federal agency involved, the title, and the citation. The Federal Register is available online at www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/frcont03.html. Information on submitting comments and reading announcements are also available online at www.regulation.gov.
The following updates and reports were added to the Government Affairs portion of AGI's web site http://www.agiweb.org/gap since the last monthly update:
Monthly review prepared by Margaret A. Baker, David Applegate, and AGI/AAPG Geoscience Policy Intern Charna Meth. Sources: American Geophysical Union, Association of American State
Geologists, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection
Agency, E&E Daily, Federal Register, Geotimes, Greenwire, House
and Senate Budget Committees, House Science Committee, Library of
Congress, National Academy of Science, Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, Washington Post. Please send any comments or requests for information to AGI Government Affairs Program. Posted April 7, 2003 |
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