Congress Passes FY 2024 Appropriations Bills, Averting Government Shutdown

Over the weekend, Congress passed, and the President signed into law, the last of the FY 2024 appropriations bills. This “minibus” contained the six appropriations bills not passed in the first set two weeks ago: Defense; Financial Services and General Government Services; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Legislative Branch; and, State and Foreign Operations.

Great Lakes provisions include funding for the International Joint Commission at $10.88 million and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission at $50 million, both equal to the amount appropriated in FY 2023. Additionally, $20 million was included for a new Great Lakes heavy icebreaker.

NEMWI has published a report summarizing the critical Great Lakes items of interest in FY 2024 appropriations. You can read that here.

You can also find NEMWI’s appropriations hub here. It includes tables comparing the President’s FY 2025 Budget Request with historical appropriations for Great Lakes programs, and will be updated with more FY 2025 information as it becomes available.

Reported by NEMWI staff Alex Eastman

U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Holds Hearing on FY2025 Budget Request for the Department of Energy

The House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee held a hearing on Wednesday, March 20, to discuss the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the Department of Energy (DOE).

The DOE’s FY2025 budget request has a total program level of approximately $52 billion, an increase of $1.8 billion above FY2024. Chair Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-03) opened by affirming his commitment to strengthening nuclear security, a priority reflected in the budget by increased funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration. But he expressed concern that programs for nuclear energy, a baseload carbon-free source of electricity, are one of the only cuts proposed in the budget request.

Chair Fleischmann expressed disapproval of the Biden Administration’s prioritization of clean energy and climate change goals in the budget request, stating: “the Department of Energy is sitting on tens of billions of unobligated dollars intended to advance a variety of energy technologies. Yet rather than focusing on the effective implementation of those existing programs, the budget request again proposes many new programs, including disproportionate and unsustainable increases for energy efficiency and renewable energy activities.” He further remarked that he hopes to see a rollback on the DOE’s proposed distribution transformers and manufactured housing rules.

In her opening statement, Ranking Member Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-09) highlighted the progress the DOE has made toward developing domestic energy resources. She noted that for the past 6 years in a row, the U.S. produced more crude oil than any nation in history. Last year, the U.S. supplied more LNG to Europe than any other country. At the same time, she emphasized the importance of renewables and the role the DOE has played in driving down their cost, securing a 69% decrease in the cost of onshore wind and a 89% decrease in the cost of solar PV in the last 12 years. “For sustained U.S. energy security, we must pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy. We must invest in clean energy to diversify our energy portfolio.”

Similar to Rep. Fleishmann, Rep. Kaptur praised funding for nuclear security assets. However, she added that she is “concerned with proposed cuts to nuclear nonproliferation programs. These investments are crucial to enhancing our nation's ability to prevent adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons and to respond to nuclear and radiological accidents domestically and abroad.”

The first and only witness, Secretary of the Department of Energy Jennifer Granholm, began by highlighting that since the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, “companies in the clean energy space have announced 600 new or expanded manufacturing plants on U.S. soil and $200 billion in planned investments in batteries, wind, solar, and nuclear.” Secretary Granholm emphasized the need to secure this funding year after year in order to continue the DOE’s demonstration and deployment programs, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains and the Grid Deployment Office. The budget request further includes $3 billion for applied R&D and $2 billion for critical and emerging tech like AI and quantum.

“We’re also making sure every community can benefit from reliable, affordable energy efficiency technologies,” she added. The FY2025 request allocates funding for an interagency working group on coal and power plant communities and enables 40,000 additional low-income households to participate in the Weatherization Assistance Program.

Several issues were raised in questioning. Ranking Member Kaptur inquired as to the DOE’s capability to “develop sensor technology that will allow for real-time monitoring of nutrients and pollutants that contribute to harmful algal blooms,” especially in the critical areas of Western Basin of Lake Erie and the Great Lakes as a whole. Secretary Granholm replied that “a number of our labs are focused on the bio-economy and ways to advance agricultural output.”

Ranking Member Kaptur also raised the point that the proposed rule for distribution transformers may hurt the steel industry, and implored that the final rule not adversely impact domestic production. Secretary Granholm responded that after receiving feedback on the rule, adjustments have been made and the final proposed rule will be released in June.

View a recording of the hearing here.

Reported by NEMWI Intern Eva Kappas, Brown University

U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Holds Hearing on the Mapping the Great Lakes Act

The House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries held a hearing on Thursday, March 21, on the Great Lakes Mapping Act, among other bills. The bill would authorize $200 million to map the Great Lakes lakebed in high resolution, the first time ever that the lakes would be mapped in this way.

“The legislation we are considering today, if enacted, would...enhance our access to and understanding of the geographic features of our Great Lakes,” Committee Chair Cliff Bentz (R-OR) said in his opening statement. The bill, “directs NOAA to conduct high-resolution mapping of the Great Lakes,” Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA) added in his opening statement. “We need that in order to fill knowledge gaps and manage our greatest freshwater resources,” he stated.

Great Lakes Task Force member and bill sponsor Representative Lisa McClain (R-MI) spoke in support of her legislation. “Nationally, tens of millions of dollars are being allocated for ocean-related initiatives, but unfortunately, the Great Lakes remain a low priority, and as a result are underfunded, undervalued. In fact only 13% of the Great Lakes are mapped to modern standards,” she said. “I believe it’s time to take exploration and discovery of the underwater environment of the Great Lakes into our own hands,” she stated. She also thanked the Great Lakes Observing System for their leadership on the issue. “Without your work in describing the need, and setting the vision for the Great Lakes mapping, we would not be here today,” she concluded.

Clay Porch, Director of NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, also gave testimony at the hearing. He referenced a recent report that found that only 13% of the Great Lakes lakebed has been mapped to modern standards. He mentioned that NOAA is ramping up its Great Lakes mapping efforts, and credited GLRI funding for helping to enable that.

The primary panelist to testify on the Great Lakes Mapping Act was Jennifer Boehme, CEO of GLOS. GLOS collects data “that inform key business, policy, and public health decisions in the Great Lakes,” Boehme said. “Underpinning all of these observations is the lake floor itself, an area woefully lacking in up-to-date high density data collected to modern standards,” she stated. Mapping the lakebed is the first step in helping properly address problems from drinking water to invasive species, Boehme said, and would help grow the blue economy, driving growth in sectors such as shipping, fisheries, recreation, tourism, and more. “Mapping the Great Lakes can ultimately help the economic transformation of the region from the ‘rust belt’ to the ‘blue belt,’” she said.

Reported by NEMWI staff Alex Eastman

U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Holds Hearing on PFAS

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on Wednesday, March 20 on PFAS being classified as a hazardous waste under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund). CERCLA gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to find any potentially responsible parties (PRPs) of environmental contamination and compel them to pay for any damages or cleanup.

Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) opened the hearing by outlining recent actions taken by the EPA. “Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency took a significant step to address the impacts of PFAS by proposing to designate two of these chemicals [PFOA and PFOS] as hazardous substances under the Superfund law,” he said in his opening statement. “We anticipate that this rule will be finalized later this calendar year,” he continued. He pointed out the potential benefits of this categorization: “The Superfund law provides the government with the authority to hold polluters responsible for environmental contamination caused by dangerous substances. With this proposed designation, the EPA is doing good work to increase transparency around the prevalence of these chemicals while also protecting the environment and public health.”

Ranking member Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) raised concerns about the EPA’s categorization of PFAS as hazardous substances. She said this could lead PRPs that did not manufacture or generate PFAS, but may have unknowingly played a part in contamination, known as passive receivers, to be held liable under CERCLA. The EPA’s approach, she said, “does not provide the EPA with flexibility to exempt innocent parties from liability for cleanup costs. If an entity meets the definition of a ‘potentially responsible party’ that entity is liable for all clean-up costs, regardless of intent or exercise of due care.” The EPA said that it plans to use its enforcement discretion to protect certain passive receivers, but that guidance could change in a future administration, and does not prevent litigation brought by states, localities, tribes, or third parties. Capito also said during her opening statement that the way to answer this issue should be to shield passive receivers from liability, something that only Congress, not the EPA, has the authority to do.

Kate Bowers, a Legislative Attorney for the American Law Division at the Congressional Research Service, provided remarks on CERCLA liability. For a party to be liable under CERCLA, there must be a release or threatened release of a hazardous substance into the environment and “a response action or clean up, and response costs at the site,” she said. So, while the EPA’s enforcement discretion does not prevent other parties from taking action against a PRP, “by limiting the number of response actions EPA undertakes, the agency’s policy could limit the circumstances giving rise to the response costs that are a necessary condition to CERCLA liability.”

Scott Fabor, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at the Environmental Working Group,  spoke in support of the EPA’s proposed designation, and warned against carving out exemptions. “Creating loopholes in the Superfund law will remove a powerful incentive for water utilities and waste managers to be good stewards of these toxic forever chemicals,” he said. He highlighted polluters and manufacturers as parties that should be held responsible.

Michael Witt testified on behalf of the Water Coalition Against PFAS, which represents associations of water utilities. He stated that “Utilities do not manufacture PFAS. We do not profit from PFAS. Industry did that – for decades.” And yet, Witt said, receipt of PFAS by water utilities could leave them liable under CERCLA. “To be clear, as the EPA and state agencies develop drinking water, wastewater, and storm water, utilities will be implementing these standards through costly treatment upgrades,” he said. “But CERCLA liability would come on top of that, and despite those improvements,” he concluded.

During the Q&A portion, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) asked Fabor how the EPA will protect minimal contributors from potential third party liability. Faber responded: “As the EPA has indicated…they do not plan to focus the responsibility for the PFAS contamination on water utilities, that’s nothing new, it has been long standing policy under EPA’s municipal settlement policy, administrative settlement policy…to quickly settle the liability of water utilities and other peripheral players, and to focus on those who are truly responsible for creating the pollution caused by hazardous substances.”

Later, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Bowers whether passive receivers have any way of protecting themselves from third party liability under CERCLA. “One of the potential exemptions…is the federal permitted release exemption, and this provides that if a release is in accordance with one of a number federally issued permits under several federal environmental laws, then there is no liability under CERCLA to be associated with that release,” Bowers said.

Reported by NEMWI Intern Aiden Meyer, Nazareth University

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