By David Martin, Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board chair
There is great uncertainty on what the looming federal budget cuts will be and what effect they will have on funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management, or EM, program at the Oak Ridge Reservation. We can be confident that budget cuts are coming. It is going to take a coordinated effort on the part of the DOE-Oak Ridge EM, regulators, and stakeholders to minimize the impact on current and future remediation projects, and on the men and women who carry out this work.
Right now DOE-EM is operating on a temporary six-month budget. This budget covers just the first half of Fiscal Year 2013 and is based on half of the FY 2012 budget. We should know soon how changes in the federal budget affect Oak Ridge EM for the second half of 2013. This still leaves the 2014 budget in question. [Read more…]