HR 6147 Introduced – FY 2019 IER Spending

Earlier this week Rep. Calvert (R,CA) introduced HR 6147, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019. The only thing of note for the purposes of this blog is that the bill continues funding for the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) and that would not be news except for continued budget suggestions from the Administration that the CSB be disbanded. Water treatment facility security is briefly addressed in the Committee Report.

CSB Funding

The bill funds the CSB at $12 million dollars. This is $1 million above last year’s spending and $3.5 million above the amount recommended in the President’s budget to close out the agency. The Committee Report notes that (pg 84):

“The Board has the responsibility of independently investigating industrial chemical accidents and collaborating with industry and professional organizations to share safety lessons that can prevent catastrophic incidents and the Committee expects this work to continue.”

Water Treatment Facility Security

There is a brief note in the Report on funding for a Water Security Test Bed. No specific funding is allocated, just the note that:

“For both fiscal year 2019 and future budget requests, the Committee recommends that EPA include adequate funding for advancing full scale applied research and testing capabilities to address threats to drinking water and drinking water infrastructure.”

Moving Forward

The Report does not include any record of the votes in Committee on this bill, but the Dissenting Views portion of the Report (pgs 217-20) makes it clear that there are serious concerns about many items included in the bill. There will not be any significant bipartisan support for this bill when it makes it to the floor of the House. With the Republicans firmly in control in the House, this will not stop the bill from moving forward.

Again, as with all spending bills this may not be an impediment to the bill’s consideration in the Senate. We have yet to see the Senate version of the bill, but if we continue to have the strong bipartisan activity that we have seen to date in the Senate Appropriations Committee, the bill coming out of that Committee (which will form the basis for substitute language for this bill) will allow the Senate to take up this bill without regard to the Democrats documented objections to this bill.

Commentary

I am certainly glad to see the Committee’s continued strong support for the CSB. The on-going effective activity of this organization is still, however, in the President’s hands. With the resignation of the CSB Chair Sutherland, the President can slow kill the agency by failing to appoint a new chair. While Dr. Kulinowski, the Interim Executive Authority, is fully capable of overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Board, the solving of endemic morale issues and the long-term growth of the Board will have to await the next Chair.

While I was encouraged to see the Committee support a Water Treatment Facility Test Bed, I was disappointed to see the lack of specific funding being earmarked for such a facility or any guidance on what type of activities the facility should target. The EPA has a history of providing support for physical security protections of water treatment facilities to protect the safety of the water quality. The history on providing support for hazardous chemical security or cybersecurity is not quite as strong. This would have been a good place for the Committee to expand the scope of water treatment facility security oversight. At the very least, I would have expected to see a requirement to report to the Committee on the progress being made on the Test Bed.