Energy and Water Development: FY2015 Appropriations (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised Jan. 30, 2015 |
| Report Number |
R43567 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Mark Holt, David M. Bearden, Nicole T. Carter, Peter Folger, Heather B. Gonzalez, Mary Beth D. Nikitin, Fred Sissine, Charles V. Stern |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill provides funding for civil works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), for the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), and the Department of Energy (DOE), as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and several other independent agencies.
President Obama's FY2015 budget request for Energy and Water Development was released in March 2014. Including adjustments, the request totaled $34.26 billion, compared with a total of $34.13 billion appropriated for FY2014. The House approved the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill for FY2015 by a vote of 253-170 on July 10, 2014 (H.R. 4923, H.Rept. 113-486), with a funding total of $34.20 billion. The House adopted several amendments that did not change the total funding level from the bill as reported by the Appropriations Committee. The Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on Energy and Water Development approved its version of the bill on June 17, 2014, with a total of $34.21 billion, but the full committee did not take it up.
Final FY2015 Energy and Water Development funding was included in the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 (H.R. 83). Energy and Water funding totaled $34.78 billion, $519 million above the request and $653 million above FY2014, including rescissions. The consolidated appropriations measure passed the House December 11, 2014, and the Senate December 13, 2014, and was signed by the President on December 16, 2014 (P.L. 113-235).
Major issues in the debate over the Energy and Water Development bill included:
the distribution of appropriations for Corps (Title I) and Reclamation (Title II) projects that have historically received congressional appropriations above Administration requests;
alternatives to the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV, which the Administration has abandoned (Title III: Nuclear Waste Disposal);
proposed FY2015 spending levels for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) programs (Title III) that were more than 20% higher in the Administration's request than the amount appropriated for FY2014;
DOE funding for a joint effort with the Departments of the Navy and Agriculture for commercial-scale biorefineries that produce military-specification fuels;
cost, schedule, and management concerns for the international ITER project, which seeks to design and build an experimental fusion reactor (Title III, Science);
long-standing controversy over facilities for processing uranium and plutonium components for nuclear weapons (Title III, Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship); and
the Administration's proposal, rejected in the enacted version, to suspend construction of the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), which is intended to convert surplus nuclear weapons plutonium into civilian nuclear reactor fuel.
