ECA Update: December 3, 2014 - Manhattan National Park Included in NDAA!
Published: Wed, 12/03/14
NDAA Update
Yesterday, congressional Armed Services Committee leaders announced they had reached a deal finalizing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. ECA Staff is thrilled to share that language creating a Manhattan Project National Historical Park is included in the bill. The park is being created to protect resources associated with the Manhattan Project for the purposes of improving public access and understanding of the historic program. The National Historical Park is set to be established within 1 year of the enactment of the NDAA and is slated to include facilities in Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Hanford. The inclusion of this language is a major victory for ECA members and supports - and congressional allies like Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington - who have worked for years to see this park become a reality.
Section 3039 creating the park can be found on page 1245 of the NDAA.
This year's NDAA also includes language directing the Secretary of Energy to convey more than 1600 acres of real property to the Community Reuse Organization of the Hanford Site. The bill requires this conveyance to occur before the end of September 2015 and includes considerations regarding the price of the land.
Information on the Hanford land conveyance can be found in Section 3013 on page 1175.
The bill also authorizes critical funding for defense environmental cleanup and operations of the National Nuclear Security Administration. For the next fiscal year, the NNSA is authorized to spend more than $11.7 billion; defense environmental cleanup efforts are authorized to spend up to $4.8 billion, with a further $4.8 million going towards closure sites and more than $800 million going to the Hanford sites.
From page 1644:
Environmental and other defense activities:
Defense environmental cleanup ....................................................4,884,538,000
Other defense activities ................................................................... 754,000,000
National nuclear security administration:
Weapons activities ....................................................................... 8,210,560,000
Defense nuclear nonproliferation ................................................. 1,774,758,000
Naval reactors .............................................................................. 1,377,100,000
Federal salaries and expenses ......................................................... 386,863,000
Total, National nuclear security administration .......................... 11,749,281,000
From page 1646:
Defense Environmental Cleanup
Closure sites:
Closure sites administration .................................................................4,889,000
Hanford site:
River corridor and other cleanup operations ....................................352,788,000
Central plateau remediation ..............................................................474,292,000
Staff would like to thank you all for your outstanding efforts and advocacy during this Congress. Please don't forget to call or e-mail your congressmen and senators to thank them for their support of these vital programs. We look forward to making the next legislative session even more productive.
Text of the full bill can be found here.
The Joint Explanatory Statement can be found here. |
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