Devolvement of Defense Cleanup.

[gkripke@Essential.ORG]

From: Gawain Kripke <gkripke@Essential.ORG>

To: Interested colleagues

From: Gawain Kripke
 Director, Appropriations Project
 FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
 Internet: gkripke@foe.org

Date: April 17, 1996

RE: Devolvement of Cleanup budget to Services.
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The Department of Defense recently released the "Report to Congress on the
Devolvement of the Defense Environmental Restoration Account" (March 31,
1996). The report describes the purpose of a recent proposal by the 
Pentagon to "devolve" the Defense Environmental Restoration Account 
(DERA) from the Defense Department level to the individual Armed Services.
For those of you who have not had a chance to look at this document
I thought I would post a couple significant excerpts which raise serious
issues about how cleanups will be funded. 

1. "the DERA account has been 'fenced.' The fence on appropriated funds in
the Component or DoD-wide account will remain in effect to prevent erosion
of the appropriated funds to pay other bills or migration of funds into
the account." (p. 3)

Analysis:
The "fence" around DERA is critical to maintaining the cleanup funding 
for its intended purpose -- cleaning up military facilities. It is 
encouraging that the DoD agrees that maintaining this protection is 
necessary. Otherwise funds could be diverted to other purposes. Even 
with the fence this sometimes happens.

2. "Including environmental restoration in program and budget reviews by the
Components' financial managers will allow restoration requirements to
compete with other mission requirements, improve the planning and
execution of the restoration program, thus minimizing the requirement
to make last minute adjustments to mission requirements in order to fund
restoration shortfalls. In addition, it will encourage environmental
restoration program managers to consider fiscal realities when negotiating
restoration schedules." (p. 4)

3. "[Devolvement] places environmental restoration into the mainstream
resource allocation decision process beginning at the Component level
making it an internal program of the Components." 
(p. 8)

Analysis: Unfortunately, on-the-ground experience is showing that
environmental restoration program managers are already highly sensitive to
the costs involved in restoration. Making environmental restoration
program managers compete for funding in an unfriendly environment does
not seem likely to produce better results. Instead, environmental
restoration managers should be provided incentives to seek the most
effective/safest solutions not just the cheapest ones. Devolvement seems
to push the cost issue further down the line and force trade-offs earlier 
in the process.