OEPR FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION CONTRACTUAL SUPPORT OMB Allowance NEA Pooling Requirements (Sec. 205) OPPR Study of Utility Deregulation under NGPA under NGPA 250,000 Study of Incremental Pricing Effectiveness under NGPA Gas Utility Rate Design Study Gas Producer Rate Schedule Analysis Study of NGA/NGPA Coordination Effectiveness Study of Future Natural Gas Requirements and 300,000 200,000 145,000 200,000 200,000 $1,575,000 OGC Consultants on Wholesale Rate Case Processing and State Utility Regulation Affecting Cogenerators Specialized Technical Assistance on Electric and Natural Gas Rate Factors SUBTOTAL: $3,060,000 TOTAL FY 1980 CONTRACTS: NEA: $3,060,000 TOTAL: $15,260,000 Mr. CURTIS. Generally speaking I think it is preferred for Government to develop inhouse expertise and capabilities for equipping agencies of Government with the necessary abilities to carry out their statutory mandates. There are, however, in the legislative components of the National Energy Act a number of tasks which have been assigned to the Commission which are of a nonrecurring nature. In my opinion, given the realistic and proper concerns with the growth of the Federal bureaucracy, and the legislative condition that was attached to the Civil Service Reform Act that requires the Federal Government overall to return to the 1977 position staffing level, we must, of necessity, have to put reliance on contractual sources to augment our capabilities if we are to carry out statutory requirements. As a Government-and this is particularly obvious to me at the Commission-we cannot continuously write laws that call upon agencies of Government to carry out functions and at the same time cutback on resources available to those agencies. The choice is either to write less laws or revise the laws that are in existence, or to increase the resources necessary to carry out the laws intelligently and effectively. But we cannot do both. Mr. BROWN. That gives me a whole new vision of the possibility of progress in this city. Maybe it ought to be from the staff of the regulatory agency to the staff of a committee rather than the other way around bause then there might be a different attitude on the part of the staff of a committee. I do sympathize with the fact that the sense of the committee staff and the committee have caught up now with the members of the Commission and the staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It must be a terribly burdensome load for you to carry to have to face the responsibility of administering laws that were written by a committee staff so dedicated to increasing the function of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and then, Mr. Curtis, recognize that successors on the committee's staff may be unwilling to provide for funds for you to do that work with dispatchability. Mr. SHARP. The time of the gentleman has expired. It has expired just in the nick of time. It seems like an appropriate place to stop. If we do not stop here, they will never get their backlog caught up. They will spend all their lifetime here. We appreciate your coming here to us. We do have a few more questions we did not have an opportunity to get to. We will submit those in writing to you. We wish you well in the administration of the Natural Gas Act and others that we provide for you. Thank you very much. The subcommittee is adjourned until 2 p.m., February 28, 1979. [Whereupon, at 3:25 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene at 2 p.m., Wednesday, February 28, 1979.] DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AUTHORIZATIONS (FISCAL YEARS 1979 AND 1980) AND ENERGY EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1979 U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, at 2 p.m., pursuant to notice, in room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John D. Dingell, chairman, presiding. Mr. DINGELL. The subcommittee will come to order. This afternoon the subcommittee continues its hearings on the Department of Energy Authorization Act for fiscal year 1979 and 1980. The subject of the hearings today is commercial waste management. The subcommittee is very pleased we have the assistance of the Department of Energy today and that our witnesses are the Honorable C. Worth Bateman, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology, and the Honorable Sheldon Meyers, Program Director, Office of Nuclear Waste Management. Gentlemen, we are delighted you are here. If you will come forward and each identify yourselves for purposes of the record, we will recognize you for such statements as you wish. Before you do, however, please identify yourselves for the record. If it is your wish to have any of your associates at the witness table with you, you may either call them to come forward at this time or you may call upon them as the need arises. STATEMENTS OF HON. C. WORTH BATEMAN, ACTING DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ENERGY TECHNOLOGY, AND SHELDON MEYERS, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; ACCOMPANIED BY BRUCE MERCER, COUNSEL Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I am Worth Bateman, Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology, Department of Energy, and to my right is Mr. Sheldon Meyers, Program Director, Office of Nuclear Waste Management at DOE. Mr. DINGELL. Welcome, and thank you for being with us. Mr. BATEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I have a prepared statement. With your permission, I would like to enter that into the record and then go ahead and summarize the major points of that statement. Mr. DINGELL. That will be entirely appropriate. Without objection, so ordered. The question is, Does Mr. Meyers have a prepared statement and would you make the same wish? Mr. MEYERS. Yes. Mr. DINGELL. Then without objection, so ordered. We will recognize each of you for such summary as you choose. Mr. BATEMAN. I am happy to be here to describe the Department of Energy's nuclear waste management budget request for fiscal year 1980. Before I get into the specific details of that request, I would like to put the request in perspective in relation to the administration's effort to come to agreement on an overall nuclear waste management program. We believe that this budget reflects, to the maximum extent possible, the recommendations likely to come out of the President's Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste Management. This report is in the final stages of preparation and we expect it to be released to the public in the very near future. The budget request which we have transmitted to the Congress supports the selection of a permanent repository site for terminal disposal of high level nuclear waste, for discarded spent fuel, either salt or basalt in 1981, or if we wait and explore a broader range of geologic environment, such a site selection for permanent repository could be made by 1985. In our view, the budget is consistent with the IRG recommendation to proceed with the dedicated TRU respository, that is, a repository transuranic contaminated waste if an opportunity to do so is available, and also to colocate in such a repository an intermediate scale facility for disposal of up to 1,000 commercial facilities' spent fuel. Our request provides for the implementation of the President's offer to provide interim storage facilities when that fuel cannot be stored safely or negatively at reactor sites prior to the establishment of a permanent repository. It also contemplates implementation of the President's offer to provide interim storage facilities for spent fuel from foreign power reactors when that would serve the Nation's nonproliferation objectives. The budget request provides for upgrading interim waste storage facilities for defense waste storage for defense waste, and increases funding for long-term waste management R. & D. and defense waste processing facilities. Finally, our request will assure we have a thorough understanding of the environmental, safety, and economic impacts of the waste program, and will insure broad public participation through the NEPA process and the licensing procedures of NRC, in consultation with State and local governments. With those introductory remarks, Mr. Chairman, I would like to turn now briefly to the major highlights of our specific budget request for fiscal year 1980 of $891 million. The three major components of our program are commercial waste, defense waste and spent fuel. The commercial waste request is for $199.4 million, and the major thrust of this program is to continue to examine a number of different geologies in different parts of the country which we hope will lead to a system of two or more repositories eventually located by the end of this century. |