Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - July 27, 2009)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. DORGAN] proposes an amendment numbered 1813.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee bill that I bring to the floor this week with my colleague, Senator Bennett, from Utah. I am chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Bennett is the ranking member, and we have worked on the bill for some long while.
On July 9, 2009, by a vote of 30 to 0, the committee recommended the bill,
as amended, be reported to the Senate. That is, the full Appropriations Committee has recommended this bill, on a bipartisan basis, without objection, 30 to 0.
I want to thank both Chairman Inouye and Vice Chairman COCHRAN for their support of this bill, and I want to especially thank Senator Bennett for his work with me in developing the legislation.
Let me, perhaps as I begin rather than end, thank the staff of the subcommittee: Scott O'Malia, on the minority side; Doug Clapp, Roger Cockrell, Barry Gaffney, Franz Wuerfmannsdobler, and Molly Barackman.
There are many staff on both sides who have worked very hard. Putting legislation of this type together is not easy. We are working with limited resources, at a time when we have relatively difficult circumstances, to try to deal with Federal budget deficits and other issues, but we have put a bill together that has garnered bipartisan support.
The allocation for this bill is just under $34.3 billion. With score keeping adjustments, it comes down to about $33.75 billion. The total funding for our bill is 1.8 percent less than the President's budget request and just 1.4 percent over the regular energy and water bill of 2009. That means there is a very modest increase for the programs in this legislation.
Let me say generally this legislation deals with the energy and the water programs across the country. Energy and water are very important to this country's long-term future. What we are working to support is jobs and the economic health of our country as well as an adequate energy supply dealing. These energy challenges we face from being overly dependent on foreign oil doing something about climate change require action. We are dealing with energy accounts in this bill that are very important for the country.
We have tried to make funding determinations about them that we think move this country in the right direction and help make us less dependent on foreign sources of oil. That means that we have, in related authorizing legislation, actually expanded drilling and the determination to try to find additional supply in this country. Fossil energy from coal, oil and natural gas is going to continue to be used in the future. But we need to use them differently.
This legislation includes opportunities to do a range of activities that I believe will be in the country's best interests. Working with Senator Bennett, we know the legislation dealing with energy and water require substantially greater resources. We have far more water projects underway in this country than we can possibly fund in the short term. I believe we have something close to $60 billion of unfunded water projects. The Corps of Engineers, and particularly the Bureau of Reclamation, especially for western America, are charged with funding these projects.
Then, on the energy side, the accounts dealing with efficiency and reliability and a wide range of energy accounts--all of those accounts understand and recognize that we do not have unlimited amounts of money. Our country has very substantial and growing budget deficits because we are in a deep recession.
My colleague from Oklahoma was speaking as I came to the Chamber. I agree with most of what he described with respect to hydraulic fracturing. He is describing something that affects our ability to continue to produce a domestic supply of oil and natural gas. My colleague should know we have had now from both the previous Presidents that we zero out the research and development in oil and gas development. The current President's budget seeks to cut the oil program. My colleague and I have restored the funding for that. One of the reasons we have done it is our country leads the world, for example, in unconventional and ultra deep water drilling. We need to retain program funding to keep that advantage.
We need to produce more here at home, and we have added the funding back. As I indicated, both the previous administration and this administration decided not to support the research and development funding for oil research and development.
The description of the shale formations that Senator Inhofe talked about earlier remind me that 5 to 10 years ago we could not drill in these formations. They are now delivering substantially new resources. That energy was not accessible to this country because we didn't have the technology and the capability. My colleague described the Bakken shale in North Dakota, which I want to describe in a moment. I think it is so important for us to have the research and development funding which current technology benefitted from in the past. With sustained investments, we might have future technology options available as well.
To go to the previous point, the Bakken shale is a formation 100 feet thick, and it is 10,000 feet underground. To drill through that 100-foot-thick seam, they have divided it into thirds--top third, middle third, and bottom third. They go down two miles with one drilling rig, 10,000 feet down, searching for the middle third of a seam of shale that is 100 feet thick. They do a big curve when they get down two miles, then they go out two miles. The same drilling rig, goes down two miles then makes a large curve and goes out two miles, following the middle third of a seam a hundred feet thick called the Bakken shale.
A few years ago I asked the U.S. Geological Survey to do an assessment of what is recoverable in the Bakken shale. They came back with their estimate after a 2-year study, saying there are 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil using today's technology. It is the largest assessment of recoverable oil in the lower 48 States ever made in the history of our country.
None of that was available to us a decade ago. It was there, but it was not available to us. How do we get that oil? When they drill down with a drilling rig, it takes about 35 days to drill that hole, then fracture it under high pressure--hydraulic fracture, they call it. After that, they tear down that rig and move it away a ways and drill another hole--every 35 days. The hydraulic fracture allows that rock formation to be fractured so that the oil drips and then is extracted from the well. They are pulling up oil out of those wells, in some cases 2,000 barrels a day. The key to that is, No. 1, have they carried out the research and development so that we lead the world in the ability to do that kind of very sophisticated exploration. We continue to put that funding in this bill and have always had it in this legislation. That is what has opened up this unbelievable opportunity.
The second half of it, as my colleague described, is not something we are doing in this bill, but the ability to continue hydraulic fracturing, decade after decade, I think for nearly 50 years, I am not aware of any evidence that there is any contamination of groundwater with hydraulic fracturing when companies have followed the appropriate guidelines and regulations.
I have been describing one small part of what Senator Bennett and I have done with respect to increasing our domestic energy needs in this bill.
We also want to encourage the development of renewable energy. We have done a lot of things in this legislation to do that. We want to encourage the ability to use our most abundant resources, such as coal, but we must use them differently. That means, if you are going to have a lower carbon future you have to decarbonize the use of coal. So we need to make substantial investments to be able to decarbonize the use of coal.
I think we can do that. Some say let's give up on it. I say let's find a way to use our most abundant resource by decarbonizing it so that we can move to a low carbon future to protect our planet.
We are doing a lot of things in this legislation that I think move this country in the right direction for a better and a more secure energy future. When I talk about energy and say that nearly 70 percent of our oil now comes from outside of our country, I think most people would look at that and say that makes us vulnerable. That is an energy security issue. It is also a national security issue. If, God forbid, somehow, some way, someday, someone shuts off the supply of foreign oil to our country, this economy of ours would be flat on its back. So I think everyone--the previous administration, this administration--believes we must be less dependent on foreign energy.
The other thing that is important to understand is, although about 70 percent of our oil comes from outside our country, nearly 70 percent of the oil is used in our transportation fleet. We are doing things in this appropriations bill that moves us toward a different kind of transportation fleet, an electric-drive fleet, for example. If we are using 70 percent of our oil for transportation in this country, how do we make us less dependent on foreign oil? Convert; move to something else.
We have funding in this legislation and we had funding in the Economic Recovery Program for battery technology and for a whole series of things that help accelerate the movement toward an electronic transportation system.
All of these things are things we can do. It is only a matter of establishing public policy that encourages it, public policy that is supportive of the direction we want to go.
I am going to be describing in some detail some of the accounts. I have talked about the energy piece of this a bit. We have programs in here for electricity, fossil energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy--small little things that people don't think much about.
Energy efficiency: Almost everything we use these days--a refrigerator, a dishwasher, an air conditioner--all of the appliances are much more efficient than they have ever been. I recall some years ago when I was supporting and pushing something called a SEER 13 standard for air conditioners--a SEER 13 standard. You would have thought we were trying to bankrupt the country by insisting on a much higher standard of energy efficiency for air conditioners. We have gotten to SEER 13 and are looking beyond that now, but we have pushed standards so that when you put a new refrigerator in your kitchen these days it uses so much less electricity because it is so much more efficient.
I recognize--someone told me this a while back--yes, we are putting these unbelievably efficient refrigerators in kitchens, and then they take the old refrigerator and put it in the garage to store beer and soda. I recognize we need to get rid of those old refrigerators, perhaps, but it is people's right to move them into the garage.
My point is, these smaller issues we are funding, energy efficiency standards for appliances are very important. When we get up in the morning we flick a switch and a light goes on. We turn on an electric razor and never think much about what makes it go. We plug it into a wall. We go down and put something in the toaster and the bread toasts because there is electricity. We put a key in the automobile, and we drive off to work.
As Dr. Chu says, 2,000 years ago, normally when you would go look for food someplace, 2000 years ago you would get on one horse and go look for something to eat. Now, of course, we get in modern conveniences and we take 240 horses to go to the 7-Eleven or grocery store. That is the way our engines work and use energy.
But we are required now to be smarter and use energy in a different way. For a wide range of accounts, my colleague Senator Bennett and I will begin describing some of these accounts in more detail in between other presentations. With the funding in this legislation, we are trying to change the way we use energy: Develop a more abundant supply of energy, including changing the way our vehicle fleet is powered. One issue with respect to the transportation fleet is moving toward a hydrogen and fuel cell future, I think a future beyond electric drive. Still, hydrogen is everywhere; it is ubiquitous. I believe a hydrogen fuel cell future is something our children and grandchildren will likely see realized and will be very important to this country.
The administration, in its budget request for this fiscal year to the Congress decided it would zero out 189 existing contracts in hydrogen and fuel cell program. We included the money again because we don't think that is wise to cut ongoing work.
I agree in the short term we are going to move toward an electric drive transportation system, but, in the longer term, we need to continue the research toward hydrogen and fuel cells, and we included that money in this bill.
Let me turn for a moment--I am going to come back to some energy issues a little later, after Senator Bennett talks about this bill as well. I want to talk about water, because this bill, after all, is also about water. As all of us who have studied history know, water is the subject of great controversy. Water is very important. So many things related to development and jobs in this country relates to accessible water.
We have issues in this bill dealing with the Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation with respect to water. These address storing water, moving water, dredging water in ports and channels so that commerce can occur, and much more. In some cases, we must address not having enough water or too much water. We have a lot of issues.
As I indicated earlier, we have far more water projects than we can possibly fund. Senator Bennett and I decided we simply could not fund what are called new starts in construction and investigations this year. We hope to do that next year, but we could not do it this year. We didn't have the money. We think it is far better to continue funding for existing projects and try to complete some of the projects underway and then proceed with new starts next year. We had 92 requests for new projects starts. We have a $60 billion backlog and 92 requests, some of which came from the President. We believed we could not do it. I wish we could, but we could not do it.
I also want to make a point that there are, in this legislation especially, legislatively-directed proposals, that is the Congress itself directs certain funding. The President sent us proposals, particularly on water projects--energy projects as well, but especially water projects. He requested earmarked funding. In other words, the President says, all right, here is what I want you to have for water. These are my Presidential earmarks and how I believe you should spend the water money.
Some of them made a lot of sense. Some of them did not. Senator Bennett and I also included, in this legislation perhaps more than other legislation, legislative-directed funding on the amount of funding we believed should go to projects.
Because, frankly, I think perhaps Members of Congress have a much better idea of what are the water needs more than the Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, Office of Management and Budget, or the White House. They know which projects will benefit their State's commerce.
So this subcommittee, going back many decades, has had a tradition of legislatively-directed funding toward the highest priorities, particularly in water projects. That makes a lot of sense to me. I assume we may well have some folks come and decide that some of them do not have merit.
It is important to discuss the individual programs for individual legislatively-directed amounts, and we will do that when necessary. But I did wish to say once again that we received a lot of recommendations from the President for earmarking the funding for various projects, and we have included many of these. We have also included projects that were recommended by the Members of Congress that were well underway.
I have other things to discuss, but let me yield the floor because I know my colleague, Senator Bennett, will want to describe some of this bill as well.
Let me close as I opened by saying it is a pleasure to work with Senator Bennett on these issues. These do represent investments in our country. Some things are spent and you never get it back, it is just spending. But when you build water projects or invest in the energy further such as through this bill, then it represents investments in the country's future that will provide very substantial dividends for the country for a long time to come.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, a couple of additional points:
No. 1, the administration's budget to the Congress for this year did recommend an increase in Corps of Engineers funding for water issues. They should be complimented for that. That is a step forward. We have seen relatively flat and underfunded budgets for the Corps of Engineers in recent years. It is encouraging. We added to it, of course, but the investment needed in major water projects to be completed is very important. I appreciate the administration's decision to increase, at long last, the recommendations there.
No. 2, my colleague, Senator Bennett, mentioned Yucca Mountain. I expect that will be mentioned more than once during this discussion in the next day or so. We are going to see the building of some additional nuclear power plants in this country. The reason is pretty obvious: Once built, nuclear power plants do not emit CO 2 and therefore do not contribute to the warming of the planet. We are beginning to see additional activity. Companies are preparing license applications now.
Senator Bennett described the issue of Yucca Mountain. I do want to make a point about that because it is important. I didn't come to the Congress with a strong feeling about building additional nuclear power plants. I have, with my colleague, increased some funding for loan guarantees for nuclear power plants in a previous appropriations bill because I come down on the side of doing everything, and doing it as best we can, to address this country's energy challenges. They are significant and require building some additional nuclear power capacity.
This President campaigned last year against opening Yucca Mountain. It was not a surprise to the American people that he would at this juncture take the position that Yucca is not the place for a permanent repository for high level waste materials. The Secretary of Energy and the administration have recognized that, not proceeding with opening Yucca Mountain, does not mean we don't need an intellectual framework for nuclear waste. They have indicated and committed themselves to that, the development of an alternative framework for how we address the issue of waste. We have to do that because, in order to build plants, we have to establish waste confidence. I am convinced the administration is doing the right thing in the sense that they have said we don't want to open Yucca, but they are saying there has to be an alternative. We are committed to trying to find a solution and explore the alternatives with a blue ribbon commission.
I wish to mention the National Laboratories. This bill funds our national science, energy, and weapons laboratories. These laboratories are the crown jewels of our country's research capability. We used to have the Bell Labs, and we had laboratories that were world renowned, world class, that didn't have anything comparable in the world. The Bell Labs largely don't exist at this point. Much of our capability in science for research and technology exists in these science labs we fund in this bill. I am determined to find ways to make certain those best and brightest scientists and engineers working on the future of tomorrow and the new technologies for tomorrow at the national science laboratories have some feeling of security about their future. The last thing we should want is to see the roller-coaster approach to jobs at our National Laboratories and our science labs.
We had a hearing some while ago in our subcommittee on the issue of how to continue to use coal in the future. That leads to the question of carbon capture and sequestration. I held a hearing in our subcommittee on carbon capture and beneficial use. One of the witnesses from one of our laboratories, Margie Tatro from Sandia National Laboratory, talked about what they are working on. It was breathtaking. We have this giant problem related to using coal, but it is not an insurmountable problem. She talked about the work they are doing with respect to concentrated solar power to be used in a heat engine to take CO 2 in on one side of the engine and water in on the other side. They fracture the molecules and, through thermal chemical dynamics, they create methane gas from the air. I don't know exactly where all this goes.
Deep in our laboratories are some of the brightest people working on these issues. We will solve some very vexing and challenging energy issues through research and development programs. I look at what we are doing in those areas for energy efficiency and renewable energy such as for hydrogen, biomass and biorefineries, solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, vehicle technologies, building technologies, industrial technology, weatherization, State energy programs, advanced battery manufacturing, and more.
All of these issues are investments in the country's future and will, no doubt in my mind, unlock the mysteries of science to give us the capability to do things we did not dream possible. That opens up the opportunity to find new sources of energy, to move us way from this unbelievable dependence on foreign oil, to move toward different constructs in building efficiency, appliances, and new vehicles. That solves a number of things, allowing us to produce more energy, more renewable energy, more fossil energy, but it also allows us to conserve much more because we are prodigious wasters of energy.
I didn't mention one other area of electricity--and it goes with conservation--incorporating smart grid technologies. We will in the future see substantial amounts of smart metering in homes that allows people to change very substantially the way they use electricity in their homes. They have not had, up until this point, that capability, but the capability, because of the research going on and the demonstration programs, some of which we are funding, can increase all across the country in the future. That, too, will invest in making us less dependent on foreign oil.
All of these things play a role in what we are trying to do.
In the electric delivery and energy reliability portion of our bill, we have programs for clean energy transmission and reliability, smart grid, cyber-security for energy delivery systems. They are examples of a wide range of investments in all of these areas that will make this a better country and advance our energy and water interests.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
IN MEMORIAM: WILLIAM PROCTOR JONES
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I rise to make a statement in honor and in memory of William Proctor Jones. He died three weeks ago on July 7, the day before we actually wrote and marked up this bill in subcommittee.
Proctor Jones was a longtime staff director of this subcommittee. His death is a great sorrow for our members and staff who worked with him. His life was a great blessing for this country.
He first came to work in the Senate in April of 1961. He went to work for his home State senator, Richard Russell of Georgia. Proctor moved to the Appropriations Committee in 1970 and worked there 27 years until 1997. Since 1973 and beyond and for the majority of his time on the committee, Proctor served as staff director of the Energy and Water Subcommittee.
For decades, as this bill was brought to the floor of the Senate, Proctor Jones was sitting on the floor knowing that he played a very significant role in putting together the investments this country was making in the critical areas of energy and water. Proctor became a very close adviser and close personal friend of Senator Bennett Johnston, the Energy and Water Subcommittee's longtime chairman.
For those of us who knew Proctor and relied upon him, he defined the very best of the term ``public servant.'' He was tireless in his work. He was a master of the budget and the appropriations process and an expert in many policy fields this subcommittee has dealt with over the years. His service made this country a much better place.
This country moves forward because a lot of people do a lot of good things in common cause to make judgments about what will strengthen America. It is often the case that those of us who are elected and serve have our names on a piece of legislation or our names on a report of a subcommittee such as this, but it is also often the case that some very key people who have devoted their lives to good public service played a major role in making good legislation happen. William Proctor Jones is one of those.
Today, as we take up the piece of legislation from a subcommittee he spent decades working on, I honor his memory and thank him and his family in this time of sorrow and thank Proctor Jones for all of the work he did for his country.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the Senator from Utah and I would ask of Senators who have amendments to this legislation that if they wish to come now, we would very much like to have amendments offered. Certainly the majority leader has wanted to bring appropriations bills to the floor of the Senate. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee described appropriately, a few minutes ago, the importance of trying to get these appropriations bills completed. So working through the full committee we are winding our way through.
Now Senator Reid is bringing them to the floor, and I deeply appreciate his determination to do that. It is a marked departure from what we were able to do previously. We would like to get individual appropriations bills done, get them to conference, have a conference with the House, and get them to the President for his signature. That is the way the Congress is supposed to work. It is the way appropriations bills are supposed to be done.
We will have amendments, I am sure. We were told someone has prepared nearly 20 amendments. But, look, they ought to have that opportunity. In the past couple years they did not have that opportunity. That is what Senator Reid is doing now, to say: Bring these to the floor. Give people an opportunity to take a look at what the Appropriations Committee has done. If they disagree, come to the floor with amendments, have a discussion, and vote on the amendments. It is exactly what we should do.
It is a problem, however, that we do not have unlimited time. My hope is--and I think Senator Bennett's hope is--we could have people come over, offer amendments, and we could finish this bill in the next couple of days. It would be great to finish it late tomorrow night or perhaps Wednesday at the latest. But in order to do that, we would need some cooperation. We would very much ask people to tell us what their amendments are, come over and file amendments, and come and debate the amendments. The point is, we are here and ready, and we very much want to get this piece of legislation completed.
I have described in some respects the urgency of our energy policies in this country. Well, the fact is, passing this legislation, and doing so now, will give us the opportunity early in the fiscal year to have the Department of Energy and the administration develop energy strategy based on these investments. For the first time in a long time, we will know where we are headed.
I have always felt we ought to be saying: Look, here is where America is headed on energy. Here is what we are going to do on renewable energy. Here is what we are going to do on carbon capture and storage. Here is where we are headed. You can invest in it. You can count on it, believe in it, because this is America's policy. Part of that policy is developed through the authorization committees, and no small part is developed in what we fund in the Department of Energy. Exactly the same is true with respect to water policy.
Let me make this point as well. This country had an economy that fell off a cliff in the first part of October of last year, and we still are in a deep recession. In the middle of a very deep recession, a piece of legislation that is going to provide the funding, hopefully by October 1, to proceed ahead building and creating water projects and other things puts people to work. It invests in the country's economy in a way that puts people to work and provides jobs. That is very important.
For a lot of reasons, again, I commend the majority leader for bringing this to the floor. We will hope for some cooperation. We want amendments, if they want to bring amendments to the floor. We want them today or beginning in the morning. Senator Bennett and I wish to work with our colleagues to try to review amendments. We wish to work with them. Perhaps they have some ideas we did not think of. We could add to this bill by consent, or others perhaps we can debate and have a vote on.
We want to make that known to our colleagues. We are looking forward to completing this bill in the early part or at least no later than midweek.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source