Highlights
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) R&D budget barely increases
by just 0.2 percent or $1 million to $573 million in FY 2006 (see
Table). Because of a reduction in congressional
earmarks, most EPA R&D programs are set to receive slight increases.
- EPA’s overall budget falls 5.0 percent to $7.6 billion because of
steep cuts to State and Tribal Assistance Grants, fewer congressional
earmarks than in recent years, and two across-the-board cuts.
EPA R&D in FY 2006 Final Appropriations
On August 2, President
Bush signed into law the FY 2006 Interior and Environment appropriations
bill, the first of the FY 2006 appropriations bills to make it through
conference. The bill funds most of the Department of the Interior as
well as the Smithsonian Institution, the Forest Service, and for the
first time the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In previous years,
EPA had been funded along with the National Science Foundation, NASA,
and the Department of Veterans Affairs in the now-eliminated VA-HUD
appropriations bill. Tight budget limits gave negotiators fits as they
struggled to wrap up the bill, and in the end they inserted an across-the-board
cut of 0.48 percent for all programs to bring the bill’s spending total
down. But in December, appropriators attached another across-the-board
cut of 1 percent for all discretionary programs to the final Defense
bill, further reducing EPA totals. (All figures in this analysis reflect both across-the-board
cuts.)
EPA’s R&D totals $573 million in the final Interior/Environment
bill, just barely a gain of $1 million or 0.2 percent that falls well
behind the expected inflation rate of 2.0 percent (see Table),
compared to a small cut in the President’s February budget proposal.
(For details of the President’s request for EPA R&D, please
see Chapter 13 of AAAS
Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or
the March 2 EPA R&D Funding Update.)
Most EPA R&D
programs gain in the final FY 2006 budget because of a reduction in
congressional earmarks. EPA’s R&D is mostly funded in the
Science and Technology (S&T) account.
R&D in the S&T account totals $541 million in FY 2006, a 1.3
percent increase, but this becomes a larger increase if congressionally
designated performer-specific R&D earmarks are not counted. Congress
chose to add $33 million in earmarks to the request, only half the FY
2005 earmarks total, leaving more room for core R&D program funding.
Clean air research, including work on global change, particulate matter,
and tropospheric ozone, gains $3 million to
reach $104 million. Clean water research increases to $95 million, up
$2 million. Human health and ecosystems research, which incorporates
computational toxicology, endocrine disruptors, and risk assessment
related to human health, gains $5 million to reach $240 million. Only
sustainability research gets squeezed down to $29 million from $40 million.
Homeland security-related activities are a winner in FY 2006, nearly
doubling from $33 million in FY 2005 to $50 million. EPA efforts focus
on two areas. Drinking water security research would be one priority,
and would involve EPA efforts to develop better surveillance and laboratory
networks for drinking water supplies to counter potential terrorist
threats. The other priority is decontamination research, to develop
better technologies and methods for decontaminating terrorist attack
sites such as the Senate office buildings that EPA decontaminated from
anthrax in 2001.
In addition to
these S&T activities, the Superfund program also finances R&D
on environmental restoration, human health effects of pollutants, and
pollution prevention. Superfund R&D declines 16 percent to $30 million
(see Table).
EPA’s S&T
investments are a small part of the overall EPA portfolio (see Table),
and are designed to support EPA’s regulatory and enforcement missions.
R&D fares better than the overall FY 2006 budget of $7.6 billion,
a loss of $440 million or 5.0 percent. Congress provides only $3.1 billion
for State and Tribal Assistance Grants (STG), down from $3.6 billion. Most of this money goes to state, local,
and tribal governments to fund environmental projects, primarily projects
to preserve clean drinking water, but in the final FY 2006 Interior
bill Congress restrained its usual penchant for adding dozens of earmarked
projects. The Environmental Programs and Management (EPM) account that
funds most of EPA’s regulatory work sees an increase (up 2.3 percent
to $2.3 billion).
Impacts of the EPA R&D Portfolio
EPA’s basic and
applied research support (excluding development and R&D facilities)
comprises the large majority (80 percent) of EPA’s R&D. The largest
part of EPA’s research is in the life sciences (primarily biology and
environmental biology), with significant support for the environmental
sciences and engineering as well. Although EPA is the major environmental
regulatory agency in the federal government, many other agencies have
environmental responsibilities related to research, resource stewardship,
and economic management of the environment, so EPA is a relatively small
funding source for environmental R&D. In the environmental sciences,
EPA accounts for only 4 percent of total federal support, while in the
life sciences EPA funds less than 1 percent.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
Roughly 47 percent of EPA’s
R&D is performed in the agency’s own laboratories, while about 10 percent
is performed by industrial firms. Nearly a third of EPA’s R&D is performed
by colleges and universities, a share that has been growing in recent years as
EPA has attempted to expand its links with academia. The remainder is performed
by nonprofit institutions and state and local governments.
EPA’s R&D
support has been declining slowly for the past few years after steady
growth in the late 1990s. EPA’s R&D budget declined sharply after
FY 1994 and bottomed out in FY 1996 (see Figure 1). In subsequent years,
EPA’s R&D grew until FY 1999. EPA R&D declined again in FY 2000,
and has eroded slowly in inflation-adjusted dollars since then except
for a one-time boost in FY 2004 for homeland security-related R&D.
EPA R&D has dipped below $600 million in today’s dollars in recent
years in a downward trend.
-
December 28, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
