Highlights
- In the final Interior appropriations bill, the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS), Interior’s lead science agency, will receive $579 million
for its R&D programs, $10 million or 1.7 percent above the FY 2003
funding level (see Table; adjusted for across-the-board
cuts).
- Congress has
reversed the Bush Administration’s proposed cuts to many of USGS’ earth
science and water resources research programs.
- Total Interior
R&D climbs $49 million or 7.9 percent to $676 million because of
a requested boost to the Bureau of Land Management’s R&D activities.
Final FY 2004 Appropriations for USGS R&D
On November
10, President Bush signed into law the FY 2004 Interior appropriations
bill (HR 2691). The bill, which funds nearly all of
the Department of the Interior as well as the Smithsonian Institution
and parts of the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, was the fourth
of the 13 FY 2004 appropriations bills to be enacted. But in December,
Congress drafted an FY 2004 omnibus bill containing appropriations for
most of the other agencies in the federal government and inserted a
provision that would retroactively cut Interior funding across the board. When the omnibus bill is
signed into law early next year, Interior will have to reduce funding
for all its programs by 0.59 percent. The
final Interior bill provides $676 million for Interior R&D,
an increase of 7.9 percent or $49 million over FY 2003. Although the
President’s FY 2004 request would have cut R&D in Interior’s U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) by 4.2 percent, the final Interior bill restores
funding to the proposed cuts and provides a 1.7 percent boost instead
(see Table; all figures have been adjusted
to reflect an across-the-board cut in the Interior bill, and another
cut in the FY 2004 omnibus bill).
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the primary sponsor of R&D in
Interior. USGS is one of the leading federal sponsors of earth sciences
research, along with the Department of Energy, the National Science
Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Within
the earth sciences, USGS is particularly important in geological hazards
research, including research on earthquakes and volcanoes. USGS is also
a leading sponsor of water resources research and biological research.
Nearly 90 percent of this research is conducted within Interior labs
to address the science needs of Interior’s other agencies, such as the
Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Congress
has agreed to provide $938 million for its total budget in FY 2004,
$42 million more than the request and $19 million or 2.0 percent more
than FY 2003 (see Table).
R&D
accounts for nearly two-thirds of the USGS budget. The Bush Administration
requested a cut of 4.2 percent from FY 2003 for USGS R&D, but Congress
allocates $579 million, a 1.7 percent increase. (For details of the
President's request for Interior R&D, please see Chapter
13 of AAAS
Report XXVIII: R&D FY 2004). The request proposed to cut
funding for R&D in all four USGS divisions, but the Interior bill
gives increases to 3 of the 4 divisions and gives the remaining division
funding nearly equal to last year.
The Interior bill
keeps funding for water resources programs at or above the FY 2003 funding
level, in contrast to the requested cuts. Congress provides $145 million
for R&D in the Water Resources Division (up $5 million or 3.9 percent).
Within the division, the request proposed to slash funding for the Toxic
Substances Hydrology Program in USGS by 18 percent, but the final
Interior bill boosts funding from $13.4 million to $15.0 million. The
program is a collaborative effort of USGS scientists, university and
private-sector researchers, and state, local, and other federal agency
scientists to conduct long-term research on water resource contamination
in surface and groundwater environments. The request proposed to eliminate
the $6 million water resources research institutes program, but Congress
has decided to keep the program alive and give it a slight increase
to $6.5 million. This program funds 54 state water
research institutes, with every federal dollar matched by two state
and other non-federal dollars. The bill funds the hydrologic
research and development program at $17 million, up from the $15 million
current funding level and in sharp contrast to a 10 percent requested
cut. The request and the final appropriation keep the
National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) at $64 million,
up just slightly from $63 million. NAWQA is charged with monitoring
the nation’s water quality, and its data are used by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and many state regulatory agencies. The Biological Resource
Division (BRD) receives $174 million in the final USGS budget, a boost
of 2.8 percent over FY 2003.
The
Geologic Resources Division sees its R&D budget stay level at $209
million in FY 2004, an improvement over a requested cut of $11 million.
Congress disagrees strongly with the Administration’s proposal to reduce
USGS mineral resources research, and restores funding to proposed cuts.
The National Mapping Division sees its R&D fall $1 million to $50
million, a $4 million addition to the requested cut. The USGS is rolling
out a digital National Map to provide comprehensive, continually updated
geospatial information electronically.
Other Interior Agencies
Although USGS
is the primary science agency in Interior, three other Interior bureaus
also fund R&D (see Table). These agencies
mostly receive the requested amounts for R&D, including funds for
minerals and mining research in the Minerals and Management Service,
and wildfire prevention research in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Because of a large expansion in BLM’s wildfire-related
R&D activities, overall Interior R&D rises 7.9 percent to $676
million.
Impacts of the FY 2004 Interior Budget
Figure 1.
(click on the image to view or download a color,
full-page PDF version of this chart)
The FY 2004 increase enables
Interior R&D to stay ahead of inflation (see Figure 1). Interior
R&D has declined sharply since FY 1994, primarily because of the
elimination of the Bureau of Mines in FY 1996 and the merging of the
former National Biological Service into USGS in the mid-1990s. Since
then, Interior R&D has been mostly flat, with small increases in
recent years after hitting bottom in FY 1999.
Figure 2.
(click on the image to view or download a color,
full-page PDF version of this chart)
Figure 2 shows the distribution
of Interior’s research portfolio (excluding development and R&D facilities)
by discipline, most of it funded by USGS. USGS work in earth sciences and water
resources falls under the environmental sciences category, which accounts for
two-thirds of Interior’s research. Biological research in USGS is classified
under life sciences, which accounts for most of the remaining Interior
portfolio. USGS and the other Interior bureaus fund small amounts of other research.
Figure 3.
(click on the image to view or download a color,
full-page PDF version of this chart)
Interior support for research has
followed trends in Interior R&D, because nearly all of
Interior’s R&D portfolio is research with only a small amount for
development. As shown in Figure 3, the most prominent drop in Interior support
is in engineering research, which was almost entirely eliminated with the
closure of the Bureau of Mines. Life sciences research increased with the
creation of the National Biological Service in the early 1990s, but cuts in
subsequent years have eroded support. Interior support for environmental
sciences research has fared better than other disciplines and has mostly
trended upward despite some year-to-year fluctuations.
Next Steps
President
Bush signed the Interior bill into law on November 10, so Interior has
a final FY 2004 budget. The FY 2004 omnibus bill, however, would impose
a 0.59 percent across-the-board cut on non-defense agencies, including
Interior. Final action on the omnibus bill has been delayed until late
January; if the omnibus bill is signed into law as is,
then Interior will have to impose the reduction on all its programs.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2004 appropriations process.
This analysis includes information on R&D in House-Senate conference
appropriations for the Department of the Interior. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2004 appropriations, is available on the AAAS R&D
Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2004 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)
- October 29, 2003 (revised December 11)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
