Highlights
- The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) would see virtually no change in its R&D
budget for FY 2005 in the House Interior appropriations bill. The
House would provide $548 million for USGS R&D in FY 2005, just $1
million more than this year.
- The House would reverse many of the Bush Administration’s proposed cuts
to geology and water research programs, but all four USGS divisions
would see their R&D funding essentially unchanged from this year’s
level.
- Total Interior
R&D would fall slightly to $671 million in the House plan.
House FY 2005 Appropriations for USGS R&D
On June
17, the House of Representatives kicked off the FY 2005 appropriations
process by debating and approving the Interior appropriations bill (HR
4568), the first of the 13 appropriations bills to make it through the
House. The bill funds most of the Department of the Interior as well
as the Smithsonian Institution and parts of the Departments of Energy
and Agriculture. The House Interior
bill would provide $671 million for Interior R&D in FY 2005,
a cut of $4 million or 0.6 percent below FY 2004. Although the President’s
FY 2005 request would have cut R&D in Interior’s U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) by 4.0 percent, the House bill would restore funding to
the proposed cuts and provide a tiny $1 million increase instead (see
Table).
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. The House
would provide $944 million for the total USGS budget in FY 2005, $25
million more than the request and $7 million or 0.7 percent more than
FY 2004 (see Table).
R&D
accounts for nearly two-thirds of the USGS budget, with the remainder
going to non-R&D activities such as environmental data collection,
mapping, and natural hazards reduction. In a repeat of previous years,
the Bush Administration requested a cut of 4.0 percent for USGS R&D,
but the House would allocate $548 million, a slight (0.2 percent) increase.
(For details of the President's request for Interior R&D, please
see Chapter 13 of AAAS
Report XXIX: R&D FY 2005). The request proposed to cut funding
for R&D in three USGS divisions (Geology, Water Resources, and Biological
Research) and keep funding flat in the remaining division (Mapping).
The House would provide enough funding to bring all four divisions’
R&D programs approximately to their current-year funding levels.
Funding for nearly
every USGS R&D program would stay flat or decline in FY 2005 under
the House plan, even after the reversal of proposed cuts. Despite an
additional $8 million over the request, R&D in the Water Resources
Division would still decline slightly to $128 million. Funding for the
Toxic Substances Hydrology Program
would decline from $14.9 million down to $12.7 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 House would reject the Administration’s
proposal to eliminate the water resources research institutes program,
but the $6.5 million FY 2005 funding level would be just barely above
this year’s level. The House appropriation of $15.7 million for the
hydrologic research and development program would be more than the request,
but well below $17.1 million for this year. The House would keep the National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) at $63 million,
down slightly from this year. 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) would receive $176 million in FY 2005, a slight gain
of $2 million.
R&D in the
Geologic Hazards, Resources, and Processes Division would stay even
at $210 million, an improvement from a proposed $10 million cut falling
disproportionately on the mineral resources R&D program. The House
not only restores funding for mineral resources R&D but inserted
strong language into the committee report calling mineral resources
research a core responsibility of USGS. Funding for R&D on earthquakes,
volcanoes, landslides, geologic mapping, geology, and earth surface
dynamics would stay flat or decline slightly. Mapping and Geography
R&D would barely increase to $34 million.
Other Interior Agencies
Although
USGS is the primary science agency in Interior, four other Interior
bureaus also fund R&D (see Table). These
include funds for minerals and mining research in the Minerals and Management
Service (MMS), wildfire prevention research in the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM), water resources research in the Bureau of Reclamation, and R&D
for the Florida Everglades restoration project in the National Park
Service. The House would go along with the President’s request for these
R&D programs.
The House bill,
however, expresses concern about the progress of Everglades research
funded jointly by USGS and the National Park Service, and chastises
Interior for delivering an Everglades science plan a year late this
April and for doing too little to coordinate various Everglades research
programs or to link science with restoration and management decisions.
The House bill would require Interior to submit a report by November
providing details of research projects, how they fit into the overall
Everglades science plan, and how research results
might inform restoration and management.
Next Steps
The House Interior
bill now awaits a companion bill from the Senate, but it may be July
before the Senate takes up its Interior appropriations bill. Working
with a nearly identical total, it will be difficult for the Senate to
be more generous than the House toward USGS.
Even the flat funding in the House and the request may look good compared
with what lies in store. The FY 2005 budget contains preliminary
projections for the USGS budget out to FY 2009. In FY 2006, the total USGS budget would fall even further to $897 million
and end up well below this year’s funding level at $903 million by FY
2009. After adjusting for expected
inflation, the Bush budget would leave USGS R&D funding 13 percent
below this year’s funding level in 2009.
- June 17, 2004
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates
on FY 2005 congressional appropriations. The complete series of AAAS
R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses of
R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2005 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
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
