The USGS and the President's Environmental Policy Initiative Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 11:42:09 -0400 To: "A - Division Chief and Staff", "B - Branch Chiefs and Offices", "DC - All District Chiefs" From: "Robert M Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist, Reston, VA" (Robert M. Hirsch) Subject: The USGS and the President's Environmental Policy Initiative Cc: "Timothy J West Reston, VA" , "Michael P McDermott Reston, VA" , "Martin Eckes Reston, VA" , "Gail A Wendt, Program Manager, Reston, VA" , "Donovan B Kelly Reston, VA" , "William G Wilber, National Synthesis Coordinator, Reston, VA" Over the past two weeks, the FAX lines between WRD and OMB have been busy exchanging information about a new Presidential initiative. It's called the "Environmental Policy Initiative" and it proposes new funding for USGS (as well as EPA and NOAA) for 4 years beginning in FY97. On Wednesday, August 28, the President publicly announced the Initiative (let's call it "EPI" for now). Although we have more questions about the EPI than we have answers, we thought we'd at least share the preliminaries with you. The following two Paragraphs are excerpted from the White House news release - "Every American has a right to know about toxic pollution in their neighborhood, and President Clinton is announcing steps to expand the information people can get about toxic risks to their families, without imposing new reporting burdens for anyone." "By the year 2000, Americans will have an easy way to answer common questions like "Is the air too polluted to play outside?" "Is the beach at my favorite lake clean enough for swimming this weekend?" "What kind of toxics are in the our local river?" This information will be available for the 75 largest metropolitan areas in the country through a comprehensive monitoring system with computer links to schools, libraries, community centers and home computers." The proposed total funding over 4 years is as follows: USGS/WRD: $45M EPA: $140M NOAA: $11M The proposed funding profile for the USGS is $8M in FY1997, $9M in FY1998, $14M in FY1999, and $14M in FY2000. Notice that the emphasis of the news release is on getting the information out to citizens. We were included in the initiative because the people in the White House know about NAWQA and know about our very successful efforts at getting water information out to people in a timely manner. The emphasis of the EPI for the USGS is intended to be on the quality of the aquatic environment and quality of source water for the 75 largest cities in the Nation. We have described our role as collecting new information (particularly where NAWQA leaves gaps in our coverage of these cities) and in improving access to information in easily understood and readily accessible forms such as fact sheets and the Internet. Obviously, this work would require a great deal of coordination with EPA and NOAA, as well as State and local agencies. We see the funding for this effort being divided between funds to the Districts for monitoring (using NAWQA protocols), funds to the Districts for outreach (fact sheets and data dissemination), funds to accelerate improvements in our data management systems, and funds for improvements in monitoring capabilities (especially real-time water quality sensors). Of course, the future of EPI in Congress in very uncertain, but the Administration seems serious about proposing new funds for this work. We understand that they are specifying off-setting budget cuts to pay for the initiative and that these off-sets are not from within our own budget. Beyond that, there's not much more to say. We just thought you should know what is happening. ********************************************************** * Robert M. Hirsch Phone: 703/648-5215 * * Chief Hydrologist Fax: 703/648-5002 * * 409 National Center Internet: rhirsch@usgs.gov * * U.S. Geological Survey * * Reston, VA 22092 * **********************************************************