Friday, May 10, 2024
Defense Environment Alert -- The dispute between congressional Democrats and the White House over the fiscal year 2007 emergency supplemental spending bill could delay some active base cleanups because the Army has announced it is suspending the obligation of $100 million in contracts and work funded under the service's environmental restoration account, an Army official tells Inside EPA.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Air Force has named Kevin Billings, a former nuclear industry official, to oversee environmental policy, and hopes to add energy responsibilities to his title.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Air Force is calling on the commercial airline industry for help in its effort to commercialize high carbon dioxide-emitting coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel refining, which military officials and other supporters say is needed to reduce dependence on foreign oil and lower fuel costs.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Interior Department, in coordination with the Defense Department, last week issued a long-awaited final rule to effectively exempt DOD from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) for the incidental taking of migratory birds during readiness activities.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Defense Department is rejecting for now calls by environmentalists to consider alternatives to using the controversial fuel oxidizer perchlorate in the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
Defense Environment Alert -- Defense Department plans to zero out funds for the department's Cooperative Threat Reduction chemical demilitarization program, which seeks to destroy chemical weapons in Russia, could hamper Russia's efforts to meet a 2012 international treaty deadline, according to an environmentalist familiar with the project.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Army expects to see an increase in environmental claims from host nations as it shuts down bases as part of its effort to relocate some of its overseas troops to the United States, according to Army budget documents for fiscal year 2008.
Defense Environment Alert -- President Bush's Jan. 24 executive order setting new energy management goals, including greenhouse gas emission and fuel consumption reductions, appears to codify much of what the Defense Department has previously committed to, observers say.
Defense Environment Alert -- Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) introduced legislation Jan. 4 that would require the Defense Department to notify deploying soldiers of any depleted uranium (DU) use in their theater of operations and any associated health risks.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Defense Department earlier this month formally certified its plan to stretch out the cost and schedule for destruction of stockpiled chemical weapons at sites in Kentucky and Colorado, despite conceding that total costs will be higher with this approach and that storage facilities are targets for terrorist attack.
Defense Environment Alert -- Critics of bipartisan coal-to-liquids (CTL) energy bills co-sponsored by Sens. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-IL) say the legislation, which would promote Defense Department use of the alternative fuel, poses significant financial and environmental problems.
Defense Environment Alert -- After years of enjoying heavy influence on environmental policy debates, the Defense Department may now be put on the defensive after the 2006 elections -- having to justify hard-fought environmental exemptions it had already won, observers say.
Defense Environment Alert -- Parties to an international convention on the destruction of chemical weapons approved extensions last month to the treaty's final destruction deadlines, giving the United States and Russia a much-needed additional five years -- until April 2012 -- to destroy their significant stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Defense Environment Alert -- Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) -- the likely chair of a key House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in the next Congress -- plans to press for greater Environmental Protection Agency oversight and enforcement at contaminated military sites.
Defense Environment Alert -- A National Academies of Sciences panel says the Army should consider using detonation-type technologies now being employed abroad to destroy the military's large caches of buried non-stockpile chemical weapons.
Defense Environment Alert -- The new Democratic majority on the House Armed Services Committee in the next Congress will attempt to quicken the pace of chemical weapons destruction, a controversial and increasingly political process for which the military has been criticized for its schedule and cost overruns and some of its destruction technology choices, a Democratic committee source says.
Defense Environment Alert -- Army Secretary Francis Harvey is urging the service's commands and worldwide regional offices to make improvements in energy conservation, a year after the Army began calling for alternatives to its heavy reliance on oil.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Navy Department is calling on its naval and Marine commands to adequately fund projects aimed at meeting DOD commitments made under an interagency agreement to significantly lower energy use and incorporate sustainable design in new buildings.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Defense Department inspector general is initiating an audit this month that will examine whether potable and non-potable water supplies at U.S. bases in Iraq are contaminated, an investigation that is broader than that requested by a Democratic senator earlier this year.
Defense Environment Alert -- The Pentagon's controversial decision to withdraw EPA oversight funding for the 2005 round of base realignment and closure cleanups may disadvantage state environmental cleanup programs that have depended on EPA to help oversee remediation at BRAC sites that are not listed under the federal Superfund program, state sources say.