	Most Recent Developments

The Bush Administration's FY2007 budget request was released in February 2006. The request followed the reorganization of appropriations subcommittees in 2005, in which the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill acquired Department of Energy (DOE) programs that previously had been included in the appropriations bill for Interior and Related Agencies. Status

	Overview

The Energy and Water Development bill has historically included funding for civil works projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), most of DOE, and a number of independent agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). Tables 4 through 15 provide budget details for Title I (Corps of Engineers), Title II (Department of the Interior), Title III (Department of Energy), and Title IV (independent agencies) for FY2005-FY2006. Title I: Army Corps of Engineers

Under P.L. The California Bay-Delta Restoration project was funded at the level requested by the President, but $1.5 million lower than the House. Nuclear Waste Disposal

DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is responsible for developing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for disposal of nuclear reactor spent fuel and defense-related high-level radioactive waste. The committee called for the report to be submitted to Congress. 5427 as passed by the House provided that amount. These nonproliferation and national security programs are included in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill in the past included funding for civil works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), most of the Department of Energy (DOE), and a number of independent agencies. For FY2006, the Congress reorganized the appropriations subcommittees and the content of the various appropriations bills to be introduced. In the case of Energy and Water Development, the only changes were the consolidation of DOE programs that had previously been funded by the Interior and Related Agencies bill. That organization was followed by the Administration in submitting its FY2007 budget request in February 2006.
Key budgetary issues involving these programs include
the need to balance efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent storm damage in Louisiana with the rest of the agency's portfolio of authorized projects (Title I); support of major ecosystem restoration initiatives, such as Florida Everglades (Title I) and California "Bay-Delta" (CALFED) (Title II); funding for the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and proposals to store nuclear spent fuel temporarily (Title III: Nuclear Waste Disposal); and the Administration's proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to supply plutonium-based fuel to other nations (Title III: Nuclear Energy).