Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton [D-DC] today will offer an amendment on the House floor to the Defense Appropriations bill to provide the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with $1 million to study the health effects of the Spring Valley Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS) located in upper Northwest Washington, DC ... Under House Rules, Members may no longer earmark funds to a specific jurisdiction or project. However, Norton's amendment would require the study or studies to be done of FUDSs in cities with more than 500,000 residents where chemical agents were tested. Spring Valley appears to be the only FUDS that meets that definition.Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
Press Release (July 6, 2011)
On Thursday Norton took to the House floor and offered her amendment. For the Army, $1 million represents a comma in its budget, but no one's adding funds to anything; her amendment got voted down. But after the vote, Washington's Norm Dicks, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said he could help direct funds for the health study. "I lost the amendment," Norton says, "but I might have won the issue."Harry Jaffe
Kent Slowinski & Ginny Durrin after the Palisades July 4th parade
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton - Press Release (July 7, 2011):
ReplyDeleteCongressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) also noted on the floor that the defense bill will include more than $200 million specifically allocated for the cleanup of FUDSs, and that there was still a chance for Norton to secure money for the Spring Valley study if the DOD agrees ... With the DOD bill coming up, she decided to go to the floor today because, even though the amendment would surely fail, an amendment would give her leverage to seek funding administratively.
http://www.norton.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2197&Itemid=88