ASME president testifies before House Subcommittee

WASHINGTON — "Engineers play a critical role in research and technology development to address environmental challenges, from air pollution to waste management to sustainable energy systems," stated ASME President Terry Shoup last month. He testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment on the importance of federal environmental research programs.

During his testimony, ASME President Terry Shoup stressed the value of environmental research programs.

In his testimony, Shoup noted that the administration's fiscal year 2008 budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development (ORD) programs is $755 million, which is 1.3 percent less than the fiscal year 2007 appropriated amount of $765 million. He urged the Subcommittee to support an increase in the agency's core research activities this year in order to allow the budget to keep pace with inflation.

President Shoup urged members of Congress to review the ORD budget to ensure that the budgetary commitment was meeting the scale of the challenges. "The number of environmental and sustainability challenges ahead of us have grown more numerous and more complex, but we are not providing adequate support for the research and technology evaluation activities that will allow us to understand and respond to these issues." His testimony cited independent analysis that noted the EPA's research and development budget has decreased by more than 25 percent since 2004 when adjusted for inflation, the lowest funding level since 1985.

Shoup's testimony was based on a position statement released by the ASME EPA Task Force of the Environmental Engineering Division on the EPA's FY 2008 Budget Request. The position statement (No. 07-11) is available for review at www.asme.org/NewsPublicPolicy/GovRelations/
PositionStatements.

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