Inel Funds Included In Senate Budget

The Senate version of the $20 billion budget for energy and resources programs includes nearly $1 billion in cash for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory - including money to prepare low-level waste for final storage and to plan more stable storage for highly radioactive waste.

The Senate measure, adopted late Tuesday, restored over $700 million to keep the Energy Department’s plans for cleaning up contaminated nuclear sites such as INEL on track.

Those and other differences must now be worked out with negotiators from the House.

In addition to the cash for INEL, the bill also includes $2.5 million for continued development of what Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne calls fish friendly hydroelectric turbines for dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Kempthorne secured $1 million for the research project a year ago.

The spending bill also urges the Army Corps of Engineers, which many environmentalists blame for the demise of Northwest salmon runs, to move as quickly as possible to modify the dams so they do not kill the vast majority of fish migrating two and from the ocean.

Conservationists, however, have contended that the Congress - and Idaho’s delegation - has failed to go far enough to head off extinction of the runs.