Doyle Funding Requests for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Included in House Spending Bills

Washington, D.C. – August 14, 2007 – U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14) today released a list of his funding requests that were included in the federal fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills approved by the House of Representatives this year.

“The annual federal appropriations process provides Members of Congress with the opportunity to make certain that federal assistance programs adequately address local needs,” Congressman Doyle said today. “In recent years, I’ve been able to secure federal funding to help deal with the recurring flooding in Millvale and Etna and the longstanding threat posed by old natural gas wells in Versailles through this process.

A list of Congressman Doyle’s Fiscal Year 2008 Federal funding requests follows below.

Fiscal Year 2008 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill:

1. $1 Million for the Three Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the removal of stream discharges from municipal combined sewer systems
2. $2 Million for the Army Corps of Engineers Upper Ohio River, Emsworth, Dashields and Montgomery Locks and Dams Navigation Improvement Project Feasibility Study. Funding will be used to complete a study of the condition of the Upper Ohio River Locks and Dams and to recommend alternatives for replacement or repair.
3. $43 Million for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Construction General Account, for the Emsworth Dam Rehabilitation. Funding will used for emergency repairs to Emsworth Dams, which are in a progressive state of failure.
4. $70.3 Million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, General Investigations Account, for the Lower Monongahela Improvement Project for Locks and Dams 2,3, and 4. Funding will be used to address the deteriorated condition of the navigation facilities along the Lower Monongahela River.
5. $5 Million for the U.S. Department of Energy’s International Agreement to demonstrate and deploy innovative energy and environmental technologies and methodologies for cleaning up nuclear waste.

Fiscal Year 2008 Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations Bill:

1. $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration for The Upper Rooms at the Reformed Presbyterians Woman’s Home. Funding will support construction of a connector between The Upper Rooms and the Reformed Presbyterian Home.
2. $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration for The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh expansion project for facilities and equipment.

Fiscal Year 2008 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Bill:

1. $100,000 for Gwen’s Girls from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Juvenile Justice Account for prevention services for at-risk girls, ages 8-18, in economically depressed areas of Allegheny County.
2. $50,000 for Homestead Borough Police Department from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Edward Byrne Account for Crime Prevention and Assistance for coordinating a drug prevention program for the community.
3. $200,000 for Duquesne University Cyber-Security Preparedness for Small and Medium Sized Business. Funding will support Duquesne’s project to assess the cyber security preparedness of small and medium sized businesses.
4. $200,000 for Family Communications’ Western PA CARES. Funding will provide prevention services for pre-school age children from low-income families in economically depressed areas of Allegheny County.
5. $50,000 for East End Cooperative Ministry. Funding will be used for at-risk youth prevention programs.
6. $50,000 for Heritage Health Foundation’s 4 Kids Learning Network, Funding will be used to provide pre-kindergarten preparation, after-school learning support, and family support services.
7. $50,000 for YouthWorks, Inc., Funding will help provide youth employment program development, training, and private sector work experiences.

Fiscal Year 2008 Transportation/HUD Appropriations Bill:

1. $1 Million for Allegheny County East-West Corridor Rapid Transit Airport to Mon Valley. Funds will go towards planning and engineering work for rapid transit corridor linking the Pittsburgh International Airport to Downtown Pittsburgh and the Oakland area to the Mon Valley.
2. $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Economic Development Initiative for the Focus on Renewal Cultural Arts Center in McKees Rocks for planning, design, and construction of a recreational and educational facility.
3. $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Economic Development Initiative for the Coraopolis Street Light Replacement Project. Funds will go towards replacing 55 inoperative streetlights in the downtown business district of Coraopolis.

Fiscal Year 2008 Agriculture Appropriations Bill:

1. Steel City Biofuels’ Braddock Biofuels Initiative would receive an as-yet-to-be-determined level of funding under this bill. This funding would support the development of a biofuel cooperative in Braddock, bringing local residents together in an effort to provide renewable fuel alternatives to the community, reduce dependence on petroleum, strengthen the local economy, improve air quality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The dollar amount will be determined by the US Department of Agriculture, working with Steel City Biofuels.
2. Three Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program Project would receive an as-yet-to-be-determined level of funding under this bill to help Allegheny County’s smaller communities to address the sewer problems. The dollar amount will be determined by the US Department of Agriculture, working with the Three Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program.

Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Services Appropriations Bill:

1. $150,000 from the Small Business Administration for The North Side Industrial Development Corporation’s New Business-New Beginning Program. Funding will go to an entrepreneurial program to train residents of distressed areas of southwestern Pennsylvania to start their own businesses.

Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill:

1. $5 Million for Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab ongoing Perpetually Available and Secure Information Systems (PASIS) program, which develops technologies to guarantee the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and security essential to government communication and intelligence.
2. $2 Million for The Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center, an independent national initiative to support the commercialization of advancements in nano-structured materials that have military and commercial applications.
3. $1.5 Million for the Doyle Center for Manufacturing Technology, which conducts innovative research on the application of commercially available technologies, training, and infrastructure in small manufacturing enterprises (SME's) that supply critical goods and services to the U.S. Department of Defense.
4. $1.5 Million for Stemnion’s Rapid Wound Healing Technology Development Project for research on amnion-derived cell therapies for rapid wound healing applications. These efforts would focus on empirical testing, selection and optimization, and preclinical toxicity to improve healing of traumatic wounds.
5. $1 Million for Prologic’s Effects Based Decision Support Services (EBODSS). The EBODSS project is using analytical engines and advanced probabilistic display environments to create decision support tools for lethal and non-lethal weapons and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors.
6. $1 Million from the Navy’s Office of Naval Research for Eye360’s Advanced Panoramic Sensor System Program to develop advanced visual imaging technologies and related sensor and computing technologies for the unmanned aerial vehicles used by the U.S. military.
7. $1 Million for research on Advanced Performance Transparent Armor for Tactical Wheeled Vehicles, which will be integrated into current and future combat vehicles based on technologies developed and tested by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and its industrial partners (including Pittsburgh Plate Glass).
8. $2 Million for the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative’s Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative for the Advanced Regenerative Medicine project, which is working to improve treatments for soldiers who receive traumatic burns in the line of duty by utilizing regenerative medical technology like tissue engineering, cellular therapies, biosurgery, and artificial and biohybrid organ devices.
9. $1 Million for Converteam’s Integrated Power System (IPS) Converter, this is a new facet of the overall IPS program that the Navy initiated to develop all-electric power systems that can be used in any class of ship. Significant advantages have been found by developing state of the art power converters that allow the affordable integration of advanced weapons, propulsion, and power distribution systems on ships.
10. $1 Million for research by Body Media on advanced non-invasive glucose monitoring, a technology that will improve the way diabetes monitoring is conducted and allow for improved and maintained health of soldiers.

Funding for these requests is not guaranteed at this time. The Senate must approve counterpart legislation, and then the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bills must be worked out by House-Senate conference committees. At that point in the process, the provisions providing funding for projects in the 14th District could be deleted – or the funding level changed. The final versions of the bills (often referred to as conference reports) must then be approved by both the House and Senate. Finally, the President musts consider them, and President Bush has threatened to veto a number of the appropriations bills approved by the House. Until the final version of each bill is enacted into law, no one can be certain that this federal funding will be forthcoming.

“Approval of the House bills is just the first step in the federal appropriations cycle,” Congressman Doyle pointed out, “but I will continue to work throughout this lengthy process to make sure that the funding for these 14th District requests is included in the final versions of these bills.”

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