{"id":150491,"date":"2024-04-17T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T17:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=150491"},"modified":"2024-04-17T18:22:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T18:22:46","slug":"dod-priorities-increasing-health-energy-resilience-bolstering-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=150491","title":{"rendered":"DOD Priorities: Increasing Health, Energy Resilience, Bolstering Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<p>\n    Defense Department quality of life issues for service members, military construction and toxic chemical cleanup are being addressed in President Joe Biden&#8217;s fiscal year 2025 budget request.\n<\/p>\n<p>Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, and service officials testified yesterday at a House Readiness Subcommittee regarding this budget request.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--popup--><\/p>\n<p>Military construction request totals $15.6 billion. &#8220;This includes $1.8 billion for facilities that will enhance and support quality of life, including child development centers, unaccompanied housing, healthcare dining facilities and schools,&#8221; Owens said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sustainment funding requested for existing facilities is $13.6 billion, with an additional $6.3 billion in restoration and modernization funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To ensure these investments are optimized for readiness and quality of life, we&#8217;re working with the DOD components to transform our military construction processes and adopting a sustainment management strategy to support consistent and sustained delivery of high performing assets,&#8221; Owens said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Funding requested for family housing construction, operations and maintenance is $2 billion and nearly $1.1 billion for unaccompanied housing projects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--popup--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These investments, synchronized with the efforts of the tiger team we established in February, will support our efforts to enhance our oversight of the portfolio. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we&#8217;re all committed to getting after it,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Reliable, adaptable and resilient energy remains essential to military capability and readiness,&#8221; Owens said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--popup--><\/p>\n<p>Funding requested for installation energy is $3.8 billion, as well as $3.5 billion for operational energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The department is transitioning from current firefighting foam to alternative foams that don&#8217;t contain PFAS, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>PFAS, which stands for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/sdwa\/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas\" target=\"_blank\">per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances<\/a>, is a man-made chemical group that is especially good at extinguishing fires very quickly. However, it is considered to be toxic at certain levels by the EPA. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--popup--><\/p>\n<p>The military departments are executing plans to ensure a safe transition that does not degrade readiness, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Funding requested for environmental cleanup of past DOD activities is $1.6 billion, including nearly $300 million dollars for PFAS cleanup.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While we are making progress, EPA&#8217;s new drinking water rule will significantly increase the amount of PFAS-impacted drinking water that DOD treats both as a water purveyor and under its cleanup program,&#8221; Owens said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency&#8217;s more stringent requirements for the amount of PFAS that can be released into the environment or cleaned up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defense Department quality of life issues for service members, military construction and toxic chemical cleanup are being addressed in President Joe Biden&#8217;s fiscal year 2025 budget request. Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, and service officials testified yesterday at a House Readiness Subcommittee regarding this budget request.\u00a0 Military construction request [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150493,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150491\/revisions\/150493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}