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ASME President Testifies Before House Environment Appropriations Subcommittee

“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 American Society of Mechanical Engineers President Terry Shoup in testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment last month.

In his testimony, Shoup (professor of mechanical engineering and former dean of the School of Engineering) noted the 1.3 percent decline in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2008 budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) programs from the previous year.  He urged the Subcommittee to support an increase in the agency’s core research activities to allow the budget to keep pace with inflation.

Shoup

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 over 25 percent since 2004 when adjusted for inflation, the lowest funding level since 1985.

Dr. Shoup's testimony was based on a position statement released by the ASME EPA Task Force of the Environmental Engineering Division on the EPA FY 2008 Budget Request.
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