Editor's Note: This transcript has been updated to correct the university that provided extraneous job loss estimates to Friends of PNNL.
Phineas Pope: A look at another federal funding cut that could be very impactful in the Tri-Cities. Roughly $260 million in proposed federal cuts could affect the area's largest employer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. For more on this, we're joined by Doug Ray, former associate laboratory director at PNNL.
So Doug, for those unfamiliar, what is Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or “The Lab,” as the locals call it?
Doug Ray: The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. It's one of about 17 or 18 across the country. It's owned by the U.S. government, but it's operated by Battelle, which is a contractor that the department has hired.
It exists to do research and development that the Department of Energy determines needs to be done on behalf of the nation. [It] has about 6,500 employees. I think it's an annual budget of about one and a half billion dollars a year. Most of the employees are in Richland, but some are in Seattle and some are in College Park, Maryland, and a few others are scattered around the country.
It's not only a Richland-based enterprise. It's been around for 60 years.
Pope: And cuts being considered right now on Capitol Hill would be in energy efficiency and renewable energy —$160 million there — and biological and environmental research, another $100 million. It's estimated that would equate to a cut of more than a 1,000 jobs.
What work is being done in those fields right now?
Ray: Work being done at PNNL in those fields, it's a lot of work on … energy efficiency, which is all about improving, reducing the energy used to heat and cool buildings, homes, improved lighting. [They] do a lot of work on fuel from biological sources, agricultural crops and that kind of stuff.
[There’s] a lot of work on batteries and energy storage mechanisms. Some work on improving the efficiency of vehicles ... lots of work on lightweight materials.
... In the biological environmental research area, there's a bunch of work on microbiology, environmental microbiology that gets done there.
Lots of work on atmospheric chemistry, understanding what might happen as the climate changes and how we, society and in particular the United States, how should we respond to that to protect ourselves? What's the snowpack going to look like in the Cascades? And how will that serve our agricultural and other human needs?
I think those are all good examples of the kind of work that's currently being done in those areas. And that work would likely just terminate if the president's budget request is enacted.
Pope: There are always ripple effects with mass layoffs. Friends of PNNL, which is a group of people who used to work at the lab or have family on staff, has some estimates on what the Tri-Cities area could expect if those federal cuts move forward. Can you tell us more about that, Doug?
Ray: I'm a member of Friends of PNNL. ...We're just a group of concerned people. Many of us, there's about maybe 20 people involved, are former employees at the laboratory, and several either have family or friends who either did or do work at the laboratory.
So, we have contacts and we have information. So the estimate of job losses, beyond the laboratory, come from some estimates we got from a professor at [Eastern] Washington University, I believe. [The professor] estimates it's about, for a job loss of one ... the community loses another two and a half times as many jobs.
So that 1,100 jobs that could be lost at PNNL would turn into … another 2,000 or 2,500. That's a pretty significant impact for a community our size.
Pope: What's next for the Department of Energy funding that's on the chopping block?
Ray: The way the federal process works is that the president proposes a budget, and then Congress goes to work on it. We have been advocating with our representative, Congressman Newhouse, and our senator, Senator Cantwell and Senator Murray, to fix that and put some money back into the budget. And looks like we're having some positive impact. The House subcommittee that Congressman Newhouse sits on met last Monday, and we’re just starting to get the results, but it's looking like they put some money back into those budgets.
We're not quite sure exactly where or how much and how that impacts PNNL, but we feel pretty good about what Congressman Newhouse and others were able to help on this. And so we're continuing that advocacy in hopes that the full committee and the House of Representatives and then the Senate … elevates things back to last year's funding, that's our target.
Pope: Doug Ray is [a] former associate laboratory director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
