Building an Effective Environmental Management Science Program: Initial Assessment (1996)

The Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) was initiated at the direction of the U.S. Congress, as noted in the introduction to this report. On February 9, 1996, the EMSP was announced jointly by the Offices of Energy Research (ER) and Environmental Management (EM). The program announcement (Program Notice 96-10; see Appendix A) was published in the Federal Register and on the World Wide Web, and a similar notification was sent to the national laboratories. As indicated in the program announcement, the objectives of this basic science program are to

• provide scientific knowledge that will revolutionize technologies and cleanup approaches to significantly reduce future costs, schedules, and risks;

• “bridge the gap” between broad fundamental research that has wide-ranging applicability, such as that performed in DOE's Office of Energy Research, and needs-driven applied technology development, conducted in EM's Office of Science and Technology; and

• focus the nation's science infrastructure on critical DOE environmental management problems.

By the preproposal deadline of February 28, 1996, DOE had received 2,200 applications. The preproposals were reviewed by ER research program managers and EM staff to determine whether the projects involved medium– to long–term basic research and were responsive to one or more of the priorities identified in the program announcement. After this review, 775 applicants were encouraged to submit full proposals. By May 8, 1996, DOE received 810 full proposals, of which approximately 270 were received from DOE laboratories and 540 from outside the DOE system, including universities and private organizations. A large number of multi-investigator and multi-institution proposals were also received.

The committee understands¹² that proposal review is being carried out in a two-step process—the first to assess scientific “merit” and the second to assess program “relevance”—that is being managed jointly by ER program managers and EM staff. Merit review is being obtained through