Murkowski Discusses FY27 Budget with EPA Administrator Zeldin
Washington, DC—Yesterday, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, welcomed Lee Zeldin, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to discuss the agency’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2027.
Senator Murkowski impressed upon Administrator Zeldin the importance of Tribal resilience as rural communities face increasingly devastating natural disasters. She also raised the bulk fuel crisis affecting rural Alaska and requested collaboration with the agency to provide administrative relief and flexibility to help ensure fuel deliveries reach communities and remain affordable for Alaskans.
Watch the Senator’s opening statement here.
Read Senator Murkowski’s full opening statement below.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
So, Administrator, thank you for joining us here this morning. Appreciate you being here. Also, a personal thank you for traveling to Alaska. Not everybody wants to come in winter. Maybe you didn't want to come in February, but I think you get a little taste of what some of the locals get to enjoy.
For colleagues, we had 152 consecutive days in Fairbanks where the temperatures did not get above zero. So, it was a cold winter, and I think you were able to enjoy a little bit of that. But again, thank you for making the trip, not only to my state, but to other colleagues as well, to know and understand and to really gather the facts on the ground. It's appreciated.
I want to acknowledge several of the steps that you've taken over the past year to help Alaska, specifically the transfer of $100 million to the Denali Commission to start addressing the serious bulk fuel storage issues that face so many Alaskan communities. We’ve got more work to do on that, but we're starting that off.
You drafted a new Waters of the United States rule to provide regulatory clarity and certainty. You're tackling some technical issues, like the diesel exhaust fluid sensor requirements to help reduce system failures in cold climate states. These things matter, and so I appreciate that.
But as with government, as with bureaucracy, the world's not entirely perfect. We still have more work, as you know, to do when it comes to the draft WOTUS rule as it relates to Alaska. It's not right yet. We wrote you as a delegation to outline its shortcomings, particularly the inclusion of permafrost within the definition of WOTUS. Again, when you're up there in Fairbanks, you have an opportunity—maybe not in the heart of winter, when everything is dramatically frozen—but we see the impact of thawing permafrost. So, I would urge you and your team to fix that and all the concerns that regulated Alaskans raised during the comment period before that rule is finalized.
I mentioned bulk fuel storage. Alaska has gratefully received a significant down payment on this more than $1 billion problem. This is something that, again, I think is pretty unique to Alaska, where you have all of these communities that are off-road, and so their fuel needs are met when they're able to fill up their bulk fuel storage. But we've got a tired history, I guess, with regards to the status of those above-ground storage tanks. So, we started funding that program in our FY26 bill. I'm going to be looking to build on that this year and beyond.
In the immediate term, I will tell you, Administrator Zeldin, people in Alaska, particularly in our off-road communities, are very anxious about the impacts that we're seeing rising from the conflict in Iran, and the impact not only on prices for fuel, but also being able to source fuel in so many of these communities. Eighty-two percent of our communities are not connected by road, but for the coastal and many of the river communities, they get their fuel basically twice a year. So, you're locked into fuel prices in the spring, which we consider to be June, and then in September.
So right now, people have ordered their fuel for their village, and they had to order it probably within the past 30 days or so, right when the prices were exorbitantly high. This is going to a region where we already experience fuel prices in the range of $7 to $10 a gallon. So, they're anticipating fuel costs in the range of 15 to $17 a gallon.
And when you put it into context, it's not just filling up your pickup truck. For most of these communities, it's not like there are a lot of roads, but the community is powered by diesel generation. So to keep your lights on, it's costing you to power that diesel generator, to fill up your skiff to go fishing for subsistence, or to fill up your four-wheeler to go hunting for subsistence, to be able to go out and collect firewood so that you can keep your home, your cabin, warm. It all requires fuel.
So, the impact on people's ability to either provide food, provide for some level of economy, or stay warm is already challenged before we've even had the delivery. And what we're hearing is a concern that so much of this supply—the refined product—is coming from South Korea. South Korea, of course, gets much of their oil from the Gulf, and so they're limiting quantities that they are sending out.
So, I've shared this with Secretary Burgum. I shared it with Secretary Kennedy—basically anybody who's listening—because I'm going to be making asks and encouraging those in the administration to do what you can to help us provide some relief and flexibility to ensure that the fuel not only arrives, but also that people are going to be able to afford it. So, there's a lot of stress there.
You've heard me talk about our issue with cleanup of contaminated lands in Alaska. We've appropriated funding for this for the last few years. My goal is to keep expanding on that. Again, this is one where, when we think about a raw deal, the federal government comes in for a host of different reasons, leaves an area, and leaves contaminated waste after the war, in some of the building projects, and then just walk away from it.
Then, when we settled up with Alaska Natives through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, so many of these contaminated lands were transferred as part of that settlement. But now you've got a huge problem on your hands. So, we've worked beyond the liability issues. Now it's just about the cleanup, and it's an area that is a considerable source of frustration. So, working with you and your folks on this continues to be a priority of mine.
Another area of frustration has been EPA’s decision to freeze or cancel grant funding that Congress approved and Alaska communities had secured on a fair and competitive basis. We talked about the situation with Kipnuk. They were a small village in southwest Alaska. They were awarded a grant to address coastal erosion. EPA canceled that grant just months before the community was literally wiped out by ex-Typhoon Halong.
And I grant you that particular grant would not have saved Kipnuk, but we have a lot of other coastal communities that need federal help and don't have it. So, it's hard when you have this kind of view from Washington that says this is a waste of money to help a community of 800 or 900 people.
It was really stunning to hear an EPA spokeswoman who went on the record to claim that the grant cancellation kept taxpayer dollars from being, quote, “swept into the Kuskokwim River.” That was really hard for people in that region to hear. It was pretty offensive, and it made me question what EPA political staff here in Washington, D.C., think of these threatened Alaska Native communities.
So, I'm going to be putting a lot of my muscle into this effort, because it's not just Kipnuk. It is small Alaska Native communities up and down the coast who are threatened right now with everything from coastal erosion to these devastating fall storms that we're seeing.
I’m very appreciative of what you and your team within the agency have done to end what we would call regulatory overreach that we saw throughout the Biden administration. It was daily. But I also recognize that while overreach is not good, underreach sometimes doesn't help us either.
Every American counts on EPA to ensure cleaner air, cleaner water, and a livable environment around them. And the baseline that determines what happens on those fronts—and all the other things that I mentioned—is in your annual budget. So that brings me back to the President's request. Like I said last year, there's good and bad within it.
We continue to target inefficiencies, overlap, and waste at the agency. We must do that. But I will share with you again: I do not support the elimination of virtually all funding for Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds or the categorical grants. I think they're good. I think they're reasonable investments, and I figure they're probably going to be some big topics today.
Cutting them would hurt public health and safety, especially with many states, including a state like Alaska, that are not able to take over and cover the cost, particularly on short notice. So, it kind of feels like we're in the same place that we were last year.
So, my approach is going to be the same. We take the President's budget request as a suggestion. We work together to produce a good bill that allows EPA to fulfill its core missions and meet the needs of our communities. I think we did that last year in working with your team. We want to be able to do that again this year.
So, Administrator Zeldin, I will invite you to give your opening comments to the committee.
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