WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall reported today that before adjourning for the August work period, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a Homeland Security measure that will benefit New Mexico Tech and Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.
The Senate's version of the fiscal year 2011 Homeland Security Appropriations bill is now ready for full Senate consideration.
The measure contains more than $40 million in funding requested by Bingaman and Udall for the expansion of New Mexico Tech's internationally recognized Energetic Materials Research and Technical Center and to support the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center, which includes scientists, engineers, and economists at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.
"First responders put their lives on the line to protect their fellow Americans, so it's important that they have the best training available. New Mexico Tech does a tremendous job preparing the nation's first responders, and this bill lends support to that effort," Bingaman said.
"To date, 300,000 of America's first responders have been trained at New Mexico Tech's state-of-the-art facilities. This bill supports the expansion of the valuable work being done at Tech to help our nation face the ever-growing mixture of threats," said Udall. "In addition, our national laboratories stand to benefit in their work to keep the United States safe and secure."
The Homeland Security appropriations bill contains the following projects requested by Bingaman and Udall:
$23 million -- New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology's Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC): Funding for New Mexico Tech to increase its capability to support Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) response training by expanding its existing technical operations and awareness level training programs to better meet the needs of responder agencies. The EMRTC will also develop additional programs to address unmet training needs associated with building effective and safe response capabilities to explosive and incendiary terrorist incidents, and expand the scope of its training programs to meet the needs of a wider audience of first responder, management and elected official personnel.
$18 million -- National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC): The NISAC is the national center of expertise on critical infrastructure interdependency modeling, simulation and analysis. The Center is comprised of DHS management personnel in Washington, D.C., and scientists, engineers, and economists at Los Alamos National Laboratories and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. NISAC's primary mission is to improve the understanding of the nation's critical infrastructure by supporting DHS planning, protection, deterrence, response and mitigation efforts for natural disasters and terrorism.
