Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposal to reduce the number of full-time employees from its enforcement budget for compliance monitoring and civil enforcement activities to evaluate EPA's statements that (1) the jobs being eliminated are ones that EPA has allowed to lapse or has been unable to fill and (2) the reductions will be managed through normal attrition, without any loss of enforcement expertise and without shifting staff to nonenforcement functions. GAO found that EPA received a total of 1,464.8 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions for civil enforcement and compliance-monitoring functions under its Environmental Program and Management appropriation. EPA's fiscal year 2001 operating plan included full funding for the FTE positions provided for civil enforcement and compliance-monitoring activities. According to Office of Compliance and Enforcement (OECA) officials, the agency had no specific plans to leave vacancies open in anticipation of planned reductions in the workforce for compliance monitoring and civil enforcement. According to EPA officials, the agency does not assume or use any attrition rate in developing its annual budget. Instead, EPA establishes FTE ceilings for each of its program offices, which are expected to manage their …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Medication errors and adverse drug reactions are a significant concern for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) because their large beneficiary populations receive many prescriptions. Each agency has taken steps to reduce the risk of medication errors, such as making patients' medical records more accessible to providers and performing checks for drug interactions. Although each agency has designed safeguards to protect its own patients, some VA and DOD patients receive medication from both agencies. Shared patients face a higher risk of medication error. Joint (DOD and VA) venture sites with inpatient facilities provide services to shared inpatients in the same manner as they do for their own beneficiaries; that is, medications are ordered using the facility's guidelines and filled through the inpatient pharmacy at that facility. Gaps in safeguards result primarily from VA's and DOD's separate, uncoordinated information and formulary systems. Joint venture sites have tried to address some of these safety gaps. For instance, all sites have made patient information more accessible by providing additional, although incomplete, access to the other agency's patient information system."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 2001, almost 40 percent of all 16- and 17-year-olds in the United States and many 14- and 15-year-olds worked at some time in the year. Children in the United States are often encouraged to work, and many people believe that children benefit from early work experiences by developing independence, confidence, and responsibility. However, the public also wants to ensure that the work experiences of young people enhance, rather than harm, their future opportunities. The number and characteristics of working children have changed little over the past decade. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as in 1990, as many as 3.7 million children aged 15 to 17 worked in 2001. The number of children who die each year from work-related injuries has changed little since 1992, but the number of children who incurred nonfatal injuries while working is more difficult to determine because data from different sources provide different estimates of the number of injuries and trends over time. The Department of Labor devotes many resources to ensuring compliance with the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including conducting nationwide campaigns designed …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Commercial Activities Panel is a congressionally mandated panel to study and make recommendations for improving the policies and procedures governing the transfer of commercial activities from government to contractor personnel. The growing controversy surrounding competitions, under the Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-76 to determine whether the government should obtain commercially available goods and services from the public or private sectors, led to the establishment of this Panel. In establishing the Panel, several steps were taken to ensure representation from all major stakeholders as well as to ensure a fair and balanced process. To ensure a broad range of views on the Panel, a Federal Register notice was used to seek suggestions for the Panel's composition. As the Panel began its work, it recognized the need for a set of principles for sourcing decisions. These principles provide for an assessment of what does or does not work in the current A-76 process and provide a framework for identifying needed changes. Many of the Panel's recommendations can be accomplished administratively under existing law, and the Panel recommends that they be implemented as soon as practical. The Panel …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past decade, there has been a technological revolution in the workplace as businesses have increasingly turned to computer technology the primary tool to communicate, conduct research, and store information. Also during this time, concern has grown among private sector employers that their computer resources may be abused by employees--either by accessing offensive material or jeopardizing the security of proprietary information--and may provide an easy entry point into a company's electronic systems by computer trespassers. As a result, companies have developed "computer conduct" policies and implement strategies to monitor their employees' use of e-mail, the Internet, and computer files. Federal and state laws and judicial decisions have generally given private sector companies wide discretion in their monitoring and review of employee computer transmissions. However, some legal experts believe that these laws should be more protective of employee privacy by limiting what aspects of employee computer use employers may monitor and how they may do so. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, policymakers re-examined many privacy issues as they debated the USA PATRIOT Act, which expands the federal government's authority to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "From the end of the Persian Gulf War in February 1991 through May 2002, the Department of Defense (DOD) reported over $43.9 billion in incremental costs for its overseas contingency operations. These operations include the enforcement of no-fly zones, humanitarian assistance, and peace enforcement operations, as well as combating terrorism beginning in fiscal year 2001. The majority of these costs were incurred in the Balkans and Southeast Asia. In fiscal year 2002, U.S. military forces are continuing to participate in a number of contingency operations, primarily in the Balkans, Southwest Asia, and a number of locations that involve combating terrorism. The military services received a combination of funding provided in the DOD appropriations act for fiscal year 2002 and money remaining in previously funded contingency fund accounts. The services also took steps to reduce costs in order to keep them in line with available funding. Both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and DOD plan to reduce troop levels in the Balkans during fiscal year 2003, which may reduce funding needs during the year. In Europe, the Army anticipates an overall reduction of 1,160 troops during fiscal …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Effective performance management systems link individual performance to organizational goals. In October 2000, the Office of Personnel Management amended regulations to require agencies to link senior executive performance with organizational goals; to appraise executive performance by balancing organizational results with customer satisfaction, employee perspective, and other areas; and to use performance results as a basis for pay, awards, and other personnel decisions. Agencies were to establish these performance management systems by their 2001 senior executive performance appraisal cycles. Because they implemented a set of balanced expectations prior to the Office of Personnel Management requirement, GAO studied the Bureau of Land Management's, Federal Highway Administration's, Internal Revenue Service's, and Veterans Benefits Administration's use of balanced expectations to manage senior executive performance in order to identify initial approaches that may be helpful to other agencies in holding senior executives accountable for results."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) is promoting departmentwide use of purchase cards for obtaining goods and services. It reported that for the year ended September 30, 2001, purchase cards were used by 230,000 cardholders to make 10.7 million transactions valued at more than $6.1 billion. The benefits of using purchase cards versus traditional contracting and payment processes are lower transaction processing costs and less red tape for both the government and the vendor community. Although GAO supports the purchase card program concept, it is important that agencies have adequate internal controls in place to protect the government from fraud, waste, and abuse. A weak overall control environment and breakdowns in key internal controls leave the Navy vulnerable to potentially fraudulent, improper, and abusive purchases. In response to GAO's previous findings, DOD and Navy have begun improving the control environment over the purchase card program. However, further improvements are needed to achieve an effective control environment. GAO determined that the Navy did not provide cardholders, approving officials, and agency program coordinators with sufficient human capital resources--time and training--to effectively perform oversight and manage the program. The weaknesses …

Student newspaper of Harper Independent School District in Harper, Texas that includes school news and information along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), will establish, promote, and manage a national industry-driven Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) that will be focused on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and/or natural gas stripper wells. The consortium creates a partnership with the U.S. petroleum and natural gas industries and trade associations, state funding agencies, academia, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This report serves as the eighth quarterly technical progress report for the SWC. Key activities for this reporting period include: (1) issuing subcontracts, (2) SWC membership class expansion, (3) planning SWC technology transfer meetings, and (4) extending selected 2001 project periods of performance. In addition, a literature search that focuses on the use of lasers, microwaves, and acoustics for potential stripper well applications continued.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story. This story aired at

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Funeral program for Bro. Otto "Toe" Williams, born September 20, 1937 and died September 23, 2002. The funeral was held September 27, 2002 at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Andrew Wilson. Funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home, and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

This report discusses a methodology for increasing the efficiency and decreasing the cost of vitrifying nuclear waste by optimizing waste-glass formulation. This methodology involves collecting and generating a property-composition database (for glass properties that determine waste-glass processability and acceptability) and relating these properties to glass composition via property-composition models. The report explains how the property-composition models are developed, fitted to data and evaluated, validated using additional data, used for glass-formulation optimization, and continuously updated in response to changes in waste-composition estimates and processing technologies. Further, the report describes a waste-glass property-composition database compiled from literature sources and presents the results from a critical evaluation and screening of the data for applicability to Hanford waste glasses. Finally, the report provides interim property-composition models for melt viscosity, liquidus temperature (with spinel and zircon primary crystalline phases), and Product Consistency Test normalized releases of B, Na, and Li. Models were fitted to a subset of the database deemed most relevant for the anticipated Hanford waste-glass composition region.

This document presents information about the possible sources of tritium that is being detected in groundwater at well 199-K-111A, 100-K Area on the Hanford Site.

This report contains the 2001 Congressional debate on emergency supplemental allocations in combating terrorism, after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This report describes an environmental surveillance study of the near-shore of the Columbia River at the 300 Area of the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site. The study was conducted in August - October, 2001 to coincide with expected low river stage. The low river stage facilitated locating and sampling riverbank spring water and other media along the Columbia River shoreline. River water, riverbank spring water, near shore groundwater, riparian and aquatic biota samples were collected. Contaminants of concern included radionuclides, metals, organics, and anions. A survey of the external radiation levels along the near-shore area was also conducted. The report presents the objectives and regulatory drivers for this study, a description of the sample collection process, analytical results and discussion for both radiological and non-radiological (chemical) samples. In addition, human and ecological dose/risk assessments based upon the analytical results are presented.

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This document presents a revised groundwater monitoring plan for the K Basins on the Hanford Site.

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