For many years, the Department of Energy has misinformed the public about the origin and true nature of the FUSRAP. In order to uncover the truth about this program, F.A.C.T.S.'s attorney pursued in court a 1997 FOIA request made to the Department of Energy.
Contrary to numerous oral and written statements by many DOE officials, Army Corps staff, elected representatives, and media outlets, the FUSRAP (Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program) is not a program or responsibility directly created by an act of Congress, i.e. "mandated by Congress", as are, for example, NEPA or UMTRCA. Instead it is an in-house DOE project started in the 1970s to deal on an ad hoc basis with liabilities incurred (often illegally) by DOE's predecessor agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Engineer District. FUSRAP exists only to the extent that Congress makes an annual appropriation for it; the meager appropriations have meant a very slow pace of cleanup.
In FY1998 the 105th Congress transferred funding for the implementation of FUSRAP projects to the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers, despite the facts that DOE is legally liable for these sites and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the federal agency with the statutory responsibility under UMTRCA and expertise to make the cleanup decisions at these sites.
In its FY1999 FUSRAP appropriation, while recognizing DOE's legal responsibility for the contamination present at these site, Congress told the Army Corps to perform the FUSRAP cleanups outside the legitimate AEA cleanup framework. Subsequent Congresses have continued the transfer of program execution to Army Corps each year despite the fact that these Army Corps CERCLA 'cleanups' have been shown to be seriously deficient.