[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 19656-19657]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          EARMARK DECLARATION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BILL SHUSTER

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 28, 2009

  Mr. SHUSTER. Madam Speaker, consistent with the Republican 
Leadership's policy on earmarks, I am submitting this statement.
  Requesting Member: Congressman Bill Shuster (PA-9)
  Bill Number: H.R. 3326--Department of Defense Appropriations Act, FY 
2010


                    Defense Appropriations Projects

  Project Name: Cadmium Emissions Reduction--Letterkenny Army Depot
  Account: RDTE, A
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Mountain Research, LLC
  Address of Requesting Entity: 825 25th Street, Altoona, PA 16601
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding: $1,000,000 
for Cadmium Emissions Reduction--Letterkenny Army Depot
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer funds because this work 
will help Letterkenny Army Depot conduct environmental management 
activities in an environmentally and fiscally sound, sustainable 
manner.
  Letterkenny's unique mission, which includes manufacturing, depot 
level maintenance, and demilitarization, presents significant 
challenges to maintaining operations while achieving aggressive 
sustainability targets and goals. Specifically, this project will 
assist in addressing federal and state regulatory issues associated 
with the reduction of cadmium levels in waste water affluent outflows. 
This technology implementation will also serve as a demonstration site 
to facilitate horizontal technology transfer to surrounding 
Pennsylvania military installations, other Army depots, and 
installations across the Department of Defense.
  Project Name: Defense Support for Civil Authorities for Key Resource 
Protection
  Account: RDTE, A
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: L. Robert Kimball & Associates
  Address of Requesting Entity: 615 West Highland Avenue, Ebensburg, PA 
15931
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding: $1,000,000 
for Defense Support for Civil Authorities for Key Resource Protection
  The Defense Support for Civil Authorities (DSCA) for Key Resource 
Protection--South Central, PA project is part of efforts led by U.S. 
Army ARDEC at Picatinny, New Jersey combing and harmonizing a number of 
Homeland Defense and Homeland Security programs under the umbrella of 
Project National Shield (PNS). The National Infrastructure Protection 
Plan (NIPP) mandates a coordinated approach to Critical Infrastructure 
and Key Resources (CIKR) protection roles and responsibilities for 
federal, state, local, tribal, and private sector security partners. 
The ability to sense, detect and respond to threats to CIKR will 
require regional communication and information sharing capabilities. 
The fundamental geospatial data needed to manage CIKR risk and 
establish the framework for assessing consequences, vulnerability, and 
threat information is available in jurisdictions across the country. 
Not available, however, are Enterprise Geographic Information Systems 
(EGIS) that span political jurisdictions, regions or states and can 
produce the comprehensive, systematic, and rational assessment of 
national or sector risk.
  South Central Pennsylvania houses a major freight transportation hub 
(CSX railway) and Army weapons depot (Letterkenny) within miles of each 
other. This proposal will establish EGIS in South Central PA to advance 
NIPP objectives. Response-specific intelligence will provide emergency 
responders and homeland defense personnel with essential situational 
awareness information required to protect critical infrastructure.
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer funds because it meets a 
critical Army need to improve Homeland Defense and Civil Support 
missions while also providing enhanced capabilities to local 
constituencies in the communications and networking side of emergency 
response. Specifically, the program represents the actual full 
deployment of a critical network that will allow local Emergency 
Management personnel and first responders to communicate as well as 
provide for a tie in to the Army's Emergency Operations Center at 
Picatinny Arsenal.
  Project Name: Nurse Education Center of Excellence for Remote and 
Medically Underserved Populations
  Account: RDTE, A
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Saint Francis University
  Address of Requesting Entity: 117 Evergreen Drive, Loretto, PA 15940
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding:
  $2,000,000 for Nurse Education Center of Excellence for Remote and 
Medically Underserved Populations (CERMUSA)
  This project will allow CERMUSA to collaborate with clinical partners 
and other key Army stakeholders to develop and implement a multi-
pronged strategy to address the core issues impacting the military's 
ability to maintain the supply of active duty registered nurses.
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer funds because these 
strategies will serve to address the shortages of registered nurses as 
well as nurse educators and will, as a final outcome, function as a 
core strategy for recruitment and retention.
  Currently, the Army has approximately 59,000 enlisted personnel 
serving as medics in a variety of theatres, including Iraq and 
Afghanistan. These medics are promising nursing students because of 
their affinity for treating and managing injured warriors. Despite the 
formal training supplied by the Army and the vast life support skills 
they acquire, they possess no diploma or certification to practice 
healthcare in civilian institutions. Many medics pursue a career in 
healthcare once leaving active duty. On the sheer basis of volume 
alone, this group of active duty personnel presents a very clear 
opportunity upon which to build a source of bachelors prepared 
registered nurses to meet the ongoing recruitment needs of the Army. In 
addition, this group has already had some preparation and has 
demonstrated affinity for the type of work which

[[Page 19657]]

Army nurses are prepared to address. In light of this opportunity, an 
online Bachelor of Science curriculum will be developed with the intent 
of allowing progression of the Army medic toward degree completion. The 
ultimate goal of this project will be qualification for, and entry 
into, the Army Nurse Corps. Following development of the initial 
program, additional educational tracks could be developed. Areas for 
consideration would include a nurse practitioner program with a 
concentration in neurology/mental health or a Clinical Nurse Specialist 
program with an emphasis in TBI/PTSD. Both options would result in the 
preparation of advanced practice nurses who would help meet the needs 
of returning warriors.
  Project Name: Rural Health Center of Excellence for Remote and 
Medically Underserved Populations
  Account: RDTE, A
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Saint Francis University
  Address of Requesting Entity: 117 Evergreen Drive, Loretto, PA 15940
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding:
  $2,000,000 for Rural Health Center of Excellence for Remote and 
Medically Underserved Populations (CERMUSA)
  CERMUSA performs applied military research in telehealth, distance 
learning, and telerehabilitation to benefit individuals, healthcare 
facilities, and educational entities in rural and remote regions. This 
research is carried out at minimal cost via strategic partnerships with 
military, healthcare, business, and other governmental areas. All of 
CERMUSA's research efforts are conducted using commercial off-the-shelf 
(COTS) technologies, making these projects both sustainable and 
replicable in a cost-effective manner. CERMUSA disseminates the results 
of this research via publication, presentation, and live demonstrations 
of technology solutions in action. CERMUSA, under the direction of the 
U.S. Army, serves as a technology test bed readily available to the 
Armed Forces for test and evaluation of both military-spec and 
commercially available hardware and software.
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer dollars because, as an 
asset of the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 
CERMUSA provides direct service to DOD by performing constant analysis 
of current trends in computing and communications. CERMUSA's main area 
of operations, central Pennsylvania, strongly approximates many of the 
same communications and technology difficulties experienced by 
America's Armed Services throughout the world, including difficult 
terrain, extreme weather conditions, and a lack of reliable 
communications architectures. By overcoming these difficulties with 
readily-available commodity technologies, often combined in unique or 
novel ways, CERMUSA provides viable alternatives to often costly (and 
proprietary) military-spec hardware and software.


  Project Name: Voice Recognition and Cross Platform Speech Interface 
                                 System

  Account: RDTE, A
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Szanca Solutions, Inc.
  Address of Requesting Entity: 100 East Pitt Street, Bedford, PA 15522
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding:
  $2,500,000 for Voice Recognition and Cross Platform Speech Interface 
System
  It is my understanding that this project will provide voice 
activation to legacy command and control systems to improve the ease of 
use, accuracy, and timeliness of the systems. The project will continue 
the work done to bring speech controlled operations and in addition 
provide a cross-platform solution that can be integrated to a wide 
variety of military systems. Doing so will dramatically increase the 
functionality and useful life of legacy systems while decreasing 
training costs and increasing operational speed.
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer funds because many of the 
Army's current command and control systems require a series of 
complicated keyboard entries to operate, making the systems slower to 
operate and prone to errors in stressful environments. This can result 
in delays providing commanders with critical information and in 
executing mission critical fire missions. This program will focus on 
solutions to those issues, allow quicker access to tactical 
information, and increase the speed in which targets can be fired.


          Project Name: ALC Logistics Integration Environment

  Account: RDTE, AF
  Legal Name of Requesting Entity: IS2 Technologies, Inc.
  Address of Requesting Entity: 3018 Pleasant Valley Blvd., Altoona, PA 
16602
  Description of Request/Justification of Federal Funding:
  $1,000,000 for ALC Logistics Integration Environment
  It is my understanding that this project will develop a Logistics 
Integration Environment using COTS software that facilitates pulling 
together teams of people to optimize battlefield readiness and improve 
the availability of aircraft and associated subsystems.
  This project is a valuable use of taxpayer funds because the Air 
Force Logistics Centers lack an integrated data environment for 
service, repair, and overall logistics.
  Development and deployment of the Logistics Information Environment 
would:
  Develop and implement a collaborative logistics management solution 
that would provide a single source of data for the maintainers, supply 
and battlefield environments
  Provide optimized predictive logistics modeling for critical 
supportability factors such as spare parts, maintenance schedules, and 
survivability under fire
  Capture aircraft performance information that may be used to drive 
further improvements in survivability
  Allow for real-time collaboration across the R&D, acquisition, 
logistics, and warfighter communities
  Reduce costs by reducing the time required to research and collect 
the engineering and logistics data necessary to support unplanned/
unscheduled depot-level maintenance requirements
  Benefits to our warfighting capability would be:
  Mission readiness: Improve the readiness of rapidly deployed aircraft
  Cost Avoidance: Minimize the cost and complexity of the aircraft 
logistics footprint
  Innovation: Allow for accelerated innovation to aircraft and 
subsystems, continuously improving their operational performance and 
survivability
  Additional benefits would include composite data that can be used to 
formalize and distribute Interactive Electric Technical Manuals (IETM) 
and dynamic work cards for maintenance planning and instructions.

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