Special Announcement: STAR Grant Program RFA Reductions for FY2004
and FY2005
The President’s
Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2005 was recently released. While the
President’s Budget funds a number of important environmental
research and development programs, funding for the Science to Achieve
Results (STAR) extramural grants program will be decreased from the
funding levels in previous budgets, from $100 million to about $65
million. As a result of this decision, it will be necessary for EPA
to reduce the number of STAR Requests for Applications and associated
grants, beginning with the 2004 announcements currently listed on our
website. Our announcements page (www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa) has been changed
to reflect these changes.
EPA recently received its appropriation for 2004. This budget requires
us to support a number of programs at levels that are higher than stipulated
in the President’s budget request. For example, the STAR- and NIEHS-funded
Centers of Excellence in Children’s Environmental Health and Disease
Prevention Research will be funded at levels higher than requested in
the President’s 2004 budget request. Other areas will be supported
at levels lower than stated in the President’s 2004 budget request.
In total, EPA has been directed to support 62 specific activities that
will affect the research we intended to support. We are currently analyzing
the effects that the directions in the 2004 appropriation will have on
the research planned for the STAR program. We may need to make further
adjustments after we finish these analyses.
If you have questions or concerns about these decisions, we have created
a Web page where you can give us your feedback and get answers to some
questions we have already been asked. As mentioned above, you can also
find the list of previously announced solicitations that have been affected.
You can find the site at http://es.epa.gov/cgi-bin/ncer_rfa.cgi. We
will try to respond to your questions as soon as we can.
