Under current law, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates a nationwide network of radio stations that broadcast continuous weather information, called NOAA Weather Radio (NWR). Those radio stations also broadcast warning and post-event information for all types of hazards including earthquakes, avalanches, chemical releases, oil spills, AMBER alerts, and 911 outages.
H.R. 5324 would authorize the appropriation of $20 million to expand NWR coverage to underserved areas through the acquisition and installation of additional transmission infrastructure. The bill also would authorize the appropriation of $40 million for NOAA to modernize the NWR by upgrading its legacy technology to Internet Protocol-based services, accelerating software upgrades, assessing and enhancing the access to and use of transmissions from NWR, among other things.
Recently, NOAA has begun to integrate some of the modernizations that would be required under H.R. 5324 in its current operations. For example, NOAA has begun transitioning to Internet Protocol-based services. In 2021, NOAA allocated $10 million to all NWR operation and improvement activities.
For this estimate, CBO assumes that H.R. 5324 will be enacted near the end of fiscal year 2022 and that the authorized amounts will be appropriated in 2023. Using historical spending patterns for similar activities, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 5324 would cost $52 million over the 2022-2026 period and $8 million after 2026, assuming appropriation of the authorized amounts.
