The U.S. Senate at Work on Our "Great Waters"

Last week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) favorably reported out of committee a number of restoration bills for the "great waters" of the country. In addition to a Great Lakes bill, there was one for the Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, and a few others.

The bills now go to the full senate for consideration where I suspect they'll be passed. Keep in mind, these are authorization bills and while they contain funding amounts, the actual money comes from an appropriations bill, and there is no guarantee at what levels these bills will be funded.

For the most part various senate staffs and the senators had agreed on the bills before they came to a committee vote, so their passage was pro forma. The exception was the Chesapeake Bay bill where there were objections to putting hard restrictions on farmers in order to control ag runoff, one of the Chesapeake's achilles heels for the past 20 years.

Amendments to loosen restrictions were defeated and the bill was reported out with tougher standards intact.

You can watch these proceedings on the EPW's website (link below).

Discussion of the Great Lakes bill comes at the very end of the 133 minute session. The Great Lakes bill doesn't restrict ag runoff or otherwise offend polluters so it passed quickly.  

The video is a bit of a slog but it shows how the committee works, at least when in public view.

One observation if you do watch, note the hesitation by Republicans to grant authority to the USEPA, and how quickly the Democrats acquiesced. This mostly relates to the Chesapeake.

gw

Here's the link. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_id=7f356e9b-802a-23ad-45c5-6e51a788d6c2