Chesapeake Bay photo by Scott Bauer

The government shutdown clock is ticking away furiously in Washington, D.C. as Congress wrestles with a budget agreement.

While many Americans have no choice but to ride out the storm, bad water riders in the house-passed Continuing Resolution, or H.R.1, continue to cloud the budget battle.

These harmful and unnecessary pieces of legislation have little to do with the budget bill or spending cuts and more to do with handcuffing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and creating giant loopholes for big polluters.

Bad water riders will:

• Ban EPA from closing recent Clean Water Act loopholes that remove protections for many waters,  jeopardizing the drinking water for 117 million Americans, threatening over half the nation’s stream miles, and opening 20 million acres of wetlands and prime wildlife habitat to polluters and developers. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to hold polluters accountable for oil spills, sewage and animal waste dumps, and other pollutants that go into rivers, lakes streams, estuaries, and wetlands.
• Ban EPA from protecting municipal water supplies, fisheries, and other critical water resources from being destroyed by large-scale mining, public works, and development projects that dredge, fill, and pollute productive waters.  EPA’s use of its Clean Water Act “404(c)” authority, a deliberative and open process rarely used, has saved taxpayers millions of dollars on wasteful and destructive public works projects, and saved Americans some of their most precious bays, rivers, and streams. This authority has only been used 13 times, and most recently to block the Yazoo Pumps project in Mississippi, which would have destroyed valuable wetlands and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.
• Endanger the Chesapeake Bay by blocking efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay just as progress is finally being made to limit allowable pollution in the waters that feed the Bay through fair and effective measures. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, covering 6 states and Washington, D.C. The watershed supports rural economies and the $730 billion-a-year outdoor recreation industry.
• Endanger Florida Waters by blocking recently issued water quality standards for Florida’s lakes and flowing waters that are necessary to protect Florida’s waters from excess pollution from sewage, manure and fertilizer.  Excessive nutrient pollution from these chemicals and waste has created toxic algae blooms in Florida waters that can spread for over a 100 miles. The blooms undermine water quality in Florida, which lowers properties values, hurts waterfront businesses, and serves a major health risk to people, pets, and wildlife.
• Endanger the San Francisco Bay Delta by blocking key measures to protect imperiled salmon, Delta smelt, and the health of the entire Bay-Delta ecosystem, which is reliant on its life-giving water supply.
• Endanger Klamath salmon restoration by blocking a study critical to rebuilding what was once the Nation’s third largest salmon-producing river systems, while also accommodating fisheries, landowner, and electric utility stakeholders.
  
• Allow more stream dumping of coal mining waste by blocking EPA from restricting water pollution from proposed mountain top removal and other coal-mining projects, and from the toxic coal ash waste that is contaminating our streams and water supplies.

Speak Up for Wildlife

You can help stop the attacks on water and wildlife in the Continuing Resolution by speaking up for wildlife at NWF’s Action Center. Don’t let these bad water riders wash away America’s bedrock environmental safeguards.

Sportsmen oppose cuts to conservation. Photo: Flickr

There’s a lot of political theater on Capitol Hill these days.  That may not be much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the Continuing Resolution (aka the ‘CR’) budget debate over the last few weeks.

But what may surprise many people are the threats to our clean air and water by political “riders” that don’t have anything to do with the budget process. Not only that, but there are a number of of proposed cuts to programs that actually boost the creation of jobs — especially jobs in rural economies.

One example of a program in jeopardy that supports jobs is the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF funds do not derive from taxpayer dollars–they are revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters. The LWCF program works in partnership with state and local efforts to conserve irreplaceable lands and improve outdoor recreation throughout the country.

Some of America’s most treasured places have been acquired by using the Land and Water Conservation Fund, including Grand Canyon National Park, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, and many historic Civil and Revolutionary War Battlefields. In addition, the LWCF provides matching grants to help states and local communities protect open spaces, build trails and playgrounds, and construct boat houses and other outdoor recreation facilities.

Unfortunately, the new short-term CR that was just passed by Congress cuts LWCF 16% from the last enacted budget and almost 36% from the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. That’s not all. One budget proposal, passed by the House of Representatives but not the Senate, made a decimating of 90% to the LWCF.

Further attacks to the LWCF program will have immediate impacts to projects that enhance public lands and are critical to tourism and recreation spending across the country.  According to the Outdoor Industry Foundation, recreation contributes $730 billion annually to the U.S. economy and supports nearly 6.5 million U.S. jobs. Without LWCF investments, the natural resources that are vital to the survival of communities close to outdoor destinations (think rural towns that depend on visitor spending) will be placed at risk. Without LWCF investments, many Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields will be sold, developed, and perhaps lost forever. Simply put, without LWCF investments many places in the great outdoors will be developed and the economic benefits will be lost forever.

The LWCF is appealing to many different groups. Sportsmen support the improved access the program provides to prime hunting and fishing spots and healthy wildlife populations from protected habitat. Families appreciate local parks and trails with playgrounds to help get kids outside. Communities that depend on wetlands to act as a buffer against floods or public lands to act as a buffer against forest fires need those ecosystem services that LWCF provides.

Despite the attacks to LWCF, the program has a strong bipartisan reputation on the Hill. The American public also overwhelmingly supports LWCF. A recent bipartisan poll showed that 86% of voters nationally support committing LWCF’s offshore drilling revenues to the program.

The House and Senate are negotiating the details of a CR budget agreement in the next few days. If you are one of the many that support programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, now is a crucial time to make your voice heard.

Contact your elected official in Congress and tell them that enough is enough: additional cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other conservation programs are unacceptable.

The amendments and riders attached to the House-passed Continuing Resolution are dismantling Clean Water Act (CWA) protections. The CWA protects clean drinking water for millions of Americans, limits pollution and helps to restore troubled waters.

Who's laughing now? Photo:Flickr

Another troublesome bill stripping away Clean Water Act safeguards is H.R. 872, which recently passed in the House of Representatives. The legislation, otherwise known as the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011, could be a big burden on public health and wildlife habitat. This legislation rolls back CWA by giving free reign to industries that pollute our waters with pesticides.

The battle over polluter bailouts in H.R. 1 isn’t over, yet. The Senate, House of Representatives and White House must reach a budget compromise, and legislators have an opportunity to restore the Clean Water Act and other bedrock environmental safeguards. Tell your papers and your members of Congress not to let big polluters have free reign with our natural resources. Clean water isn’t a joke, and lawmakers shouldn’t treat it that way.