House budget resolution includes cuts to many environmental programs

The U.S. House of Representatives passed early Saturday a landmark resolution that would impose the largest rescissions of appropriated spending on federal agencies in decades. Included in the targets for budget cuts are a variety of programs related to environmental law and policy.

According to the Washington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency was the target of a number of amendments aimed at limiting the agency's ability to enforce regulations or create new ones.

EPA would, if the relevant provisions of the resolution are adopted by the Senate and President Obama signs the final resolution, be forbidden to regulate greenhouse gases.

A 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision required EPA to determine whether carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas emitted to the atmosphere by motor vehicles, factories, and power plants, is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. If so, that law mandates that EPA limit its emissions.

Last year EPA issued a regulation that would cap CO2 emissions by the largest industrial sources.

The budget resolution would also deprive the agency of more than $8 million currently available to fund its greenhouse gas registry. That cut would be in addition to another $5 million reduction for this year already proposed by the majority party in the House of Representatives.

The registry does not force emitters of carbon dioxide, methane, and other industrial greenhouse gases to limit those emissions. Originally created by rule in October 2009, it requires emitters to report to EPA the amount of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere above a specified threshold.

EPA would also be barred from spending money to grant waivers of requirements relating to the ethanol content of gasoline and be forbidden to spend money needed to revoke a Clean Water Act permit.

Other adopted amendments to the budget resolution would forbid any EPA efforts to regulate fossil fuel combustion waste, prevent the expenditure of money needed to modify the national ambient air quality standard applicable to course particulates, enforce a Clean Air Act regulation that limits cement plant emissions, and develop or implement surface mining and reclamation guidelines.

In addition, EPA would not be permitted to spend money to implement revised water quality standards in Florida and the agency's Environmental Appeals Board would be barred from spending money to decide whether air pollution permits have been properly granted to companies seeking to drill for oil off Alaska's Arctic coast.

Other agencies with environment-related missions are not spared, but the budget hits they would take are significant less than those aimed at EPA.

The Bureau of Reclamation would lose $1.9 million in funding for water and related programs, the Bureau of Land Management would lose $2 million in funds, and the Forest Service would be prohibited from spending money to implement the Travel Management Rule, which limits the use of roads and trails in the National Forest system by off-road vehicles.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation would not be able to spend money to implement any of its regulations, while the National Atmospheric & Oceanic Administration would be prohibited from spending money to create a Climate Service, as it announced it would in Feb. 2010.

The proposed Climate Service would consolidate NOAA functions related to acquisition of climate data and reporting of that information. The administrative organization would not require the expenditure of any more money on those functions than the agency already spends, according to an information sheet published by NOAA.

NOAA would also lose the ability to regulate fish harvests in four management zones along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The recently announced agreement to remove several dams on the Klamath River in Oregon would be, at minimum, delayed by the budget resolution.

An amendment adopted during the marathon debate Friday night and early Saturday morning would forbid expenditure of any money needed to study the effects of removing Iron Gate Dam, John C. Boyle Dam, and the Copco No. 1 and No. 2 dams.

That study, which the U.S. government agreed to undertake as part of a settlement of a complex dispute over re-licensing the dams, is to assess the costs and benefits of removal. It is to be completed by Mar. 31, 2012.

If Congress and the voters of California approve removal of one or more of the Klamath River dams, they could be breached by 2020 under the historic 2010 agreements.

Ongoing efforts to clean up the heavily-polluted Chesapeake Bay would also be affected. Another adopted amendment deprives that program of most of its appropriation for this year.

The Obama administration had sought more than $400 million to fund that effort this year. Obama had ordered inter-agency cooperation in the effort in 2009.

Congress' in-house environmental programs would suffer a fiscal blow, as the "Green the Capitol" program would lose $1.5 million, and the White House would not be able to pay a senior advisor focused on climate change and energy.

Even the United Nations would suffer financial losses. The resolution would forbid the U.S. government to expend dollars in support of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The funding resolution proposes to cut more than $60 billion in federal spending this year. It does not attempt to significantly lower spending on entitlement programs or national defense, which are the principal contributors to federal spending.

The federal government's budget deficit for this fiscal year is anticipated to be about $1.6 trillion.

Congress must pass, and President Obama must sign, a funding resolution on or before March 4 if ongoing government operations in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, are to continue.