American Rivers October 12 Legislative Update

American Rivers Policy Update

For the week of October 12, 1998

APPROPRIATIONS: THE BATTLE CONTINUES
VA-HUD Appropriations:
Agriculture Appropriations:
Public Lands Appropriations:
HYDROELECTRIC POWER AND DAMS
The Water Resources Development Act:
ELECTRIC UTILITY RESTRUCTURING
FISH AND WILDLIFE RESTORATION EFFORTS
Endangered Species Reauthorization:
WETLANDS
WATER QUALITY
SENATE- AND HOUSE-APPROVED BILLS AWAITING ADMINISTRATION APPROVAL
NOMINATIONS
CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE
NEWS BRIEFS:
LINKS TO PAST UPDATES:

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APPROPRIATIONS: THE BATTLE CONTINUES

Continuing Resolution:

Unable to settle their differences on a number of spending bills over the weekend, Congressional leaders passed another continuing resolution to keep the government running through Wednesday night. The seven lingering spending measures are Interior Department; Labor-HHS; foreign operations; District of Columbia; Commerce, Justice, State; Transportation; and the vetoed Agriculture bill. House Appropriations ranking Democrat David Obey (D-WI) said that environmental riders attached to the omnibus bill are still a major roadblock.

VA-HUD Appropriations:

Last week, both the House and Senate approved the $93.4 billion FY 99 VA-HUD spending bill that includes $7.56 billion in funding for US Environmental Protection Agency. Under pressure from President Clinton and Democrats, the House eased a ban on EPA approval of dredging to remove contaminated sediments from riverbottoms. Conferees funded a number of water-related programs above the Administration s requests: a $14 million increase for several small and rural water projects at universities and foundations; and a $7 million increase for 6 programs focusing on nitrogen and phosphorous runoff, Pfiesteria, hog farms, and poultry waste. Conferees funded state and tribal assistance grant accounts for water programs at $3.387 and fully funded EPA s role in the Administration s Clean Water Action Plan at $645 million. President Clinton is expected to sign the bill.

Agriculture Appropriations:

President Clinton vetoed the FY 99 Agriculture and related agencies bill last week because of significant cuts to conservation programs included in the legislation. The reconciled version of the bill would cut by $26 million the Administration s $174 million request for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and fall 45,000 acres short of the White House recommendation to bring 165,000 acres under the Wetlands Reserve Program. On the plus side, the Agriculture funding bill retains the Senate-proposed level of $20 million for the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program. Earlier, the House had wiped out funding for the program, which offers helps fund restoration and protection of wetlands for wetland wildlife, endangered species, fisheries, and other wildlife.

Public Lands Appropriations:

House Parks Subcommittee Chairman Jim Hansen (R-UT) was unable to ease the controversy surrounding his omnibus public lands bill, H.R.4570, and it died on the House floor by a vote of 123-302. The bill rolled about 90 bills affecting 36 states into one piece of legislation that included both non-contentious items, such as minor border changes and historic site designations, and some very controversial ones that raised serious objections from the environmental community and a veto threat from the Administration. For more details on the contentious riders, see www.amrivers.org/policy10-5.html.

Hansen offered a substitute amendment that modified several of the contentious items opposed by environmental groups and the Administration, including a measure to designate natural heritage and conservation areas in the San Rafael Swell region of Utah. The modified version passed the House by voice vote.

HYDROELECTRIC POWER AND DAMS

The Gorton Rider:

After last-minute negotiations with the Administration, Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), Chair of the Interior subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, withdrew his dams rider to the Interior spending bill. The measure would have required congressional approval before any Columbia River dams could be removed to aid salmon recovery efforts. Because the Administration refused to accept his dams rider, Gorton also struck from the appropriations legislation $2 million that was earmarked for removal of the lower Elwha dam on the Olympic Peninsula. Although the National Park Service has approved removal of the dam, an aging structure that completely prevents salmon migration, Congress must appropriate the funds before work can begin.

The Army Corps of Engineers is currently involved in a $20 million study to identify the best way to aid salmon recovery on the lower Snake River while continuing to operate the four federal dams. The options under consideration include breaching the dams to allow the river to flow unimpeded, modifying the dams to facilitate fish crossing, and expanding a program that moves fish past the dams in trucks and barges.

The Water Resources Development Act:

Last Thursday, the Senate approved by unanimous consent the $1.5 billion Water Resources Development Act of 1998, but a proposed California dam has caused dispute over the bill in the House. WRDA bills move through Congress every two years, naming new Army Corps of Engineers construction projects, modifying already approved projects, and authorizing studies for future projects. Last April, the Administration introduced its 1998 proposal.

Contention in the House focuses on the highly controversial Auburn Dam, which Water and Power Subcommittee Chairman John Doolittle (R-CA) wants to build in his district to protect downstream Sacramento from the often flooded American River. Representative Robert Matsui (D-CA) opposes the dam and is pushing instead for raising the levees in and around Sacramento and modifying the aging Folsom Dam. The environmental community has criticized the Auburn Dam as a $1 billion waste of money that would destroy about 50 miles of the American River in the foothills Sierra Nevada and would likely not survive an earthquake on the nearby fault.

The Senate s WRDA bill would significantly scale back the Administration s Challenge 21, a new Army Corps program that emphasizes nonstructural flood control and prevention methods such as upland water storage, voluntary property purchases, and setback levees. Instead of funding the program at $325 for six years with a $75 million cap per project, the Senate bill provides the program with $75 million for two years and a $25 million per project cap.

The bill also includes an amendment from Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID) to provide the Corps with $46 million for 22 new salmon restoration and recovery projects on the Columbia-Snake River System.

ELECTRIC UTILITY RESTRUCTURING

Last week saw more activity on the electric utility restructuring front. On behalf of the Clinton administration, Reps. Robert Matsui (D-CA) and Richard Neal (D-MA) introduced a bill (H.R.4732) to address the issue of tax-exempt bonds of municipal and state-owned utilities. H.R.4732 would grandfather the current tax-exempt debt of publicly-owned utilities but continue to allow public utilities to issue tax-exempt bonds for facilities that are involved only in the distribution of electricity and not transmission or generation.

Representative Richard Burr (R-NC) introduced H.R.4715, which would advance states ability to move toward retail competition in the utility market and strip off the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to oversee mergers in the electric industry and give that power to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) may introduce his own restructuring bill. His draft bill does not impose a federal mandate for retail competition and prohibits bailout of uneconomical power plants. Kucinich s draft plan promotes strong consumer protections, labeling, pollution standards, and a renewable portfolio standard.

FISH AND WILDLIFE RESTORATION EFFORTS

Oversight Hearing on Salmon Recovery on the Columbia and Snake Rivers:

On October 8, the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee held an oversight hearing on salmon recover in the Columbia and Snake Rivers, focusing on scientific and engineering issues. Subcommittee Chair Kempthorne (R-ID) insisted that data on fish populations does not support dam removal, a view echoed by Senator Craig (R-ID). Scientists and engineers offered testimony on a federal-private partnership program - the Advanced Hydropower Turbine System - that would upgrade fish passage safety through hydropower facilities, the need to create a gene bank for threatened and endangered fish species, and the impact of predation by fish-eating birds in the Columbia Basin.

For copies of testimony by the panel members, see the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Hearing Testimony webpage at http://www.senate.gov/~epw/stmts2.htm.

Endangered Species Reauthorization:

Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID) hopes to link his Endangered Species Act reauthorization bill (S.1180) to the omnibus spending measure. The bill is backed by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair John Chaffee (R-RI) and President Clinton, although it has been criticized by many environmentalists for containing a no surprises policy under which landowners who voluntarily set aside property to protect species are exempted from future species-protection requirements for up to 100 years.

In the House, Western conservatives led by Representative George Radanovich (R-CA), Western Caucus vice chair, are trying to keep the ESA rewrite off the omnibus spending bill, saying House members have not studied the measure.

WETLANDS

In a speech to the League of Conservation Voters last week, President Clinton announced new rules that would require greater protection of wetlands. The proposed rules would require that developers follow a full-scale application process included hearings and public input before being allowed to develop a wetlands, thereby ending the current fast-track process. The proposal includes additional protections for wetlands near waters ecologically sensitive areas and those designated for special protection and would reduce the number of acres a developer could disturb.

WATER QUALITY

Safe Drinking Water:

Although citing some significant success in the EPA s implementation of new drinking water standards, Representatives and water managers voiced concern over funding issues and questionable policies that they believed were excessively burdensome on local interests. The House Commerce Health and Environment Subcommittee met October 8 to discuss the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments, which requires promulgation of numerous rules in the upcoming four years, including limits on radon and arsenic in drinking water.

SENATE- AND HOUSE-APPROVED BILLS AWAITING ADMINISTRATION APPROVAL

H.R.3903 to exchange 1,000 acres in Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska for an equal amount of state land outside the park to allow for the construction of hydropower facilities in the Gustavus community. Because the land trade involves a wilderness area, an equal amount of park land would be designated wilderness to maintain the number of wilderness-designated acres.

H.R. 3381 to consolidate public and private land now in a checkerboard pattern in Montana. The bill would exchange 54,000 acres of land owned by the Big Sky Lumber Co. of Oregon for 31,000 acres of federal land in the Gallatin, Flathead, Deerlodge, Helen, Lolo, and Lewis and Clark national forests in Montana.

H.R.2886 to create a five-year demonstration project in which a private contractor would oversee the management of natural resources in about 8,000 fire-damaged acres of the Stanilaus National Forest in California.

Management activities include logging, road repair, selected tree removal, field restoration, and wildlife monitoring.

S.1016 to authorize funding for the Coastal Heritage Trail in New Jersey.

S.1333 to amend the Land and Water Conservation Fund act to allow national parks that are forbidden to charge entrance fees to keep other fees.

S.469 to designate a segment of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers as part of the Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

The Senate also approved the following measures:

S.2142 to convey federal jurisdiction over the facilities of the Pine River Project in Colorado;

S.2041 to amend the Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act to allow the Secretary of the Interior to help design and build the Denver Water Reuse Project;

H.R.4079 to allow the construction of temperature control devices at the Folsom Dam in California;

H.R.2795 to lengthen contracts between the Bureau of Reclamation and irrigation water contractors in Nebraska and Wyoming that receive water from the Glendo Reservoir;

H.R.4081 to extend the construction deadline under the Federal Power Act of a hydroelectric project in Arkansas; and

S.2500 to grandfather current coal bed methane leases that would be affected by a July Colorado circuit court decision that changed the kind of lease needed by CMB producers.

NOMINATIONS

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the nomination of T.J. Glauthier as deputy Energy secretary.

CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE

October 12-16:

No Action Scheduled This Week

NEWS BRIEFS:

Washington Post, NATION IN BRIEF

From news services Friday, October 9, 1998; Page A10 Americans' Water Use Is Declining Despite an increase in the U.S. population, a new government report shows that Americans are using less water.

The United States consumed 402 billion gallons of water per day in 1995 for all uses -- drinking to car washes -- according to new statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey.

That is down 2 percent compared with the 1990 level and nearly 10 percent less than the 1980 rate, despite an increase in the U.S. population of about 40 million people over the 15-year period. Freshwater use averaged 1,280 gallons a day for every American in 1995 compared with 1,340 gallons in 1990, the report said.

The government said conservation programs in many communities, improved irrigation techniques and efficient industrial use have helped cut consumption. The biggest uses of water were for irrigation and electric power generation. California accounted for the most water use in 1995, at 46 billion gallons per day, followed by Texas, Illinois and Florida.

LINKS TO PAST UPDATES:

October 5th: http://www.amrivers.org/policy10-5.html
August 3rd: http://www.amrivers.org/policy8-3.html
July 27th: http://www.amrivers.org/policy7-27.html
July 20th: http://www.amrivers.org/policy7-20.html
July 13th: http://www.amrivers.org/policy7-13.html

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