House Asspropriations Committee Slashes Environmental and Natural Resources Protections

Last week while the rest of the known universe was focusing on the Supreme Court, the House Asspropriations Committee was doing everything in its power to gut environmental protections for clean water.

On June 28 the House Appropriations Committee passed by a 26-19 vote the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill. The bill would slash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by about a fifth for fiscal year 2013, the lowest it has been funded since 1998 and deeply cut funding for other environmental programs including the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that provides critical resources for protecting national parks, wildlife refuges and local recreation areas.

In addition, the bill was riddled with anti-environmental riders, including ones that would block the Obama administration from finalizing and implementing proposed guidelines to restore Clean Water Act protections to many of America’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands.

As an added bonus the bill also contains a rider to block Interior Department regulations that may be proposed to protect streams from mountaintop removal mining.

LINK (via: ecowatch)