The Chickahominy Report

Rep. Bob Goodlatte

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — The House vot­ed late tonight to approve a bud­get amend­ment by Rep. Bob Good­lat­te (R‑Va.) that would pro­hib­it fed­er­al fund­ing for the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agen­cy’s Chesa­peake Bay restora­tion plan.

Good­lat­te’s amend­ment to the House con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion (H.R. 1), man­dates that “None of the funds made avail­able by this Act may be used to devel­op, pro­mul­gate, eval­u­ate, imple­ment, pro­vide over­sight to, or back­stop total max­i­mum dai­ly loads or water­shed imple­men­ta­tion plans for the Chesa­peake Bay Watershed.”

The Wash­ing­ton Post reports that the amend­ment passed 230–195, with eight Democ­rats join­ing 222 Repub­li­cans vot­ing in favor of the res­o­lu­tion and 15 Repub­li­cans join­ing 180 Democ­rats oppos­ing it.

In urg­ing Con­gress to vote against the mea­sure, Good­lat­te raised the boogey­man of an over­reach­ing fed­er­al gov­ern­ment plan­ning to wreck the econ­o­my in favor of the environment.

The Post report said that Good­lat­te wrote a let­ter to his House col­leagues that the Bay restora­tion plan was a “demon­stra­tion” project.

“If the EPA has its way, your local com­mu­ni­ties will also have to find the mon­ey for these cost­ly reg­u­la­tions,” he wrote. “Con­gress must tell the EPA we do not want this over­reg­u­la­tion in the Chesa­peake Bay or any oth­er watershed.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, giv­en that the Clean Water Act man­dates the cleanup of the nation’s water­ways regard­less of who gets to pay for it, Good­lat­te’s amend­ment will place the fund­ing bur­den square­ly on the backs of state and local gov­ern­ments in the Bay water­shed. Accord­ing to the Clean Water Act, the EPA only has to set water qual­i­ty standards—it does not have to pay the costs of achiev­ing them.

Chesa­peake Bay Foun­da­tion Pres­i­dent William C. Bak­er issued the fol­low­ing amendment:

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