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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