Following discussions with the Inspector General, EPA has committed to updating guidance on agency records management and resuming sending reports to Congress on the coastal waters grant program.
A top Senate Democrat is criticizing Trump administration proposals to cut funding for EPA's Office of Inspector General (IG), a move that may help preserve separate congressional spending plans that propose to increase the office's funds in fiscal year 2019 just as officials battle to address increased work loads due in part to inquiries into former Administrator Scott Pruitt.
EPA's environmental justice advisors are urging the agency in a draft report to build a broad coalition to press Congress to increase funding for affordable, safe and reliable drinking water, arguing that without the funds, the agency will not be able to advance their advice to address what they call “a defining problem of the 21st century.”
EPA is exploring at least three new metrics for measuring communities' ability to afford water infrastructure projects as it seeks to respond to congressional and other pressure to revise existing guidance to account for utilities' infrastructure needs and enforcement compliance and move beyond its current, controversial metric of median household income (MHI).
The Senate has approved a “minibus” fiscal year 2019 spending bill that largely maintains EPA's existing funding level, teeing up a fight with the House that has already approved an FY19 measure to cut funding for the agency's budget by between $100 million and half a billion dollars, depending on which programs are counted as base EPA funding.
Environmentalists are urging a federal district court judge to reconsider a decision finding they lack standing to challenge EPA and the Commerce Department's failure to withhold funds to prevent nonpoint source pollution in Washington state, arguing the judge changed the test for standing without notice.
Draft legislation the Senate is slated to consider as soon as next week proposes to slash authorized funding levels for a controversial EPA water infrastructure loan guarantee program -- to roughly 5 percent of what the environment committee originally approved -- in order to comply with Senate budget rules.
A draft bill floated by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the departing chairman of the House transportation committee, proposes a series of steps to bolster EPA's nascent water infrastructure loan guarantee program but stops short of backing the more far-reaching overhaul that the Senate is expected to vote on this summer.
The Republican sponsor of a bill seeking to reauthorize EPA's authority to collect industry fees to support timely pesticide reviews is declining, for now, to back a Senate-passed compromise that would extend the program in exchange for preserving two Obama-era farmworker protection rules that the Trump administration had sought to roll back.
