Act Green Blog

Senators Feingold, Bingaman Introduce Key Bills

In what was already a frenzied day on Capitol Hill as both chambers race towards passing a budget, Sen.
Russ Feingold (WI) and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (NM) both introduced priority pieces of legislation this afternoon for the environmental community.

Sen. Feingold re-introduced the Clean Water Restoration Act (S. 787), which seeks to restore the protections of the original Clean Water Act, which were gutted during the Bush Administration. As it stands, the drinking water of 110 million Americans are currently in jeopardy due to the weakened safeguards, according to USGS data, and about 2 million acres of stream miles, or 59% of streams in the U.S., have lost protections. Read more in LCV’s press release or from the office of Sen. Feingold.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bingaman, who chairs the influential Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, introduced his own legislation that would reform the archaic law that currently governs hardrock mining on Western lands. The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act (S. 796) would at long last reform the General Mining Law of 1872, which allowed large-scale mining operations to extract minerals from public lands absent reasonable environmental safeguards or financial accountability, leaving taxpayers the burden of cleaning up the messes left behind. Mining pollution is blamed for polluting over 40% of Western watersheds with such toxic extraction chemicals as arsenic and cyanide. Here’s LCV’s statement and the official scoop.

All in all, a busy day on the Hill, with budget proceedings ongoing. One thing is for sure, with debate on global warming and energy legislation set to commence after the Easter recess, this portends an even busier spring than anyone could have imagined.

Which is obviously a good thing!