Dear Representative,

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is the independent political voice for the environment. Each year, LCV publishes the National Environmental Scorecard, which details the voting records of Members of Congress on environmental legislation. The Scorecard is distributed to LCV members, concerned voters nationwide, and the press.

When the FY 2007 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations bill reaches the House floor this week, LCV urges you to oppose any anti-environmental riders to the bill and to support restoring desperately needed environmental funding. LCV also urges you to support the following amendments:

• Putnam (R-FL)-Capps (D-CA)-Jim Davis (D-FL)-Foley (R-FL)-Bill Young (R-FL)-Pallone (D-NJ) Amendment to Maintain the Drilling Moratorium for the Outer Continental Shelf. Current language in the bill would allow offshore drilling three miles from our coasts, but this amendment would maintain the bipartisan moratorium that has been in place for twenty-five years. Instead of despoiling our shores, Congress should pursue faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly solutions to our energy problems like increasing efficiency and our use of clean, renewable energy.
• Oberstar (D-MN)-Leach (R-IA)-Dingell (D-MI) Amendment to Protect Clean Water. This amendment would prohibit the EPA from implementing a 2003 policy directive that has effectively eliminated Clean Water Act protections for many small streams, wetlands, ponds and other waters around the country. The directive requires staff to get permission from headquarters when they intend to protect certain water bodies.
• Pallone (D-NJ)-Solis (D-CA) Amendment to Protect the Public’s Right to Know. This Right to Know amendment prevents EPA from moving forward with proposals to weaken the Toxics Release Inventory, an important public health program that provides the public with information about toxic chemicals. In 2005, EPA proposed raising the reporting thresholds tenfold, potentially allowing large industrial facilities to release 5,000 pounds of toxic pollution before they are required to report details about their releases, and allowing facilities to withhold information about some of the most dangerous chemicals, including lead and mercury. EPA is also considering changing the frequency of reporting pollution releases from every year to every other year.
• Chabot (R-OH)-Andrews (D-NJ) Amendment to End Taxpayer Subsidies of Logging Roads in the Tongass National Forest. Taxpayer-subsidized logging in the Tongass has cost taxpayers one billion dollars since 1982. In 2005 alone, the Forest Service lost $48 million of taxpayer money on the logging program and logging roads in the Tongass. This amendment, which passed the House in 2004 by a vote of 222-205 but was not included in the final bill, will prevent the Forest Service from spending taxpayer dollars in FY 2007 on building logging roads in America’s Rainforest.

LCV also urges the House to retain three pro-environment provisions that are already included in the bill: a “Sense of the Congress” resolution that calls for mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions to address global warming; an environmental justice provision that ensures that minority and low income communities are not exposed to disproportionately high levels of pollution; and language that limits the Department of the Interior’s ability to grant oil royalty relief and encourages the renegotiation of existing drilling leases. In addition, we urge you to support any amendments to strengthen the oil royalty language.

In addition to supporting these amendments, LCV urges you to support efforts to restore environmental funding levels in the FY 2007 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. This bill contains the lowest level of environmental funding in at least five years, using non-inflation adjusted dollars, providing woefully inadequate resources for water and sewer funding, National Park maintenance, federal land acquisition and many other valuable programs. If adequate environmental funding is not restored to the bill, we urge you to oppose final passage.

We urge you to protect the environment and public health by voting for the amendments mentioned above and voting against the bill if funding levels are not restored.  LCv's Political Advisory Committee will strongly consider including votes on these issues in compiling the 2006 National Environmental Scorecard. For more information, please call Tiernan Sittenfeld or Nat Mund in my office at 202-785-8683.