Stop the Harmful Provisions of HR 1

In late February the House drafted and passed a bill that would wipe out years of progress that Trout Unlimited - its volunteers, staff and partners - has made on some of our toughest habitat challenges.  A funding bill should not contain them, but the bill's ill-conceived legislative provisions contain the following harmful items:

• Removing funding for the Klamath River Dam Removal and Sedimentation Study, a necessary step to evaluate removing four dams and reopening 350 miles of salmon habitat and resolve the long-running conflict in the Klamath Basin.
• Stopping the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA from conducting a rulemaking to restore Clean Water Act protection for some wetlands and streams which were curtailed by two harmful and confusing Supreme Court decisions, Rapanos (2006) and SWANCC (2001).
• Discontinuing rulemaking processes designed to protect streams from mountaintop removal mining.
• Removing the EPA's authority under the Clean Water Act to veto Army Corps authorized permits for the disposal of dredge and fill material and to designate as off limits certain areas for such disposal.
• Preventing the use of federal funds to implement certain Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction programs, which help to restore coldwater habitat in the headwater areas of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
• Blocking the U.S. Forest Service's Travel Management Plans, which were developed to prevent uncontrolled off-road vehicle use from damaging fish and wildlife habitat.
• De-funding the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act, a law enacted last year with strong bipartisan support, which represents a broad coalition of restoration partners.