In today’s Morning Take:
- Daylong Wrangling Over Interior-Environment Likely
- Committee Intends to Bottle Up ESA Listings
- Pesticides Banned From Northwest Refuges
- Grain Focus Could Backfire, Rail Board Told
The House Appropriations Committee today marks up what is always one of its most controversial bills, Interior-Environment, and the debate and votes could go all day. The fiscal 2015 bill includes a provision that would block the Obama administration from implementing its proposed rule for defining the waters covered by the Clean Water Act ( PL 95-217 ).
The bill’s report language, released Monday, also includes some language emphasizing the appropriators’ concerns about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s moves to protect several species of western grouse under the Endangered Species Act ( PL 93-205 ). The bill would delay any listings until at least fiscal 2016, but the report language makes clear appropriators are looking to keep the listings bottled up even longer. “The Committee intends to revisit any future legislative listing delays on an annual basis so as to prevent extinction,” says the committee report, which also directs the Bureau of Land Management not to delay any processing of permits because of uncertainty about possible listing of the birds.
The appropriators say they’re concerned the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “actions on western grouse are being driven by litigation deadlines that leave the Service with no flexibility to take into consideration the extraordinary conservation planning efforts and expenditures at the Federal, State and local levels,” says the committee’s report. Bills introduced in the House by Cory Gardner , R-Colo., and Rob Bishop , R-Utah, and in the Senate by Michael B. Enzi , R-Wyo., ( HR 4716 , S 2394 ) would prohibit FWS from listing the Greater or Gunnison Sage Grouse while approved state management plans are in place.
Pesticides Banned From Some Wildlife Refuges. The Fish and Wildlife Service is phasing out the use of neonicotinoid insecticides on national wildlife refuges in its Pacific region, which includes Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. According to a July 9 letter, use of the chemicals, which have been linked to pollinator die-offs, will end January 2016, and refuge managers will have “to exhaust all alternatives” before allowing the use of neonicotinoids in 2015. Some 50,000 bees were killed in an Oregon incident in 2013 after a landscaper sprayed some trees with a neonicotinoid product.
The agency had no immediate comment on why the ban was limited to one region.
Groups Mixed on Disease Plan. Livestock groups are weighing in on U.S.-Canada plans to contain outbreaks of animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth in a way that could allow trade between unaffected areas in the two countries to continue. The two countries’ plans call for establishing control areas that include a central infected zone, where eradication efforts would be focused, surrounded by zones where movements of livestock and commodities would be restricted.
The National Milk Producers Federation praised the plans in its comments. The zoning arrangement ”will facilitate continued trade between disease-free areas of the U.S. and Canada while safeguarding animal health in both countries,” the group said.
The National Pork Producers Council supports the regionalization concept but cites some shortcomings in the Department of Agriculture plan, including USDA’s lack of a mandatory premises identification system or a centralized database for tracking animal movements. USDA could be at a disadvantage in relation to Canada in having the precision necessary to define the control areas in a way that limits the number of producers and processors, NPPC says.
USDA Wants to Know More About SNAP Recipients. USDA is commissioning surveys and focus groups to find out more about food stamp recipients who aren’t exempt from the program’s work requirements. Of the 47 million people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 13.3 million are classified as “work registrants,” because they’re required to register for work and accept a suitable job, and 629,000 participate in education in an employment and training program. The department plans 3,000 interviews, half with work registrants and half with E&T participants. Respondents will be paid $40 to complete the interview.
Rail Board Warned on Grain Focus. BNSF Railway says the Surface Transportation Board’s focus on alleviating grain shipment backlogs could set a precedent that winds up weakening the rail system nationwide, reports CQ Roll Call’s John Boyd.In a letter to customers , BNSF says it’s concerned the board’s actions “will encourage all system users to seek regulatory intervention.” John Miller, BNSF’s group vice president for agricultural products, also said that “altering our service priorities through regulation will potentially pit one region versus another, or even one commodity versus another, compromising the network and hurting the system overall.”
Quotable: “FWS has taken a responsible and necessary first step in the Pacific region, but the agency must permanently institute this policy on all refuge lands across the country.” – Paige Tomaselli, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety, on the pesticide ban