"Advocates want more frequent federal water bills" @ocala

MIAMI — Environmental advocates hope Everglades restoration won't have to wait another seven years for a federal water projects bill like the one expected to clear Congress this week.

The House passed the Water Resources Reform and Development Act on Tuesday, and the Senate could vote on it later this week.

The bipartisan legislation authorizes over $1.8 billion for four Everglades projects, along with 30 other water projects nationwide. It's been seven years since Congress last considered a similar bill.

When a massive, multibillion-dollar Everglades restoration plan was approved in 2000, Congress took up water projects bills every two years. Few of the roughly 60 projects originally included in that plan have been authorized for federal funding.

Some of the original projects have been absorbed into a $1.9 billion Central Everglades Planning Project that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing. Environmental advocates had hoped it would be included in this water projects bill so that it wouldn't languish for years without authorization.

The advocates say the lag between authorization bills and federal bureaucracy in project planning forces the state to shoulder more of the funding burden up front and keeps Everglades restoration to incremental progress.

"In order to have more things to work on, we needed this bill," said Julie Hill-Gabriel, director of Everglades policy for Audubon Florida.

"There has to be a more efficient way of doing things," she added.

In general, the state and the federal government each pay half the cost of Everglades restoration projects.

http://www.ocala.com/article/20140521/WIRE/140529944?Title=Advocates-want-more-frequent-federal-water-bills-

E.P. A. Is Sued Over Ozone Rules

The groups said that President Obama’s refusal to adopt the new standard was illegal and left in place an inadequate air quality rule from the Bush administration. Near the end of his presidency, George W. Bush overruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisory panel and set the permissible ozone exposure at 75 parts per billion.

The current E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wanted to set the standard at 70 parts per billion, near the maximum level recommended by the advisory panel. But President Obama rejected that proposal on Sept. 2, saying that compliance would be too costly and create too much regulatory uncertainty for industry. He ordered the E.P.A. to conduct further scientific studies and come up with a new proposal in 2013.

The decision infuriated environmental groups, who called it a betrayal, but cheered business leaders, who said that the ozone rule was one of the most onerous of the administration’s proposed environmental regulations.

The E.P.A. said last month that it would adopt the Bush-era standard and work toward tightening it in the future. The five groups that sued — Earthjustice, the American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Environmental Defense Fund — said that was not adequate and asked a federal court in Washington to review the administration’s action.

“The rejection of stronger standards was illegal and irresponsible, in our view,” said David Baron, a lawyer for Earthjustice. “Instead of protecting people’s lungs as the law requires, this administration based its decision on politics, leaving tens of thousands of Americans at risk of sickness and suffering.”

The same groups had sued the Bush administration over its ozone policy, but agreed to suspend the suit when the Obama administration came to office and promised to reconsider the Bush standard. That reconsideration was delayed several times before finally being killed by the president last month.

Ground-level ozone is the main ingredient in smog, which is linked to premature deaths, heart attacks and lung ailments, including childhood asthma.

The standard rejected by Mr. Obama would have thrown hundreds of counties out of compliance with air quality regulations and imposed costs of $19 billion to $25 billion, according to E.P.A. estimates. But the resulting health benefits would have been $13 billion to $37 billion, the agency calculated.

 

via nytimes.com