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Summary:
Environmental protection concerns span a wide variety of issues, including clean air, water quality, chemical security, and environmental aspects of other major issue areas such as transportation and defense. This issue brief provides an overview of key environmental issues that are receiving or may receive attention in the 109th Congress. The sections on specific issues contain references to more detailed and extensive CRS reports on the subjects covered. (It should be noted that this issue brief treats mainly pollution-related matters; for natural resource management issues, see CRS Report RL32699, Natural Resources: Selected Issues for the 109th Congress.) A number of environmental measures have been the subject of congressional actions. On April 21, 2005, the House passed H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005. An omnibus energy package, the bill contains numerous environmentally related provisions. Perhaps the most controversial include liability protection for the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a renewable fuel standard, streamlined environmental permitting, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas explorations. Early in the year the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held hearings and scheduled markup of S. 131, the Clear Skies Act. However, the bill failed on a tie vote March 9, 2005, owing to the contentious nature of the debate over whether clean air regulation would be made more effective or weakened by the legislation, and whether it should include carbon dioxide. On March 16, 2005, the same committee ordered reported S. 606, the Reliable Fuels Act, which would amend the Clean Air Act to ban the gasoline additive MTBE, and providing for a replacement additive -- ethanol. In mid-March transportation bills that contain environmental provisions were subject to congressional action. The House passed H.R. 3, the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (TEA-LU); and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved S. 732, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity act (SAFETEA). The House Financial Services Committee ordered reported H.R. 280, a bill to make HUD brownfield grants more accessible. Appropriations for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) affect many of the programs and issues discussed in this issue brief; therefore, EPA's annual funding is an issue of perennial interest, and related issues and action are the subject of the first section below. As bills receive committee or floor action, they will appear in a table at the end of this report, providing a brief description of each bill and its current status
