Money for a far-reaching pollution control plan for Chesapeake Bay would be stripped from this year’s federal budget under a proposed amendment to an important House spending bill.

Michael Temchine

for The New York Times

The amendment, filed on Monday by Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, takes aim at an Environmental Protection Agency program to reduce the flow of several major pollutants into the bay by roughly a quarter by 2025. Called a “pollution diet” by federal regulators, the plan was deemed necessary after the E.P.A. determined that states were moving too slowly to curb polluted runoff from farms and cities into the bay.

In an interview, Mr. Goodlatte called the E.P.A. plan a “power grab” that exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act and said that the agency had failed to calculate the program’s impact on jobs and the region’s economy. He argued that under the new regulations, towns and cities would be required to spend millions of dollars to upgrade their stormwater runoff systems.



“These communities are going to face gargantuan unfunded mandates,” he said. “Farmers are facing the exact same thing.”

The E.P.A. declined to comment on the measure but pointed to a statement by the Office of Management and Budget indicating that President Obama would veto the spending bill if it “undermines critical priorities.”

The prospects for the amendment are unclear, as Republicans have added dozens of similar measures to the spending bill, each of which must be voted on before the bill can be passed on to the Senate. “We don’t have any assurance that this will get time on the floor,” Mr. Goodlatte said.

William C. Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a conservation group, criticized the amendment, saying that the E.P.A. plan “may well represent the bay’s best and last chance for restoration.”

“Its goal is to restore clean water to the Chesapeake and to tributaries such as the Shenandoah River, a polluted river flowing through Congressman Goodlatte’s own district, by 2025,” Mr. Baker said. “Pollution has resulted in fish kills, dead zones, and impacts to human health, as well as costing jobs and damaging local economies.”

Mr. Goodlatte acknowledged that more needed to be done to reduce the flow of polluted water into the bay, but said that the E.P.A.’s plan was too burdensome on farms and municipalities. He said he planned to reintroduce a bill that failed in the previous Congress that would force the E.P.A. to weigh the economic impact of its regulatory plan and hand more power over to the states for regulating runoff.

The amendment would be only a temporary measure, lasting until the end of September.