No limits on neurotoxic pollution by cement plants. No protecting endangered fish in San Francisco Bay. And no regulation of greenhouse gases.

Those are just some of the "riders" tacked onto HR1, the GOP spending bill defeated Wednesday in the Senate – but sure to return as Congress negotiates how the U.S. government will be supported.

The bill would have funded the government for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011, which began last October and has been defined by the failure of Congress to agree on a budget.

As would be expected in any legislation this massive and urgent, HR1 contained hundreds of fine-print amendments that had little or nothing to do with federal spending, but reflected ideological wishes or political favors.

>'This week's debate is just a dress rehearsal for the big stuff.'

David Goldston, the House Committee on Science chief of staff under President George W. Bush who now directs government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, broke down how riders work after HR1 passed the House in February.

Many of the anti-environmental riders that passed after what Goldston called a "weeklong carnival of destruction on the House floor" were dropped from the original House plan. But more than a dozen remained.

Several would have ordered the Environmental Protection Agency not to fulfill its duty, legally mandated by Congress and the Supreme Court, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Other bills currently under consideration by Congress would do the same thing.

But the assault didn't stop there. HR1 would have cut the EPA's budget by nearly one-third. The agency would have been prevented from limiting pollution from a laundry list of neurotoxins and carcinogens – mercury, arsenic, PCBs, dioxins, heavy metals – at cement plants.

As Goldstonrecounts on an NRDC blog rundown of HR1's anti-environmental riders, the EPA estimates that cement plant restrictions would cost industry several hundred million dollars. In exchange, it would annually prevent 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 heart attacks and 17,000 cases of asthma. Those public health benefits, or the cost of their absence, are worth between $6.5 billion and $17 billion.

The EPA would also have been blocked from updating its standards on soot pollution, which is responsible for up to half of current global-temperature increases. Neither would the agency be permitted to apply Clean Air Act standards to oil drilling in Alaska.

In California's San Francisco Bay and delta ecosystem, endangered fish would no longer be protected by the Endangered Species Act. (Ditto wolves in parts of the Rocky Mountains.) The proposed restoration of the San Joaquin River would be halted, as would cleanup efforts in Chesapeake Bay.

Under HR1, the Clean Water Act could no longer be used to restrict water pollution that killed wildlife. The EPA would have been prevented from developing handling procedures for coal ash, a carcinogen, and prevented from enforcing restrictions on mountaintop removal mining.

Even Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), best known for apologizing to BP during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, said the EPA-gutting was going too far. Scott Slesinger, the NRDC's legislative director, called HR1 "the most anti-environmental bill in 40 years."

The bill was defeated, 44-56, but its provisions are likely to return in other spending bills. As Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said after HR1's Senate defeat, "This week's debate is just a dress rehearsal for the big stuff."

Images: 1) The former Holmes Road Incinerator in Houston. (Marc St. Gil/Documerica – a photography project commissioned by President Richard Nixon after the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970.) 2) Contaminated water in a ditch behind the Pittsburgh Glass Company. (Marc St. Gil)

See Also: