Chair Grijalva: Reconciliation Agreement Includes Multiple Key Measures - “Just the Start of a Longer Effort”

10.28.21

Chair Grijalva: Reconciliation Agreement Includes Multiple Key Measures - "Just the Start of a Longer Effort"

Washington, D.C. - Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) expressed his support for the revised reconciliation agreement released today, highlighting several key measures-including an end to new offshore fossil fuel drilling in most federal waters, funding for coastal restoration and resiliency, and enhanced funding for climate adaptation and wildfire management on public lands-that he and Democrats on the Committee successfully pushed throughout the negotiating process. The Committee on Sept. 9 approved its portion of the reconciliation package, and much of the budgetary vision expressed in that version remains intact in the agreement released today.

Other measures supported by the Committee and included in today's version include money for nationwide environmental justice mapping, to be handled by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and funding for stronger community input in the National Environmental Policy Act scoping process for projects with a major environmental impact.

Grijalva said the bill released today significantly invests in federal climate and economic policy on several important fronts, prioritizing sustainable development over long-term fossil fuel reliance and extending federal assistance in regions already badly hurt by climate change.

"Our country and our political culture desperately need to take our environmental needs more seriously, and this is the start of a longer effort to build the America we know is possible," Grijalva said today. "For far too many of us, droughts, wildfires, crop failures and hurricanes are now the central facts of our lives, and we need sustained national leadership and long-term investments to confront that reality head on. This bill does a lot of good things and leaves a lot of good ideas on the table, and I'm especially disappointed to see much of the support for Native American communities that we passed in September not reflected here today. As soon as President Biden signs reconciliation into law, this Committee is redoubling its efforts."

Among other measures in the Committee's jurisdiction, the reconciliation bill released today includes:

• $6 billion for coastal and Great Lakes restoration and climate resiliency projects
• An end to new offshore fossil fuel leasing in federal waters along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico
• An end to fossil fuel leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• $2.5 billion for ecosystem resiliency and restoration on public lands
• $1 billion for hardrock mining cleanup
• $945 million for Indian Health Service health facility construction, maintenance, and improvement
• $550 million for Bureau of Reclamation potable water supply projects for disadvantaged communities
• $500 million for tribal and Native Hawaiian climate resilience and adaptation
• $500 million for wildfire management
• $490 million for tribal public safety and justice
• $180 million for mitigating climate-induced weather events
• $100 million for projects to mitigate impacts of reduced water availability to inland water bodies
• $100 million for large-scale water recycling
• $100 million for urban parks
• $25 million for emergency drought relief for tribes

Today's bill includes measures to raise public money, including:

• Establishing a hardrock mineral royalty, which could raise around $1 billion over 10 years
• Directing the Department of the Interior (DOI) to hold offshore wind lease sales in federal waters around American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands
• Requiring DOI to hold offshore wind lease sales in federal waters in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida
• Increasing outdated oil and gas royalty rates and fees

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