Washington, D.C. – In response to the Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the Senate Interior-Environment FY2020 bill, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) issued the following statement from Legislative Director Matthew Davis:

“While we are pleased to see some modest increases in funding for programs that safeguard our communities, drinking water, children’s health, and public lands, the scale of the funding still does not match the need for environmental and public lands protections. That is why we’ll continue to push for full and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

“We’re disappointed that there are still anti-environmental poison pill riders in the Senate funding bill, from blocking multi-state cooperative processes to protect endangered sage grouse to legislating anti-science interpretations of the climate change impacts of burning biomass. We will continue to fight in conference for the language in the House-passed Interior-Environment funding bill which eliminated all anti-environmental poison pill riders and exercised much-needed oversight over Trump administration recklessness with our air, lands, waters, and communities. One particular bright spot in the Senate bill is language to protect the greater Chaco Canyon region from oil and gas drilling, which we would hope survives in the final package.”

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