Good day for fish and fishers

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recommended a whopping 13 bills for passage last week, including the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project bill that will make fishing better in this storied Washington watershed. 

by Brian Zupancic

When a congressional committee holds a markup (also known as a vote), it’s rare that committee members agree on all the bills before them, especially when they cover a wide range of topics. It’s an even rarer event when a committee takes less than 30 minutes to consider all of their legislative business for the day.

But that’s exactly what happened last Thursday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

After what felt like a matter of minutes from the time the markup began, Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, a senator from Alaska, announced that the committee had concluded its consideration of legislation for the day, and that they would be favorably reporting 13 bills.

Wait. What? Thirteen bills? 

Among the bills reported out of the committee, two are proposals that TU has played a prominent role in shaping.

(S. 1694) Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project Phase III Act of 2015.  Introduced earlier this year by Sens. Cantwell (D-WA) and Murray (D-WA), this bill authorizes the third chapter of water infrastructure improvements and fishery restoration projects for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Yakima River Project in Washington State.   

The bill will increase the sustainability and resilience of the Yakima River Basin, particularly in the face of climate change and drought. The plan itself provides for improved water infrastructure and storage, water conservation and ecosystem restoration, and construction of fish passage at two dams, which will restore historic Chinook, Coho, Steelhead, and Bull trout runs blocked by dams for more than a century.

Yesterday’s vote to advance S. 1694 is the result of a collaborative set of stakeholders consisting of groups like TU, irrigation districts, local governments, the Yakima Nation and numerous state, federal and local agencies. This kind of successful cooperation is a model that others in the West can look to as a pathway to effectively address these pressing issues.

(S. 556) The Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act of 2015.  S. 556 is a collection of smaller bills. Among its most important provisions, this bill protects the rights of sportsmen to hunt and fish on public lands and places great focus on fish and wildlife habitat conservation. The bill also reauthorizes the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, a low profile but highly effective public land protection program.

Finally, the Sportsmen's Act carried with it an amendment to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This 50-year-old program is one of our nations’ premiere conservation tools. Sadly though, the funding mechanism for the LWCF expired at the end of September and its reauthorization has since become a hotly debated, needlessly political topic. The vote to move S. 556 forward is a big win for the LWCF that hopefully sets it on a course to be reauthorized once and for all. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico was especially compelling in his advocacy of the LWCF during the committee debate.

Trout Unlimited applauds the ENR committee leaders, Senators Murkowski and Cantwell, and all committee members, for a very fine day’s work.

Brian Zupancic is TU's manager of government affairs. He works from our Arlington, Va., office.