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Congress Returns from Recess
for Pre-Election Session
The House and Senate both return to Washington today from a month and a half long summer recess with the goal to finish their remaining legislative business before the election. Congress will spend the month of September looking to move forward with a temporary spending bill to keep the government funded after October 1, which is when it is expected to recess for the election.
While House Leadership and appropriators have voiced their support to move forward with a three month stopgap bill that would keep the government funded up until mid-December, the conservative House Freedom Caucus continues to push for a six month bill, giving the new administration more input into the final FY 2017 federal budget. The Democratic Senate Leader, Harry Reid (NV), has stated that Senate Democrats will not support any temporary spending bill that goes past December.
Additionally, this month Congress will also look to find an agreement on legislation providing emergency funding to fight the Zika virus. The Obama administration has asked Congress for an additional $1.9 billion in emergency funding to combat the Zika virus's spread to the United States, but several issues, including funding amounts and other policy disagreements, have prevented Congress from finding a final compromise on Zika funding legislation. Other large ticket items that Congress could look to tackle during the upcoming September session include:
- the Water Resources and Development Act (WRDA);
- emergency funding to help Louisiana flood victims; and
- conference reports to the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the Energy Policy Modernization Act and the 21st Century Cures Act.
The following Congressional Committee events are of interest to stakeholders in the Northeast-Midwest region:
Wednesday
Thursday
For more information, contact Matthew McKenna, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program or Jared Mott, Senior Policy Analyst for the Mississippi River at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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Ways to Evaluate UV Ballast Water Treatment Effectiveness Subject of Experts Workshop Hosted by EPA
This week, an invitation only experts workshop hosted by the Environmental Technology Verification program in EPA is taking place in Baltimore to allow federal agencies, industry, and testing facilities to discuss the best ways to evaluate effectiveness of ballast water management systems (BWMS) that involve Ultra Violet irradiation. Vendors of BWMS systems that use UV (usually following filtration) claim that methods for evaluating BWMS effectiveness are not adequate to characterize their systems' benefits and they want additional methods approved as equivalent which can detect UV outcomes.
Current methods of assessing BWMS effectiveness focus on live/dead analysis. UV vendors claim that their systems also render live organisms unable to reproduce. If true, these reproductively inactive organisms are as harmless to receiving systems as dead organisms. While most agree in theory, the problem is in finding a method that adequately verifies that claim to the same level of certainty as methods for assessing live/dead status of organisms. NEMWI's Allegra Cangelosi is one of the invited experts attending the meeting. The NEMWI's Great Ships Initiative is conducting bench scale studies to determine if reproductive inactivation is detectable in cultured freshwater organisms, and if so, at what dose of UV.
For more information, contact Allegra Cangelosi,
Senior Policy Analyst, Environmental Projects and
Director, Great Ships Initiative
at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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NEMWI Participates in Tour of U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Research Vessel Sturgeon
The Northeast-Midwest Institute (NEMWI) participated in a tour organized for U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley (IL) of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Research Vessel Sturgeon at Chicago's Navy Pier on August 18. The purpose of the tour was to provide Congressman Quigley an overview of the science and research technologies that are being implemented within the Great Lakes and their impacts on the Great Lakes' fisheries, which provide the region with over $7 billion annually in economic activity. Rep. Quigley, who is a member of the Congressional Great Lakes Task Force, is also the lead author of the Great Lakes Fishery Research Authorization Act of 2016 in the House, which formally authorizes the USGS's Great Lakes Science Center. Along with the NEWMI, participants at the event included Bill Lellis, Acting Associate Director, USGS Ecosystems Mission Area; Kurt Newman, Western Basin Branch Chief, USGS Great Lakes Science Center; David Warner, Fisheries Research Biologist, USGS Great Lakes Science Center; Dave Ullrich, Chair, Great Lakes Fishery Commission; Dan Makauskas, Lake Michigan Fisheries Specialist, Illinois Department of Natural Resources; Josh Miller, USGS Science Communications Liaison; and the entire crew of the USGS R/S Sturgeon.
For more information, contact Matthew McKenna, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
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NEMWI: Strengthening the Region that Sustains the Nation
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