Enviros scored a number of victories in an Interior Department funding bill passed by the House last night. The House will now run up against the Senate, which has inserted a number of anti-environmental passages into its version of the bill. The House bill would bar the use of federal funds for building logging roads in national forests, cut $50 million from research and development on fossil fuels, and put $30 million into state land and water conservation efforts. The bill would also limit the dumping of mining waste on public land. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said she would introduce an amendment to the Senate bill to support the same limit on mine waste.
