House lawmakers are girding for what could be a bruising markup this morning as the Appropriations Committee considers a bill to cut close to 20 percent of U.S. EPA's budget, significantly slash land acquisition projects and curb the government's ability to regulate pollutants, grazing and species protections.

Democrats are expected to offer amendments to increase oil and gas inspection fees, strike controversial policy riders and reinstate industry taxes for Superfund sites, among potentially many others.

Republicans are expected to offer amendments further curbing federal regulations, in addition to potential measures related to yesterday's federal appeals court ruling upholding EPA's tailpipe emissions rule and an agency regulation governing the production of portland cement.

Lawmakers, mostly Democrats, may also try to restore funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Land and Water Conservation Fund and water infrastructure projects, though such proposals must find funding offsets elsewhere in a bill that already contains steep cuts.

"You have to find a requisite program to cut by the same amount," said Alan Rowsome, director of conservation funding for the Wilderness Society.

Rowsome and some lawmakers have pinned the blame on a GOP budget allocation that forced significant cuts to a variety of natural resource, environmental, historical and cultural programs. The shortfall leaves lawmakers with few options to restore what are slated to be historically steep cuts.

"There's no pork in that bill. There's not a lot there to say, 'We'll go after that because it's egregious,'" he added. "It's been cut to the bone."

The committee's $28 billion fiscal 2013 spending bill sailed through a subcommittee markup last week during which Republicans touted the plan as a bold effort to rein in federal spending and regulatory overreach (E&E Daily, June 21). A draft committee report was released yesterday.

"We've made some difficult decisions in this bill," said Interior and EPA Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), "decisions that will help reduce our budget deficit while funding many important agencies and programs at sustainable and appropriate levels."

The overall bill, which is 4 percent below current spending and 6 percent below the president's request, would cut the Fish and Wildlife Service by more than 20 percent and both the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service by about 5 percent. It would reduce LWCF funding to $66 million -- the lowest level in its 48-year history -- and significantly slash climate change, ecosystems and administrative accounts within the U.S. Geological Survey.

EPA would be funded at $7 billion, $1.4 billion less than 2012 levels and less than what the agency received in fiscal 1998. The agency's marquee state water revolving funds would take a sizable hit with the clean water fund getting $689 million, nearly $780 million less than enacted levels.

Democrats today are expected to hammer Republicans for cutting funding for infrastructure projects that support jobs as well as eroding regulation critical to public health.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), the ranking member on the Interior-EPA subcommittee, plans to introduce an amendment to boost inspection fees for onshore oil and gas wells and use to proceeds to restore funding for FWS.

"The deep funding cuts to important conservation and environmental protection programs would, if enacted, cause serious harm to our environment," Moran said last week.

Environmentalists this week have also blasted the FWS cuts, which specifically target land acquisition, endangered species grants, state and tribal wildlife funding, wetlands and bird protections.

A 10 percent cut to national wildlife refuges could result in the closure or elimination of programs at more than 130 units and the cutting of roughly 35 visitor services, 200 wildlife management and more than 40 law enforcement officer jobs, according to Mary Beth Beetham, director of legislative affairs for Defenders of Wildlife.

"Paying to conserve something now is much cheaper than paying to restore it later," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the group's president and a former director of FWS. "This is the simple equation that many members of Congress just don't seem to understand."

Rappaport Clark also slammed the committee for including language forcing the agency to remove Endangered Species Act protection for gray wolves in Wyoming and blocking protections for bighorn sheep.

Bob Bendick, director of U.S. government relations at the Nature Conservancy, said there were some bright spots in the bill for lands advocates, including wildfire suppression funding and $40 million for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program, which enjoys broad bipartisan support.

But he, too, said the committee is considering disproportionate cuts to popular conservation programs such as Forest Legacy, which allows agencies to purchase easements on private forests that prevent their development.

But trade groups may find provisions to like in the bill. Industry organizations including the American Forest Resources Council and National Mining Association have opposed new regulations governing runoff from logging roads -- as called for in a recent appeals court ruling -- and mountaintop-removal mining, each of which is curbed under the House spending bill.