Senators this afternoon continued to file amendments to the $31.625 billion energy and water 2012 appropriations bill even as the clock wound down for floor debate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has warned that little time remains this week to wrap up the spending bill that would fund the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers and Interior Department water programs for the rest of the current fiscal year. If debate bogs down, he may pull the bill from the floor. Still, the legislation remained under consideration this afternoon.

Reid had hoped to merge the measure with two other spending bills -- for financial services and state and foreign operations -- to fast-track the measures through the chamber. But efforts to create that "minibus" were blocked yesterday afternoon, and since then appropriators have been scrambling to reach an agreement limiting amendments to move the bill forward.

As of last night, senators had filed dozens of amendments to the legislation, and a Democratic aide said they continued to do so this afternoon.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska) offered one that would strike language in the bill calling for a $500 million sale from the nation's crude oil stockpile. The duo said the provision is unnecessary after President Obama called for an emergency sale from the 727-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve this summer.

"Clearly, the president's proposal from February to create a little free space in the [SPR] is no longer necessary," Bingaman said this morning on the Senate floor. "The concern we have is that the [SPR] sale provision in this legislation remains part of an appropriations bill, and ... it is simply a way of generating revenue."

"I believe this is a bad precedent," he added.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) offered a different version of the SPR language that would block the sale until the State Department issues the permits required to build a controversial pipeline from Canada's oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico.

Republican senators also are attempting to use the spending bill to limit a controversial clean energy financing program at DOE. GOP senators offered three separate amendments that address DOE's loan guarantee program amid a scandal over a loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) floated an amendment that would limit the value of loan guarantees to $250 million unless the project receives an independent third-party review of creditworthiness, construction factors and legal and regulatory issues.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) offered an amendment that would require loan guarantee recipients who default to repay the federal government first before repaying other creditors.

And Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) floated an amendment that would prohibit DOE from using the funds to grant any kind of loan guarantees.

Four Republicans, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, DeMint, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Johanns of Nebraska, teamed up to file an amendment that would block the implementation of a set of lighting efficiency standards that will take effect later this year.

The House included similar language this summer in its $30.6 billion version of the spending bill.

Yucca, mining, water measures

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is backing away from an amendment to fund the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada and instead shoring up support for the language heading into a potential House-Senate conference committee.

Kirk had planned to offer an amendment to the energy and water funding bill to continue financing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review of DOE's application to build the repository (E&E Daily, Nov. 3). The Obama administration has abandoned the project, and NRC has since closed down its review.

Now Kirk is circulating a letter in the Senate asking for support in conference negotiations, noting that the House-passed appropriations bill provided a total of $45 million to advance the review. At least 13 senators have co-signed the letter so far, including Murkowski and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Reid, a vocal opponent of the project, today said the country needs to move past Yucca Mountain and find other ways to deal with nuclear waste. "I understand that there are a few people in Washington who still want to spend nearly $100 billion of taxpayer money to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain," Reid said in a statement. "But they need to understand that this dangerous project is over and will not be resurrected."

Along those lines, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) filed an amendment to counter Kirk's efforts by blocking funding for Yucca Mountain, except for the orderly closeout of the project.

On the mining front, Paul introduced an amendment to prohibit funding for the Obama administration's crackdown on coal operations, particularly in Appalachian states like his. It is the latest attempt to block a U.S. EPA guidance document on the issue as well as enhanced permit reviews by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers (Greenwire, March 3.).

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced an amendment to ensure funding for the Energy Innovation Hub for Critical Materials. Money would be used for research, including recycling and substitutes, on numerous rare earth elements important to renewable energy technologies.

A raft of water-related amendments offered would roll back or suspend various environmental regulations, fast-track levee rebuilding in flooded regions, provide more disaster-recovery money for the Army Corps and overhaul the way the Army Corps manages its growing backlog of water projects.

Heller and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered a measure that would block funding for the Obama administration's effort to strengthen Clean Water Act regulation. The administration says recently proposed "guidance" and upcoming rulemaking are intended to re-establish water pollution protections rolled back in two muddled Supreme Court decisions and by the George W. Bush-era EPA.

GOP critics argue that the interpretation oversteps constitutional bounds and amounts to a federal power grab and an infringement on state and private property rights that will hurt business and slow economic recovery.

Two amendments from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and supported by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) would exempt levee-, lock- and dam-rebuilding efforts following this year's epic Mississippi and Missouri river floods from environmental permitting and reviews. Another would shift $50 million in the Army Corps budget from wildlife recovery to flood control along the Missouri River.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) offered an amendment to pump another $1.2 billion into the Army Corps of Engineers' flood recovery fund, potentially brining total flood recovery money in the bill to nearly $2.25 billion. About $550 million would have to be offset by spending elsewhere, according to Alexander.

DeMint has floated his Army Corps reform legislation as an amendment he says would do away with water project earmarks for good. His proposal would eliminate $60 billion of unfunded water infrastructure projects, establish a commission to better prioritize water-resource projects, empower the Army Corps to launch projects based on national needs rather than congressional earmark requests and allow states more choice in how to use harbor maintenance taxes collected at their ports.

Reporters Hannah Northey, Paul Quinlan and Manuel Quinones contributed.