Senate panel to vote on recycling, brownfields bills

By Ellie Borst | 02/03/2025 06:31 AM EST

Environment and Public Works Committee leaders are trying again to pass legislation to boost recycling data and infrastructure.

Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Sheldon Whitehouse chatting.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) talk as the panel kicked off the new Congress last month. Mark Schiefelbein/AP

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will consider legislation to boost recycling and continue a popular program for revitalizing contaminated areas.

The panel will mark up a bill nicknamed the “STEWARD Act,” S. 351, and legislation to reauthorize EPA’s Brownfields Program, S. 347.

The “STEWARD Act,” sponsored by Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), combines two bipartisan recycling and composting bills that Capito and former Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) have been attempting to pass for years. Both bills cleared the Senate by unanimous consent last March but failed to become law.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who replaced Carper as the top Democrat on the committee, and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) joined as co-sponsors for the new Congress.

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