Legislative Session Ends without adoption of the Drought Bill
Thank you to everyone who answered our call to action and contacted your legislators to advocate for legislative initiatives that will support a healthy watershed. The formal legislative session has now ended (barring an unlikely re-convening prior to January), and several of our priorities failed to obtain consensus by legislators as they met into the wee hours of August 1st.
Climate Bill: Unfortunately, this bill appears to be dead for this session, and the Drought Management Bill with it. The two branches simply could not get on the same page about the provisions in the bill, and the Conference Committee therefore did not issue a report.
Housing Bond Bill: While the $1B for MWRA expansion was excluded from the final version of this bill, we are pleased to report that a $1M earmark for permitting and engineering costs associated with connecting Walpole to MWRA through Norwood was included. The caveat: As a bond bill, this is merely an authorization for the Governor to borrow and spend money on the project. It doesn’t guarantee the project will happen. We will continue working with Walpole legislators and local staff to advocate for the project.
In good news for the Housing Bond Bill, it appears that the problematic “study committee” that was likely to undermine water resource protections of the Inter Basin Transfer Act (IBTA) was also excluded from the final bill.
FY25 Budget: Once again, NepRWA joined together with Mass Rivers Alliance and sister organizations to advocate for the Green Budget. We are happy to say that despite disagreements on Beacon Hill, legislators still made increased investments in many of our priority environmental line items.
For additional details, check out MassRivers Legislative Debrief by clicking here.
Again, sincere thanks for your advocacy in support of our budget priorities and other legislative initiatives over this last 2-year session. We can’t accomplish this work alone!
Questions? Please feel free to contact Managing Director for Community Resilience, Kerry Snyder at snyder@neponset.org
