Greens fume over Obama’s bid to divert restoration funding

National environmental groups today blasted an Obama administration proposal to divert more than $3 billion in future oil and gas revenues due to Gulf Coast states to pay for land conservation, rural counties, wildlife grants, coastal restoration or other "national priorities," warning that such a move would stymie coastal restoration projects in Louisiana. The proposal tucked within Obama's $4 trillion fiscal 2016 budget request has set off a firestorm of opposition among Gulf Coast lawmakers and drew a scathing review this morning by the editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Today it was opposed by the Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society and Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, groups that have invested heavily in restoring the eroding Gulf coastline. Other environmental groups appear ambivalent about the proposal. Numerous conservation and sportsmen's groups are pushing for dedicated funding for LWCF, but they have yet to articulate a way to pay for it. The $3 billion that would be diverted from four Gulf states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas -- would fund accounts like LWCF, which acquires and preserves lands nationwide, as well as state and tribal wildlife grants and payments in lieu of taxes (PILT), a major priority for rural counties with federal lands, but not so much along the Gulf Coast...more