Overnight Energy: Senate approves Flint aid | Union chief backs Dakota pipeline

WATER WORKS, FLINT AID MOVE THROUGH SENATE: The Senate overwhelmingly passed Thursday a bill to fund water infrastructure projects and provide aid to the water crisis in Flint, Mich.

The Senate approved the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) on a 95-3 vote Thursday, boosting U.S. ports, waterways and clean water infrastructure and pumping $220 million in direct funding to address drinking water crises in communities like Flint.

{mosads}The bill authorizes $4.5 billion worth of water-related infrastructure projects around the country and $4.9 billion over five years to repair systems related to drinking water.

The aid will go to cities with drinking water crises like the one in Flint, where water from the river corroded the city’s pipes and contaminated the water supply with lead.

The Flint package seeks to address the crisis by offering $100 million in subsidized loans and grants for lead-contaminated communities and $70 million in Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation credit subsidies.

It also designates money for the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor residents’ health in lead-tainted communities; creates a new Environmental Protection Agency grant program to reduce lead levels in drinking water; and offers loan forgiveness for states where a public emergency has been declared over lead contamination.

Members hailed the bill Thursday as a rare bipartisan victory.

“The science is clear on the impact of lead in drinking water,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “We disagree on a lot of science, but on that one, we agree.”

Read more here.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR FLINT AID? Despite the Senate vote, the prospects for Flint aid in the House remain less clear.

The House version of the WRDA — which could come to the floor next week — is narrow and doesn’t contain any drinking water provisions due to jurisdictional differences between the House and Senate committees.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, urged the House to support the bill there, and vowed to attach the Flint component during a conference between the chambers.

But that action may not come fast enough for some members of the Michigan congressional delegation, who are strategizing different paths forward for the aid package.

“You can put it in the water resources bill, you can put it in one of the spending bills, you can put it in the morning prayer,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said. “It really doesn’t matter to us what vehicle we use. We just want one that will get to the president’s desk as fast as we can.”

Kildee said one of those routes might be a continuing resolution to fund the government past Sept. 30. Members have said emergency funding for Flint, the fight against Zika and even aid for flooding in Louisiana could be attached to that bill.

Lawmakers emphasized, however, that they would still fight to attach Flint language to the House WRDA bill.

“But simultaneously, we can look at other options,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said.

Read more here.

TRUMP ON ETHANOL: Donald Trump’s campaign said Thursday that he opposes a key element of the federal ethanol mandate, but then reversed.

In a fact sheet put out as part of the GOP nominee’s economic speech Thursday, the Renewable Identification Number (RIN) program, a piece of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), was identified as a regulation he would repeal.

But Trump has been on record as recently as last week as strongly supporting the RFS and ethanol.

The campaign took the fact sheet down Thursday and replaced it with one that didn’t mention the RFS or ethanol.

The initial fact sheet said that the RIN program “penalizes refineries if they do not meet certain blending requirements. These requirements have turned out to be impossible to meet and are bankrupting many of the small and midsize refineries in this country.”

Trump used this as an opportunity to slam “Big Oil,” saying in the fact sheet that RINs give the industry “an oligopoly by destroying the small to mid-size refineries.”

Read more here.

Ethanol wasn’t the only thing Trump changed … Trump’s new fact sheet also deleted an earlier section vowing to roll back food safety regulations. Read more here.

UNION HEAD BACKS PIPELINE: The AFL-CIO labor union threw its political weight behind the Dakota Access pipeline on Thursday.

“The AFL-CIO supports pipeline construction as part of a comprehensive energy policy that creates jobs, makes the United States more competitive and addresses the threat of climate change,” union President Richard Trumka said in a statement, calling on the Obama administration to allow the project to move forward.

“We believe that community involvement in decisions about constructing and locating pipelines is important and necessary, particularly in sensitive situations like those involving places of significance to Native Americans. However, once these processes have been completed, it is fundamentally unfair to hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay. The Dakota Access Pipeline is providing over 4,500 high-quality, family supporting jobs.”

Construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,170-mile project running from North Dakota to Illinois, is on hold while the Obama administration reassesses the permits it issued.

The AFL-CIO has often broken with Obama on pipelines, notably the Keystone XL project, which the union supported but Obama ultimately nixed.

ON TAP FRIDAY: The World Resources Institute will host an event on sustainability. Several European officials, including David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States, will participate.

AROUND THE WEB:

Washington state adopted a new regulation Thursday to cap carbon dioxide emissions from major sources, the Seattle Times reports.

Ammon Bundy, the accused leader of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover in Oregon, wore his jail scrubs to his court trial Thursday to protest his detention during the trial, the Oregonian reports.

Native Hawaiians filed formal federal complaints against the state of Hawaii, objecting to pesticide spraying near their communities, the Associated Press reports.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out Thursday’s stories…

-Arctic sea ice hits second-lowest level on record
-Fact sheet confuses Trump position on ethanol
-Obama: Oceans are key in climate change fight
-Senate passes water bill with Flint aid
-UK approves $23.8 billion nuclear power plant
-Louisiana Republicans: This isn’t like Sandy
-Michigan lawmakers plot path forward on Flint aid
-Obama creates national monument off Massachusetts coast

Melanie Zanona contributed. Please send tips and comments to Timothy Cama, tcama@digital-staging.thehill.com; and Devin Henry, dhenry@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @Timothy_Cama, @dhenry, @thehill