Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) offered an amendment to H.R. 5538, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017, which would strike four anti-clean water provisions in the underlying bill. These riders attack fundamental pollution safeguards for our waterways, including blocking the Department of the Interior’s final Stream Protection Rule, which will better protect the drinking water of communities living in the shadows of coal mining operations, preventing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from updating the definition of “fill material” under the Clean Water Act, which would prevent mountaintop mining operators from filling valley streams with mining waste, expanding exemptions under the Clean Water Act that would allow more dumping of pollution into waterways, and blocking the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers’ Clean Water Rule, which protects the small streams and wetlands that feed into the drinking water of one in three people in the United States. On July 14, the House rejected the Beyer amendment by a vote of 178-246 (House roll call vote 468). YES IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE. The House passed H.R. 5538 on July 14, but the Senate took no action on this legislation.