For the second time in as many years, Senate environment committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has adopted a wholesale reorganization of the committee, creating a host of new subcommittees that provide chairmanships to each of the Democratic senators that served on the panel in the last Congress. As part of the reorganization, Boxer has elevated climate change and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review requirements to the full Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW), suggesting she will take the lead on those issues. Boxer scrapped two climate panels from the 11 Oth Congress - one on private sector solutions to global warming, the other on public sector solutions. At the same time, the chairmen and ranking members of the new subcommittees are already laying out aggressive agendas ranging from oversight of the Bush administration's environmental policies to finding ways to boost infrastructure funding and from addressing a backlog of Superfund sites and other waste issues to tackling legislation to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act.
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