Boxer pledges fast action on BP spill penalties after recess

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said the panel will act fast after the August break on legislation that steers penalties from the BP oil spill to Gulf Coast states.

A bipartisan group of senators reached an agreement on the bill earlier in July, but Boxer said the debt fight postponed action.

“I put everything off because we couldn’t do anything until we knew that this was resolved,” Boxer told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday. “We will be bringing it back in the first week or the second week when we get back,” she said.

The legislation mandates that 80 percent of Clean Water Act penalties eventually imposed on BP or other companies deemed responsible for the spill go to five Gulf Coast states. Under current law, penalty money goes to the federal Treasury.

Steering what could be billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines toward the Gulf region has White House support.

An Obama administration report on Gulf Coast restoration last year called on Congress to “dedicate a significant amount of any civil penalties obtained from parties responsible for the oil spill under the Clean Water Act to the recovery of the region that was damaged, and to those impacted by its effects.”