HARRISBURG — A longstanding legislative conservation committee is slated to go out of existence in two years under a provision in the new state budget’s Fiscal Code.

The Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Com­mittee was created in 1968 to provide legislative oversight for water projects authorized under a voter-approved bond issue. Ridding Pennsylvania of the environmental legacy of coal mining with polluted streams and scarred mine lands was a major issue at the time.

In a cost-cutting move led by House Republican lawmakers, the committee will be terminated on July 1, 2021.

“The move in general is about centralizing different programs and reducing costs and recognizing that a lot of the initiatives of that committee were already being taken up by other standing committees,” said Mike Straub, spokesman for House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, on Wednesday.

The two-year window aims to give committee staffers time to find other jobs, he added.

House GOP lawmakers have proposed consolidating special legislative committees as part of earlier budget debates.

The committee will receive $582,000 in the state budget for Fiscal Year 2019-20.

Sen. Scott Hutchinson, R-Venango, has chaired the 18-member committee since 2001. Hutchinson was the only Republican senator to vote against the Fiscal Code bill (Senate Bill 712) when it came up for a Senate concurrence vote with House amendments. The bill passed 29-21 on an otherwise party-line vote.

Neither Hutchinson or Committee Executive Director Tony Guerrieri responded to requests for comment.

But they commented on the committee’s work in a 50th-year retrospective published last December.

“The committee was established with a unique mission to monitor abandoned mine reclamation efforts, to assess water quality projects, and most importantly, to identify further practical options for change,” wrote Hutchinson. “It has earned a solid reputation for crafting important environmental legislation, conducting major inquiries into conservation initiatives, and by monitoring key developments that influence the way environmental policies are determined in the future.”

Guerrieri wrote: “Over the last five decades, the committee progressed from an oversight service agency charged with monitoring water quality projects to one as a catalyst behind a number of legislative, regulatory and public policy objectives that have addressed some of the most challenging problems in Pennsylvania.”

The committee publishes a monthly newsletter and has held hearings and issued reports in recent years on topics ranging from the state’s forests, recycling, solar power and scenic Route 6.