On Tuesday, the Iowa House passed a Senate bill aimed at improving Iowa’s water quality.

Senate File 512 passed through the House with a 59 to 41 vote, mostly along party lines. The legislation commits $282 million to water quality initiatives. Last year, the House and Senate passed their respective water quality bills, but an agreement between the chambers was never completed.

One representative that voted against the Senate’s bill has been working on the House bill for over a year. District 47 Representative Chip Baltimore spoke out against the Senate bill saying he was “disappointed” with the outcome of the House vote.

“The messages that we had received from the Senate up to this point is that they were not interested in making any changes at all to their original bill. So I think the majority of my colleagues, when it came down to voting, decided to do something rather than nothing.”

Baltimore says his bill brought together ways for everyone to share in the improvements for water quality, whereas the Senate bill targeted mostly the farming community. He adds that he’s still willing to work on possibly amending the bill, even after it becomes law.

“Honestly I’m not very optimistic. If we were really going to make improvements to that Senate bill I think we would’ve done so already over the interim between last year’s votes and this year’s vote. So I’m not optimistic but I know there are a number of people that are interested in having those conversations.”

The bill is currently awaiting Governor Kim Reynolds’ signature to become law.