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ANNAPOLIS — To environmental advocates, the 2009 General Assembly has been a mixed bag, producing wins, setbacks and amended bills resulting in limited victories.

As the session enters a final working weekend, lawmakers are on the verge of passing a bill that takes big steps toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and another that takes smaller steps to restrict growth than advocates would have liked.

In a 45-2 vote Tuesday, the Senate approved a bill requiring planning boards to file annual reports tracking where and how development is occurring in counties and municipalities. Left out of the bill was a statewide goal, added in the House Environmental Matters Committee, that 80 percent of development occur in areas designated for growth. The House passed that version of the bill last week.

"No question, the biggest failure of the General Assembly on the environment this year is to address the issue of growth," said Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland.

The Maryland Association of Counties was "standing in the way of progress" in its opposition to the statewide goal, Heavner said.

MACo executive director Michael Sanderson said counties were concerned that the amendment would put them at the end of the line for infrastructure funding if they did not meet development goals.

"What scares local officials is having the state have a hands-on role in local land-use decisions," Sanderson said.

Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Maryland, whose primary focus is on growth issues, said the failure to pass a stricter goal was a missed opportunity to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and improve land-use planning.

"We haven't really made any great big strides in about 10 years, and it's time," she said.

Advocates praised legislation that mandates a statewide reduction of global-warming pollutants by 25 percent of their 2006 level by 2020.

Heavner, a member of the commission on whose recommendations the bill was based, called the legislation "one of the strongest bills addressing global warming ever in the United States."

A similar bill failed to clear a House committee in the final hours of last year's session. This year, lawmakers won support for the bill from industry and labor by exempting manufacturers from the emissions-reduction goal. Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) included the bill among his legislative priorities for the session after Maryland Department of the Environment officials worked with advocates and industry representatives throughout 2008.

Last month, the House and the Senate each passed versions of the bill. Advocates say that the differences are minor and likely will be worked out before the session ends Monday night.

Advocates also hope that a conference committee of representatives of both chambers will keep money for Program Open Space in the budget.

The House plan would take $118 million from the parkland acquisition program, which is funded through the transfer tax levied on real estate sales.

The Senate took an additional $65 million from the fund. The conference committee is considering a proposal to backfill the fund using bonds.

"If that holds, we've had a good, solid year," Schmidt-Perkins said.

Both chambers included $10 million for the Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund — an initiative to help clean up the Bay that received $25 million in fiscal 2009.

Other budget cuts are "pretty painful," said Heavner, including O'Malley's proposal to slash $35 million from an energy-efficiency initiative that was one of his priorities last year.

"Just as it was getting up and running, the funding was cut. So that's a big disappointment," Heavner said.

Other legislation still in play includes a bill to require any new or replacement septic systems installed near shorelines to use nitrogen-removal technology. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation calls nitrogen the Bay's "most serious pollution problem."

The Senate approved the bill late last month on a 24-23 vote. It was the subject of a lengthy debate on the House floor Thursday. Republicans from districts near the Bay said the bill would place a costly burden on their constituents and offered a series of amendments — rejected by the House — to provide certain exemptions.

It costs about $12,000 to replace a tank with nitrogen-removal technology, according to the legislature's nonpartisan Office of Policy Analysis. The state has an account available to provide grants and loans to replace tanks, with priority placed on tanks near shoreline or that are failing.

A final vote was expected late Friday or Saturday.

Another bill would give citizens legal standing to challenge in court decisions on state permits, such as wetlands permits. The House approved the bill, 110-23. The Senate was scheduled to vote on it late Thursday.

Environmentalists preferred an expanded version of the bill that would have allowed citizens to sue polluters, as well.

"It moves forward on one section, but leaves behind an equally important part of the problem," Schmidt-Perkins said.

The one step forward, one step back comes as federal and state officials have admitted in recent years that they would not come close to meeting a goal set in 2000 to clean up the Bay by 2010.

Meeting that goal will take a "whole sweep of policies," Heavner said. "In that context, we're tinkering around the edges, and we need to get serious real quick," he said.

Cindy Schwartz, director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, tried to keep things in perspective, saying Marylanders have "high aspirations" for environmental legislation, even in times like these when budgets are tight.

"When you put the whole picture together and in the context of the economy and where we are and how much actually happened, I think it was a pretty good year," she said.