PROVIDENCE — With only a few days left in the current legislative session, the leadership of the General Assembly is still negotiating on an environmental bill that seemed to be a slam dunk two months ago.

But that was before a Texas-based utility hired a well-connected lobbyist to represent its legislative interests in an apparent reprise of a strategy that helped kill a similar bill in the waning moments of the General Assembly session last year.

This year, a companion bill with bipartisan sponsorship would raise the maximum fines against environmental polluters from $1,000 to $25,000 a day.

State Rep. Joseph N. Amaral, R-Tiverton and Portsmouth, principal sponsor of the House version, offered an amendment to the state budget Wednesday night that would have incorporated provisions of the environmental legislation.

But House Majority Leader Gordon Fox objected, saying that the House and Senate leaderships still have the measure under discussion. Amaral then withdrew his budget amendment, he said, out of consideration for the House leadership.

Yesterday, Larry Berman, a spokesman for the House leadership, said that the legislation is “still in play.”

“It’s still alive,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see. There are literally hundreds of bills that have passed one chamber and not the other and are still under discussion,” Berman said. The session could end today or tomorrow.

Jeff Neal, spokesman for Governor Carcieri, said the governor is heartened by comments made by Fox on the House floor Wednesday night indicating that the bill is still a topic of discussion between the House and Senate leaderships.

Last year, legislation that would have raised the maximum daily fines to $50,000 died in the Senate over the leadership’s objections that the state Department of Environmental Management had hired a Washington, D.C., law firm to help force Southern Union to clean up contaminated soil on about 100 residential properties in North Tiverton. Legislators were angered over the firm’s bill, which reached $1 million in less than a year.

In the meantime, Southern Union, the Texas-based utility, had hired lobbyist Andrew Annaldo for $20,000 to oppose the legislation, which state officials say would have no effect on the Tiverton case.

After the close of the 2007 legislative season, a bipartisan study group researched the law in other states and recommended maximum fines of $25,000, in keeping with existing statutes in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, according to state Sen. Walter E. Felag Jr., D-Tiverton, Warren and Bristol, principal sponsor of the Senate bill.

Felag’s bill sailed through the Senate in early April and was heard the same day, along with Amaral’s bill, in the House Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources. Testimony ran unanimously in favor of the legislation, which is intended to give DEM financial leverage in enforcing the state’s environmental laws.

On May 1, about three weeks after the committee hearing, Southern Union hired lobbyist Robert Goldberg for $45,000 through the remainder of 2008, according to lobbying records on file with the Secretary of State’s office. Efforts to reach Goldberg yesterday were unsuccessful.

Felag said yesterday, “Shame on the General Assembly if it does not pass this bill.”

“These fines will serve as a deterrent to companies that act irresponsibly,” he said, although any company that faces penalties can challenge them in court.

The $25,000 maximum would be applied only against those who resist orders of the state Department of Environmental Management, Felag said. A total of 24 environmental and health organizations support the Felag and Amaral bills.

“As the General Assembly, we need to send a strong message to these companies to clean up these sites,” Felag said.

“I don’t know why everybody’s not onboard,” he said.

The chairman of the House Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources, state Rep. Jan Malik, D-Warren and Barrington, said he has urged passage in recent conversations with the House leadership.

gmacris@projo.com