Hey everyone!

Here is a great example of a community working together to defeat a landfill. 1,000 people protested by attending a county commission meeting wearing green shirts that said "Stop the Landfill", the created a motorcade over a mile long to lead everyone to the meeting and used lawn signs to express their dismay at the potential.

TCWN’s Elizabeth Murphy has been working with the community and they won. The Marshall County landfill is dead. Congratulations!!

Knoxville News Sentinel: Area Lawmaker Admits to Smoking in Legislative Office

I woke to find this on the front page of the Knoxville News Sentinel. I always wondered why Rep. McCord’s office door was ALWAYS closed. Everyone else on his floor invitingly had their office door open so it was very noticable.

Thanks so much for the support from those who posted and those who contacted me personally about getting reamed by Rep. McCord. Perhaps he had too much to drink?

RvH

Here is what happens when you take a stand for clean water and fight to keep developers from being allowed to pave, culvert and bury streams at the state Legislature.

On April 9, the Stop Work Order bill was up in the House Environment Committee for a vote. During discussion, Rep. McCord asked me to come up and speak on it. Once he got me up there, he turned the subject to the limited resources bill that we worked so hard to kill. I tried to turn his attention back to the Stop Work Order, but he would have none of it.

Click here to watch the proceedings.

A couple of notes. Rep. McCord suggests that I am only in this for money. I had a conversation with Rep. Nicely at the beginning of the session. Rep. Nicely told me that because I get paid to do the work I do, it’s not worthy. When I countered that the Farm Bureau lobbyist gets paid to represent farmers, a group he claims to support, he told me that I make more money than she does and therefore what I do is not worthy. I don’t think Rep. McCord thought up the money comment on his own.

I do believe that Rep. McCord got the message.

RvH

I spent Earth Day with Science Clubbers from Seymour High School. They wanted to do some service learning on Earth Day and approached the network about a river clean up. With generous support from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, we were able to use a Clean Streams Grant to get the students out into the creek. We teamed up with the National Park Service who helped us find a location and organized all the gear necessary gear: gloves, vests, bags, truck for hauling off the trash. The High School provided lunch. The kids picked up enough trash to fill a NPS truck.

We had 66 students participate and they pulled out a lot of trash!

Sadly, not everyone thought the efforts of all these students were admirable. The Seymour Herald carried a story and the blog comments were quite unkind. The kids rallied and you can hear what they had to say for themselves and all the work they did. These kids are really committed to taking care of the environment and I am proud to have spent the day with them.

Click here to see their comments.

This week was pretty exciting at the Senate and House Environment Committees

In the Senate:

The Scenic Vista’s Act was revisited in the Senate.  Last week the Senate Committee Chair deferred to the House Subcommittee’s decision not to pass it out of the House Committee. This week the Senate sponsor and Sen. Jackson, rallied the other senators and the bill passed out of the Senate Committee.

The Limited Resources bill was completely rewritten to delete all the language and substitute in its place language that would require a clean up of the Nolichucky River.  Apparently many years ago, in the dark of night, several tons of tires were dumped into the river and are still there today.  This bill would clean it up. It passed out of Senate with the amendment unanimously.

In the House, Rep. McCord suggested the same amendment for the Limited Resources bill. It was accepted and it passed out of the House Environment Committee unanimously.

WE WON!  This bill is dead.  Though our bills died, their impact would have been greatly reduced had the limited resources bill passed.  We heard from Senator Raymond Finney that there were three bills he heard about the most and this bill was one of them.  Many thanks to all of you who called your representatives and senators to encourage them to not vote for this bill.

This fight is not over.  We have won the battle, but not the war.  We have heard that next year they are planning another round. TCWN will be there and vigilant to protect our right to clean water!

We got some excellent press from the Maryville Daily Times.

This piece leads us to believe that the fight may carry over to the making of rules and regulations.  We have a constant presence at the Water Quality Control Board and we will be watching the opposition’s every move.

If this issue is important to you, consider becoming a member and helping us win this war to protect clean water in Tennessee.  Click here to become a member today!

Many thanks to you all!

RvH