Your elected officials, to be more precise.  TCWN has kicked off a massive campaign to encourage folks to call their State Senators and Representatives and demand they protect our state’s waters.

Right now, there are 14 destructive water bills in the Senate and House.  Any one of these bills could have a devastating impact on our water quality and quantity.  All of them combined- well, it’s just bad, bad, bad.

We have added a page to our website that summarizes each bill and provides talking points.  Feel free to use those points to write a letter or make a phone call to your Senator and Representative, especially if your representative belongs on one of these committees:

Senate Environment, Conservation and Tourism Committee

Steve Southerland, Chair
Ken Yager, Vice-Chair
Eric Stewart, Secretary
Tim Barnes
Charlotte Burks
Mike Faulk
Doug Jackson
Jack Johnson
Jamie Woodson

House Conservation and Environment Committee

This article just came over my email.  I think it is worth a mention that not all people working in government are too happy at recent Supreme Court decisions and the current fallout from EPA.  Many rivers in the United States are being reclassified as non-navigable, when indeed, they are navigable-in-fact.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wylie30-2008oct30,0,712832.story

There is a fix for this.  It’s call the Clean Water Restoration Act. It simply removes the word “navigable” from the Clean Water Act, thus solidifying the CWA’s original intent to protect ALL waters of the nation.  I think the word appears something like twice in the act.

Now here’s what the detractors say.

“This act will increase enforcement activities by the Feds.”  No so. This does not touch the enforcement sections of the CWA.

“People will be regulating bird baths and puddles.”  I hear this one a lot.  I cannot believe someone would actually utter it.  It is by far the most stupid argument against this legislation I have heard yet.  Give me an argument with umph. PLEASE!!! As if the Feds have time to do something like this.  Ridiculous.

“Farmers will have to comply with the CWA.” Again, not so.  Agriculture is exempt from the CWA except when they have heavy equipment in a stream.

Unfortunately, not too many of our federal representatives support this legislation.  Neither of our Senators support it and only three of our representatives - Gordon, Cooper and Cohen are co-sponsors.  Many thanks to the three of them.

Please give the remaining delegation a call and tell them that you want them to co-sponsor this legislation.  Call us and we’ll give you the low down, fact sheets and everything you need to state your case.

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.

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

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

Here’s an update of the bills that we are watching:

Stop Work Order. This bill is dead for lack of a second in the House SubCommittee on Environment.

Limited Resources bill: There were some negotiations that took place on the Senate side. Sen. Southerland introduced an amendment to this bill that wipes out the definition of water and replaces it with a clean up of the Nolichucky thereby making the attempt to change the definition dead for this year. The opposition’s lobbyist stopped me in the hall before committee and told me that they are finished with this bill. We aren’t declaring victory yet, but we think it will be very soon.

Pigeon River: This bill changes the location of water testing for pollution coming into Tennessee from the Evergreen Paper Mill (formerly Blue Ridge, formerly Champion). Amendments for this bill more fully indicate how TDEC will take those samples. This bill passed and is being signed by both Senate and House Speakers. Yay!

We’ll keep you posted!