Setting the table for yet another fight during the legislative session, lawmakers Monday nearly doubled the list of West Virginia streams afforded protections under "Tier 2.5 status," The Associated Press reports.
AP's Tom Breen notes that the interim committee vote reverses a course set by Gov. Joe Manchin and his Department of Environmental Protection, who had been paring down the stream list.
"That likely means a fight with groups representing industry and property owners, who had hoped to reduce the number of protected streams to 38," Breen reports.
It had been whittled down to 156 before the successful amendment by Delegate Mike Burdiss, D-Wyoming.
But Burdiss "unfurled a huge map showing the state's more than 2,000 streams and carried it around the room to help make his point," the AP article said.
"Only 38 streams out of 2,000 and some? What are we doing?" it quotes Burdiss as asking.
The Charleston Gazette was also at the interim meeting, and recounts the multi-year battle over the stream list while predicting it could be "the biggest environmental issue of the 2008 session."
The Gazette also relays this color from the meeting:
Delegate Kelli Sobonya, R-Cabell, insisted that the committee allow anyone at Tuesday’s meeting who owned property along a listed stream be allowed to address lawmakers.
Minard asked if any landowners were present, and the only person who came to the podium was Roger Sherman, a lobbyist for Mead Westvaco.
Sherman said that while timber operations are exempt from the anti-degradation rules, his company might someday want to do something else on its land that required a permit that would be subject to the rules.
Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley, asked Sherman to identify which streams on the DEP list Mead Westvaco owned property along.
“I can’t recall that,” Sherman said. “I was not prepared to speak today. I’m not sure which list we’re talking about.”
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