CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Two dozen West Virginia residents and environmentalists urged state lawmakers on Monday to defeat legislation they said would sharply lower the standards for measuring the quality of streams affected by coal mines’ toxic sludge and acid drainage.
The bill, passed 32-2 by the Senate last week, would direct the Department of Environmental Protection to measure waterway health by fish populations without measuring insect life as well.
At Monday’s House Committee on Energy hearing, environmentalists said they were left out of stakeholder discussions on the legislation pushed by the diminished coal industry. They also said the hearing was only the first opportunity for public comment.
Several called the pro-industry approach “war on water,” countering the industry claim that environmental regulation has meant “war on coal.”
“Water is our most important natural resource,” said Larry Orr, who chairs the West Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited with 1,400 members. “Not coal, not lumber, not oil, not gas, not any of the products of the extractive industry, it’s water.”
Attorney Mike Becker called the legislation “overreach,” saying it was meant to undermine federal court rulings in cases brought by the Sierra Club and others over environmental standards. The current standard is used across the U.S., and West Virginia has spent decades developing its related water-monitoring system, he said.
Current state law calls for water quality standards based on “biologic life” and finding that a stream “supports a balanced aquatic community that is diverse in species composition.” The bill would delete those words.
Instead, it would call for compliance standards based on “aquatic life” and continued findings that a stream “contains appropriate trophic levels of fish, in streams that have flows sufficient to support fish populations.”
Three West Virginia coal industry representatives said the change will remove barriers to their struggling industry’s ability to compete.
Jason Bostic, vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said the changes are meant to close a loophole that let a federal judge instead of the Legislature decide what West Virginia water quality standards should be. He blamed “anti-coal groups” such as the Sierra Club for setting impossible discharge standards.
“This is the latest front in the war on coal entered by the anti-coal and anti-energy groups as they see their influence with EPA fading under a new president,” Bostic said.
Industry-drafted provisions in the original bill also would have cut state mine safety inspections. They were opposed by the United Mine Workers of America and removed before a rewritten bill cleared the Senate.
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