The Charleston Gazette
www.wvgazette.com

Lawmakers delay water rule decision

By Ken Ward Jr.
Tuesday January 9, 2001

Legislators on Monday gave industry lobbyists, regulators and environmentalists another month to come up with an agreement on a rule to keep West Virginia's streams from being made dirtier.

In doing so, members of a rule-making committee also declined to immediately take up a version of the rule that industry officials are quietly pushing.

"We prefer that all of the stakeholders and the agencies come up with something," said Sen. Mike Ross, D-Randolph and chairman of the Joint Legislative Rule-making-Review Committee.

Delegate Mary Pearl Compton, D-Monroe, said the committee would delay consideration of the matter until its February meeting.

She added: "When I say all the stakeholders, I mean all the stakeholders, and not just a few getting together behind closed doors making rules for everybody."

During an interim meeting Monday in Charleston, committee members considered a proposed stream "anti-degradation" policy submitted by the state Environmental Quality Board.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, states are required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to have anti-degradation policies. The idea of the policy is to keep clean streams from being made dirty. Streams are only supposed to be "degraded" if regulators study proposed developments and determine their social and economic benefits would outweigh the pollution they would cause. Under the law, if states do not implement anti-degradation policies, EPA must step in and do so.

West Virginia is just getting around to writing an anti-degradation implementation plan.

Joe Lovett, a lawyer for environmental groups, said that the state's current proposal is far too weak. For example, he said, the proposal exempts all existing pollution sources from anti-degradation studies.

But steel makers, chemical manufacturers, coal operators, loggers, farmers and power companies say the board's proposal is too stringent.

Wayne Appleton, a spokesman for DuPont and other chemical companies, said that industry has come up with its own anti-degradation plan. Industry lobbyists are calling it their "Clean Water and Good Jobs" plan, Appleton said.

Bob Korancai, chief of EPA's regional water office, told committee members that his agency would reject the state's current proposal. EPA has agreed with some, but not all, criticisms of the proposal by environmental groups.

Delegate Larry Faircloth, R-Berkeley, asked exactly what EPA wants the state's plan to say. Faircloth said he wondered about reports from industry lobbyists that the West Virginia proposal is more stringent than those in surrounding states.

"We're operating here without national guidance, and frankly, that is EPA's fault," Korancai replied. "When you don't have national guidance, you're going to have different states and different regions with different interpretations."