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July 17, 2007
DEP, Manchin take heat for shrinking stream list
Chris Byrd took half a day off work Monday to drive to Charleston and tell
state officials what he thinks of their ever-shrinking list of protected
streams.
“It’s an absolute insult to the general public,” said Byrd, a Clarksburg
jeweler and avid trout fisherman.
Byrd urged state Department of Environmental Protection officials to let
science — not politics or orders from Gov. Joe Manchin — decide what streams
receive special anti-degradation protection.
“I would ask this agency not to be influenced by our ‘Open for Business’
governor,” Byrd told DEP officials during a public hearing Monday evening.
Byrd was among several dozen anglers who dominated testimony at a DEP hearing
on the agency’s latest “Tier 2.5” list. The list is proposed as part of West
Virginia’s federally required stream anti-degradation policy.
Under orders from Manchin, DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer last month cut
the number of streams on the agency’s preferred list from more than 300 to 157.
Streams on the list are clean, and the anti-degradation policy aims to keep them
that way.
Earlier this year, the Legislature refused to either approve or reject DEP’s
list after it was vigorously opposed by the timber industry, farmers and other
business interests.
Now, the list of 157 streams is out for public comment through the end of the
day today. After DEP makes any changes, it will go back to the Legislature for
consideration during the 2008 session.
About 50 people attended Tuesday’s hearing at DEP headquarters in Kanawha
City, and the sentiment among speakers was heavily against Manchin’s actions.
Representatives of both of the state’s Trout Unlimited chapters, along with
various environmental groups and the Council of Churches, all lined up against
the governor’s move to reduce the number of protected streams.
“I haven’t seen any science to back up this massive de-listing,” said Evan
Hansen, a water quality consultant who works with the West Virginia Rivers
Coalition. “This is based on what the governor has told DEP to do.”
Shawn Fetter, a middle school science teacher from Elkins, said that every
time he read about the Tier 2.5 list, the number of protected streams appeared
to have dropped.
“It doesn’t look like to me that any science was used to take the streams
down a notch,” Fetter said. “When are we going to make decisions not based on
our pocketbooks, but based on public health and safety?”
Dick Waybright, executive director of the West Virginia Forestry Association,
said the DEP list is still too expansive, including streams where landowners did
not receive individual notification of the listing process.
And a spokesman for the West Virginia Farm Bureau, Jamie Kinsey, complained
the listing process amounts to a “taking” of public property from rural
landowners.
Gary Zuckett, executive director of the West Virginia-Citizen Action Group,
said forestry and farm groups have released disinformation about the possible
impacts of the rule.
For example, he said, the groups have farmers believing they would have to
fence off Tier 2.5 streams that go through their property, or even “put diapers
on their cattle” to keep waste out of creeks.
In reality, Zuckett said, both farming and timbering are generally exempt
from the anti-degradation policy, as long as they comply with voluntary best
management practices.
“The pollution lobby has been very effective at whittling this list down,”
Zuckett said. “The truth is the pollution lobby doesn’t want any streams
protected.”
Other speakers said the state’s streams are really owned by the people, and
that polluting them amounts to a “taking” of property from all West Virginians.
“Clean water is not a commodity,” said Carol Warren of the West Virginia
Council of Churches. “It’s a basic human right.”
The federal Clean Water Act requires states to adopt and enforce
anti-degradation policies to keep streams from being made dirtier. West Virginia
officials have been working on their policy for years. Final implementation has
been delayed numerous times, in large part because of industry complaints.
The Tier 2.5 category itself actually exists only because of one of a series
of compromises with regulated industries.
Under the state’s policy, streams in this category could not be degraded more
than 10 percent. The Tier 2.5 category was created to keep many state streams
from ending up classified as Tier 3, a category that allows no degradation at
all.
Don Garvin, lead lobbyist for the West Virginia Environmental Council, on
Monday evening gave DEP spokeswoman Jessica Greathouse a list of 288 streams his
group was nominating for Tier 3 protection.
“These streams deserve the highest level of protection under the law, and
that’s Tier 3,” Garvin said. “We’ve gotten ourselves into a place where politics
has changed reality.”
Ed Hayne, a trout fisherman from Charleston, agreed.
“Every time I read about this process or hear about this process, the number
of streams seems to drop,” Hayne said. “You shouldn’t be allowed to change a
decision made by science with a pen.”
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348-1702.
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