WV Senate Votes To Boost Water Pollution, Having Already Destroyed Mine Safety
Legislation that could allow increased discharge of toxic chemicals into West Virginia’s rivers and streams won final approval from the state Senate on Tuesday, giving business and industry lobbyists a major victory on a long-sought change in the way water pollution permit limits are calculated. Senators voted 20-13 in favor of House Bill 2506 and sent the measure to Gov. Jim Justice, who is all but certain to sign it into law.
The move ends a more than quarter-century of periodic efforts by the West Virginia Manufacturers Association and other industry groups to move the Department of Environmental Protection to the use of an average stream flow called “harmonic mean” when setting pollution discharge permit limits. DEP officials have used a more protective low-flow stream figure in calculating those permit limits. Under the bill, the state’s water quality standards — the legal limit for in-stream contamination — won’t change. But because the average flow is always higher than the low-flow measure, the change allows the agency to approve increases in the discharges allowed by specific industrial facilities.
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Sen. Mike Romano, D-Harrison, noted that lawmakers were told during the House of Delegates discussion of the bill that the change would bring West Virginia in line with surrounding states, something that turned out to actually not be completely correct when senators began digging into the matter. “Passage of this bill will give us the most lenient flow standards in the region,” Romano said. “I guess we’re finally first in something.”
Tuesday’s Senate approval vote came just hours after a late-night session in which senators turned down efforts by Romano and Sen. Ron Miller, D-Greenbrier, to narrow the bill’s effects.
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