CHARLESTON — A Senate resolution to create a new Joint Select Committee on Requirements Governing Water Quality Standards is on its way to the House floor.
House Judiciary approved an amended version of SCR 39 Thursday afternoon.
The resolution stems from the controversy surrounding passage of a Department of Environmental Protection water quality rule that is on its way to the governor.
As previously reported, that rule, SB 167, which is rolled into a rules bundle in SB 163, deals with EPA-recommended standards for discharge of 60 pollutants, some of them carcinogens.
A new set of DEP-recommended standards based on those recommendations had been taken out of the rule, amended back in and amended out again. As SB 163 came out of the Senate and passed in the House, all stakeholders have until Oct. 1 to submit comments and recommendations to the DEP; DEP has until April 1, 2020, to re-submit its proposed standards for the 60 contaminants to be approved and enacted in 2021.
Judiciary chair John Shott, R-Mercer, told members that this new joint select committee resulted from an agreement the Senate reached with stakeholders.
The resolution says the committee will “study the processes, procedures and policies regarding the development and implementation of water quality standards and the standards’ implementation through permits.”
A Judiciary amendment offered by Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, doubles the size of the committee. She said these are difficult issues and the more ears and voices the better. As amended, the committee will have 10 members each from the House and Senate, with six of the 10 from each chamber’s majority party.
Delegate Andrew Byrd, D-Kanawha, offered a successful amendment to give the committee a deadline for its study: Feb. 1, 2020. This allows time for the DEP to digest whatever information the committee presents in order to meet its April 1 deadline.
Before the vote, Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said that water quality issues can lead to strong differences of opinion on both sides. “Everybody can agree we need clean water.”
The last time such a committee met was in 2014, following the Freedom Industries spill at the beginning of that session. That one was called the Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources and helped formulate the aboveground storage tank regulations.
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