February 5, 2010
Editorial
Legislators must reverse trend, preserve land, water
It's time to consider environment
As feared, the Tennessee General Assembly has veered from the serious governance of the special session to the antic policymaking of the 2009 regular session.
Legislators slid from raising educational standards to pushing an unnecessary constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to hunt and fish. But they could stop the fall into provincialism by focusing on two areas: the budget and the environment.
Given the gravity of the budget crisis, it's easy to believe legislators who say they will work hard to tackle the problem. When it comes to the preserving air, water and soil — well, Capitol Hill's record has been toxic.
Last year, legislators voted to relax the definition of a waterway so that developers could remove or divert natural channels without recourse. Lawmakers also attempted but failed to change rules to allow more selenium in state waters. In high concentrations, the substance is toxic to humans and aquatic life. That bill is being recycled for this session.
Undaunted, Tennessee Conservation Voters, a nonprofit coalition of 25 environmental groups, is promoting proposals to reverse this trend of disregard. At the top of the list is an effort to restore funding to protect wetlands and add to parklands.
For two years, revenue from the real-estate transfer tax intended for those protections has been diverted to the state's general fund. As a result, the coalition told The Tennessean recently, 80,000 acres of parkland and wetlands are lost to development every year.
That diversion is a classic illustration of government shortsightedness. Perhaps officials justified it because of the recession, but wetlands are critical to the state's future. Wetlands are the natural filter of impurities in our water and soil, and manmade alternatives cost more and are far less efficient. It also is more expensive and usually unsuccessful to try to restore wetlands after they have been bulldozed and built upon.
State Sen. Douglas Henry and Rep. Bill Dunn have introduced a bill to restore the funds.
Other priorities of Tennessee Conservation Voters include seeking a ban on mountaintop removal for coal mining. Most controversial in West Virginia, portions of Middle and East Tennessee also are at risk, not only from defacement of scenic mountains but from the resulting erosion and water pollution.
Legislation introduced last year by Rep. Mike McDonald to stop this practice stalled in the Conservation and Environment Committee. It's a bill that should be revived.
McDonald has reintroduced another stalled bill that would set a deposit for beverage containers as a way to spur recycling. These and other initiatives demand the state's attention; few of them would cost much money, and the "bottle bill'' actually would generate revenue.
What is the source of resistance to these initiatives? Politicians eager to divert funds to their pet cause; coal-mining concerns whose economic impact in Tennessee is dwarfed by tourism dollars; and large soft-drink companies, who say a container deposit will cut into drink sales despite all evidence to the contrary.
How strange it is to overlook the needs of more than 6 million Tennesseans for the desires of a few. Those needs are water safe to drink and to play in, clean air to breathe and the ability to share Tennessee's unique beauty with millions of visitors. The special interests of the few just don't stack up.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100205/OPINION01/2050327/1008
