As of February 8^th We’re half-way through the 2002 session and things are starting to get interesting. Here’s some bits and pieces of things heard and happening around the capitol this week:

At a meeting this morning with coal industry mining engineers and DEP mining regulators I learned a new term: "exceeds AOC." I had never heard this expression until this morning. "AOC" was familiar to me, of course – it’s the acronym for "Approximate Original Contour." Federal law requires that strip miners return the mountains they tear down to their "approximate original contour."

I was told this morning that some mountaintop removal mines are now being restored to EXCEED approximate original contour, and that DEP thought this was a good idea! What a novel concept – we’ll take all that loose fill material and build a series of Pikes Peaks in southern West Virginia. Wonder where all that rock and rubble will end up after the next torrential rainfalls this spring or summer?

Quote of the week comes from Senator Walt Helmick (D-Pocahontas Co.) when asked if you could get high by smoking hemp: "You’d have to smoke a ‘joint’ the size of a telephone pole and then you’d get only a headache!" He made this remark in a senate agriculture committee meeting dealing with an industrial hemp bill (SB 447) sponsored by Senator Karen Facemyer (R-Jackson Co.).

After a sub-committee meeting Wednesday on HB 4014, the bill that would enact strict new enforcement measures on over-weight coal trucks, Delegate Mary Poling (D-Barbour Co.) said that she "had taken two pages of notes directly from the testimony of the coal industry mining engineer" that basically contradicted his own arguments for increasing weight limits on coal trucks.

Monday was "WV Forestry Association Day" at the capitol, and Senator Helmick (again) as chair of senate Natural Resources Committee took the opportunity to put a pro-industry timber bill (SB 431) at the top of the committee’s agenda just 30 minutes before the meeting. At the encouragement of Forestry Association wag Dick Waybright, an amendment was successfully added that removed language requiring timber operators to file their logging plans before they actually did the logging (another novel concept).

However, when the bill was sent back to the full senate for first reading on Tuesday, the original language was still in the bill! On Wednesday, in spite of valiant efforts by Senators Jon Hunter (D-Monongalia) and John Mitchell (D-Kanawha), Helmick succeeded in removing the language once
again with a floor amendment.

On Thursday, through the efforts of Julian Martin, copies of the January issue of the Voice were distributed to every delegate and senator at the Capitol. Julian placed other copies in strategic places around the building. Voices were everywhere!! And everywhere you looked, people were reading the Voice! We received more than a few compliments about how good it was.

And coal industry lobbyist Bill Raney simply shook his head and told a member of the WVEC lobby team that "you folks shouldn’t be telling people these things." Our lobby team member simply replied, "So how many copies do you want, Bill?" There was no response, just muttering!

A final note: on Monday of this week, members of Trout Unlimited (namely Bryan Moore and yours truly) officially filed with the Environmental Quality Board a nomination to redesignate 951 miles of West Virginia’s highest quality streams (almost 250 individual streams) as Tier 3 streams under the provisions of the anti-degradation plan passed last year!

Am I having fun yet? You betcha!