Good news!

The West Virginia Environmental Quality Board (EQB) has forwarded regulations for Category A public drinking water supplies for approval by the legislature -- without an exemption for manganese included in the rule. This is the way West Virginia Rivers Coalition (WVRC) Conservation Director Pam Moe-Merritt asked to see the rule when she attended an EQB meeting in November. This proposal retains the definition of Category A as applying to all the waters of the state -- providing the maximum degree of protection for our surface waters, for existing and future uses!

In an interim meeting of the Joint Rule Making Committee on January, the committee voted to send the rule on for consideration during the regular legislative session.

The bad news is that industry will likely try to write a manganese exemption into the rule during the session. WVRC will be watching this issue as it develops in the legislature, and we’ll keep you posted!

West Virginia Rivers Coalition is currently in the middle of a fight to keep West Virginia’s clean rivers and streams from being polluted any further.

WVRC filed a Notice of Intent to sue EPA to get an anti-degradation implementation policy in place for West Virginia. This policy, a key provision of the Clean Water Act, is intended to keep our clean waters clean. Although the Clean Water Act was passed 27 years ago, our state still isn’t in compliance with this important part of the law.

A stakeholder committee, in which WVRC plays a large part, has been working to put together a draft plan for consideration by the state legislature this winter. However, the state Environmental Quality Board has decided to withdraw the draft rule and continue with the stakeholder process. WVRC will cooperate with this plan to develop a document in consensus with other committee members. Unfortunately, there is the threat that industry interests, which have stymied the anti-degradation process for years, will try to circumvent the stakeholder group and submit their own, weaker document to the legislature.

While fighting for a solid plan to come out of the stakeholder group, WVRC will watchdog the legislature this session and seek a strong implementation plan that’s developed by an array of interests.

If you’d like to know more about this issue, contact WVRC Conservation Director Pam Moe-Merritt at (304) 637-7201.