Healthy environment pairs with strong economy
The 2012 Legislature is a particularly vexing one for those who know that a healthy environment and a strong economy go hand in hand. Efforts are under way on several fronts to roll back environmental rules and regulations under the guise of jobs creation and economic prosperity.
Each year, before the state Legislature convenes, a coalition of environmental groups from across the state maps out its environmental priorities for the session.
By prioritizing their issues, the environmental community stays focused on the task at hand: maintaining and improving the environment that makes this such a special place to live.
The environmental community wins some and loses some in every legislative session. The 2012 Legislature is a particularly vexing one for those who know that a healthy environment and a strong economy go hand in hand.
Efforts are under way on several fronts to roll back environmental rules and regulations under the guise of jobs creation and economic prosperity.
But most Washingtonians know better than to think that a healthy environment and a strong economy are mutually exclusive. The exact opposite is true — clean water, clean air, orderly land use development and diversity of habitats and species are all critical to the quality of life that attracts companies to locate here and invest in the future.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement in the way projects are reviewed and business are regulated by local and state governments. Who doesn’t support regulatory reform and streamlined permitting? The problem arises when regulatory reform turns into regulatory cuts and rollbacks that defeat the underlying purposes of the environmental laws.
The environmental community is on the defense this session. They started off monitoring more than 50 bills that would do everything from relax the state Growth Management Act to delay new rules for controlling and preventing urban stormwater runoff, which is the No. 1 threat to the health of Puget Sound.
The 50 bills have been pared down to about 15 bills as legislative deadlines and bill cutoff dates come and go.
By the end of the session, there will probably be four or five anti-environment bills that will be caught up in last-minute budget negotiations and political horse-trading typical of an election year that finds Democrats and Republicans vying for control of the state Senate, House, governor’s mansion and other offices.
“We’re on the defensive, fighting a fight that we didn’t pick,” noted veteran state lobbyist Bill Robinson of The Nature Conservancy.
Legislators need to proceed with caution and a long-term view, careful not to do anything today that will come back to haunt the state in the ensuing years.
The state has built a network of environmental regulations that protect public health, preserve the natural beauty of the state and add to the overall quality of life found in the Evergreen State.
Environmental rules didn’t cause the economic recession, and gutting them won’t lead to economic recovery. Job creation won’t be an automatic result of relaxing environmental laws.
While environmentalists are spending most of their political capital on protecting existing environmental laws and regulations, they do have a couple of other priorities. They are:
- Passage of a bill that would phase out the use of toxic flame retardants in baby products such as portable cribs and changing pads.
Some manufacturers have already made the switch to safer products. They are the leaders in the baby products industry, and the rest of the industry should follow.
- Fulfilling the goals of Initiative 937, the clean-energy initiative approved by the voters in 2006.
There’s a requirement in the initiative that requires the state’s 17 largest utilities to gradually increase to 15 percent by 2020 the amount of renewable energy they use to serve their customers.
There needs to be some fine-tuning of the initiative so utilities aren’t stuck buying new energy resources they don’t need.
The goal of the initiative remains worthy: Clean energy reduces reliance on fossil fuels, which pollute the air with climate-changing gases.
But a utility shouldn’t be forced to buy energy supplies it doesn’t need, especially if it drives up costs to the ratepayers.
At the same time, all the utilities covered by the initiative — those with 25,000 customers or more — should continue to pursue cost effective energy conservation as required by the initiative.
