What a banner year for the Environmental Priorities Coalition. Looking at this list Craig Benjamin sent, it makes the work of the group that much more laudable. The coalition is network of leading environmental groups in Washington state who believe we can have a strong economy that provides everyone with the opportunity to prosper and a clean, healthy and safe environment for ourselves and our children. They select priority issues each legislative session that are important to protecting public health and welfare.
Check the list and summary from Craig:
Coal-Free Future for Washington – SB 5769: The Coal-Free Future for Washington law will responsibly transition Washington’s only coal-fired power plant off of coal, while creating a model of how investing in the transition to a clean-energy future can create jobs and a healthy economy.
A major win for our health, the environment, our economy, plant workers, and the Lewis County community, it provides a powerful model of what works: environmentalists, labor unions, health experts, faith leaders, the local community, the corporation, the governor, and legislators working together to drastically reduce coal pollution. It shows we can transition off dirty fossil fuels and build a strong economic future for local communities as we continue to move towards a coal-free Northwest.
Clean Fertilizers, Healthier Lakes and Rivers – HB 1489: The Clean Fertilizers, Healthier Lakes and Rivers law will manage the sale of phosphorus in lawn fertilizers and provide a commonsense and cost-effective approach to keeping our lakes and rivers clean and healthy for ourselves and our children. Managing the sale of phosphorus lawn fertilizers will help clean up lakes and rivers across Washington while saving our businesses and local governments money; it’s a win-win for our economy and the environment.
OK, let’s move on to the central story of the session: the budget.
This year, the legislature faced tremendously challenging budget choices. Due to the recession, things we all care about like education, health care, and core environmental protections were not spared in the final budget passed by the legislature.
Having already been cut over the past few years to the point where they’re barely able to perform their core functions, critical environmental protections that ensure we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and a healthy future for our children took significant further hits in the Operating Budget. Despite the fact that the legislature worked very hard to limit the impact of budget choices on the environment, unavoidable cuts put our public health, economic future, and quality of life here in Washington at risk.
Unfortunately, the legislature failed to enact proactive solutions which would have required industries that benefit from our natural resources to pay their fair share for the services they receive. Despite the emergence of a broad consensus in support of making environmental programs more self-sufficient while taking some of the burden off taxpayers, industry refused to pay increased fees without also weakening protections for our land and water, and the legislature balked at advancing a fair and equitable budget solution.
The legislature provided critical funding in the Capital Budget for the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program, which creates state and local parks and trails and protects habitat for fish and wildlife, along with important funding for cleaning up Puget Sound and toxic waste sites across the state.
And finally, the most disappointing news of all.
The 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act – SB 5604 / HB 1735: For the third year in a row, the legislature failed to act on an opportunity to create jobs, clean up our water, and protect our quality of life. The 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act would have cleaned up polluted waterways across the state like Puget Sound and the Spokane River by addressing Washington’s number one water pollution problem, toxic stormwater runoff.
While we recognize the legislature for providing $30 million of helpful stop-gap revenue for clean water projects in the Capital Budget, in order to fully address our state’s number one water pollution problem, we must have a significant and sustained funding source to fund local projects that clean up toxic runoff before it enters our water. Each year we delay in implementing a comprehensive solution, it puts Washington State further behind and makes our work in the long-term more costly.
The DTE blog is committed to reporting and sharing environmental news and sustainability information from across the Inland Northwest.
