Kentucky Dirty Water Act - SB89
Taken from the current version of SB89 under consideration in the Kentucky Legislature
The Kentucky Legislature is trying to pull a fast one by fast-tracking SB89 - a bill that I call the Kentucky Dirty Water Act. The bill on its surface deals with mining and permits, but with this paragraph of text, non-navigable waterways including rivers, streams, creeks, lakes, ponds, impounding reservoirs, springs, wells, marshes, and all other bodies of surface or underground water, natural or artificial are no longer considered water for purposes of mining operations.
This opens the door to pollution in these upstream bodies of water that are not water by this new definition. The old definition has been in use for 75 years, and that seems like a pretty obvious thing, but not in Frankfort.
Speaking of obvious:
Clean water is more important than mining.
Clean water is cheap to treat and distribute. Polluted water is not. Water is fundamental to survival. Coal is not. There are myriad substitutes for coal; there is not a single one for clean water.
When water is polluted, there is a cleaning cost. That cost is disproportionately paid by taxpayers rather than the mining company:
A portion of clean-up costs are priced into the sale of coal by the mining company
Mining companies have a long history of going bust and leaving taxpayers on the hook for clean-up
The state rarely has enough money to take on large scale clean-ups
The federal government is loathe to provide money for these activities - particularly with the current wave of budget cuts
In the end, taxpayers deal with contaminated water, higher water treatment prices, and eventually, more taxes paid for a problem created by a business
This is socialism. The government, funded by taxpayers, will be the backstop to clean-up. Instead of a business taking care of its mess, it leaves the bill with us. And mining companies are notorious for exactly this sort of thing.
And for those of you waiting for the federal Clean Water Act to make a difference, know this: it only applies to navigable waterways because of the interstate commerce clause. States police their own water so long as it doesn’t pollute navigable waterways.
AND, since we have a states’ rights Supreme Court, there is no help coming from D.C. if we pass the Kentucky Dirty Water Act.
By the way, a popular river in Kentucky isn’t navigable, and according to Frankfort, it isn’t water either. You might have heard of Red River, right? There’s a gorge there.
While this is a federally protected Wild and Scenic River, those protections might fall under the current court’s interpretation because federal law may not apply to this non-navigable waterway.
So, what can we do? Leave a message with Frankfort that you’re a NO on SB89. You’ll need to give your name and address to the human on the other end of the phone line, and this is for Kentuckians, not for random folks from other states.
“Hi, my name is __________ and I want to leave a message to vote NO on SB89. My address is __________.”
Message hotline is open from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Manual dial is 800-372-7181.