West Virginia Environmental Council
March21, 2008 WVEC Alerts Archive

Dear Friends,

Any way you look at it, this was a successful session for the WV Environmental Council and the legislative lobby team.

With your help, we pushed state lawmakers to make a real commitment to protecting West Virginia’s cleanest waters; we defeated another proposal to weaken the state’s solid waste laws and bring a mega dump to McDowell County; we succeeded in restoring anti-degradation language to DEP air regulations; we brought public attention to the devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining; and we educated legislators about how a real Citizen’s Energy Plan could benefit the people of West Virginia.

Even though the lobby team is exhausted, now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We are already planning the rest of the year’s activities for WVEC, as we continue to increase our outreach to West Virginians and expand our membership base.

And even though the 2008 regular session just ended, the monthly Interim legislative sessions will begin as early as April. This is our opportunity to address upcoming agency rule-making as well as to work with lawmakers on new legislation for the 2009 Legislature.

With primary elections just around the corner, the lobby team is busy preparing a legislative scorecard so you can see just how your representatives voted on important environmental issues this session. Even though we had a very good year, several good bills to address global warming, energy efficiency, mining regulation, and more, did not pass. The upcoming election cycle is the time to build these issues into a political constituency and to mobilize citizens to advocate for them.

This is also the time to build statewide support for the WVEC Citizen’s Energy Plan and Renewable Energy Campaign. Both of these will be featured components next month at Sustainable Fair 2008 (“Green Makes $en$e”, April 18-20 on the campus of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV – see flyer and poster).

All of our efforts represent fundamental change for West Virginia and require a year round commitment in order to be successful. Your continued financial support will help sustain WVEC’s activities for the rest of the year. So please consider sending us a contribution now.

Thank you,

Jim Kotcon, WVEC President