Environmental Groups Decry Flood Of Legislation Gop, Demos Both Faulted For Bills That Would Roll Back Protections

The Republican-led Legislature is pushing so many proposals to ease protections of the state’s air, land and water that environmental lobbyists can’t even list them all, environmental groups lamented Thursday.

At a news conference, representatives of groups ranging from People for Puget Sound to the Sierra Club to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission said they couldn’t recall a year in which the Legislature has proposed so many bills they consider major threats to environmental protection.

They largely blamed Republican lawmakers and the “special interests” they said are behind them - developers, industrial polluters and timber companies.

But they also faulted their usual allies, the minority Democrats, for not doing enough to fight some of the bills. They conceded that many of the proposals drew significant Democratic support.

“They’re not doing their job, Republican or Democrat,” said Steve Robinson, a spokesman for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. He and his colleagues said the public does not support weakening of environmental protections developed over the last 25 years.

Later, at another news conference, House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, and Sen. Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, said they were willing to work with environmentalists to make the legislation more palatable.

But environmental spokesmen said they ultimately will look to Democratic Gov. Gary Locke to stop the dozens of proposals they don’t like.

On the wall behind them, the spokesmen had tacked up hand-scrawled lists of measures they said would dismantle anti-pollution laws, destroy land-use planning, give away publicly owned water to special interests and open the forests to more logging.

“These are just some of them. We can’t even begin to cover them all here,” said Kathy Fletcher, spokeswoman for People for Puget Sound.

Here is a sampling of legislation environmental lobbyists and their allies hope to have stopped or greatly amended by April 27, the scheduled adjournment date:

More than two dozen measures to rewrite the state’s 7-year-old Growth Management Act. Most of the bills have passed the House and are headed for the Senate, which has passed a handful of its own.

HB1866, which would allow industries to enter into agreements with the governor making them exempt from most state environmental laws.

SB5208, to limit protections for “whistleblowers” who report violations of environmental laws by their employers.

HB1022, to bar the Department of Natural Resources from entering into habitat conservation plans with the federal government.

HB1795, to strip the state Forest Practices Board of much of its power to regulate conversion of forest land to development.

A dozen measures to rewrite laws controlling water uses.