Another bad piece of environmental legislation

More stuff to get upset about

By Will Collette

During each session of the General Assembly, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance pushes the “general alarm” button over one or more pieces of stupid anti-environmental legislation. 

For the past several years, it’s been the “Builders’ Bill” which would impinge on rural municipalities’ rights to restrict development. A new version has been introduced this year. It is unlikely that it will do any better than its predecessors did – none of them ever got out of committee.

This year, there is a bill that would prohibit municipalities from imposing standards for on-site waste systems (a.k.a. septic systems) that are higher than those set by the state Department of Environmental Management.

The rationale is that it’s bad for business for Rhode Island to fail to set uniform environmental standards, that businesses shy away from places where there are 39 different waste water treatment standards. 

This would be a good argument, except for the differences in local conditions where stricter local standards hold demonstrable merit.

The new bill is H-5425, introduced on February 13 and sent to the House Judiciary Committee.

This bill is almost identical to an earlier bill that was introduced by one of H-5425’s co-sponsors, Rep. Mike Chippendale (R-No-School-Foster-Gloucester).

That bill, H-5192 was introduced on January 30 and was sent to the House Environment Committee for a hearing. Our own Rep. Donna Walsh, who is vice-chair of the Environment Committee, and Rep. Larry Valencia confronted Chippendale about this very bad bill.

One week later, Chippendale withdrew it, only to then have it reincarnated as H-5425.

Even though the new bill isn’t going to the Environment Committee where Donna, as vice-chair, would have a lot to say about its fate, and instead goes to Judiciary, Donna serves on that committee, too.

The Town Council is expected to discuss this bill at its March 11 meeting and no doubt will engage in its usual hand-wringing about the threat this bill poses to Charlestown’s sovereign rights. They will almost certainly vote for a resolution to ask local legislators to oppose H-5425. Except our local legislators, led by Donna Walsh, are already on top of this.

But such a resolution by the Town Council, though ineffective, does no harm.