SB423 comes before the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee bright and early Monday morning, Jan. 28th at 9:00AM! Contact these senators ASAP! Tell them to support Citizen Environmental Boards! Oppose efforts to marginalize Citizen voices! Senate Bill 423 (Puckett) would strip all meaningful authority away from Virginia's Citizen Environmental Boards. Citizen Boards protect the environment and human health by reviewing and improving permits deemed highly significant to Virginia's citizens and those permits for energy facilities like the Wise County Power Plant and the Mirant Plant in Alexandria that have a major impact on our air and water quality.
"By vesting so much authority in the hands of a single politically appointed bureaucrat who serves at the pleasure of another, this bill will undermine fact-based environmental decision making. It also would negatively impact meaningful public participation, remove transparency from the decision making process, and effectively remove the one affordable means of appeal which small business, localities, and citizens have--appeal to citizen boards that have the authority to right wrongs."
"They want to establish a rubber stamp permitting regime where citizens would never have the same access to the decision makers that big polluters would have."
"This is an example of attempting to put the 'fox in charge of the henhouse'. This legislation would remove citizens from vital input in the process, essentially giving those interests that need public scrutiny a free rein. It ain't broke, so don't try to fix it."PLEASE Contact these senators TODAY! coz Monday morning is just around the corner, and ask them to OPPOSE SB423.
His contact information is here: