|
|
|
|
A bill has received key House approval prohibiting the use of fertility control agents to limit the number of deer and other wildlife.
Bill proponents say the bill's purpose is to ensure hunters have enough wildlife to shoot.
Exceptions can be granted by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
Chances dimmed Wednesday that a bill intended to protect rivers from excessive withdrawals will pass the Legislature this year.
For the second consecutive week, the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committee failed to agree on the bill that requires new industries to get state permits to withdraw large amounts of water.
By Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris | Politico.com
Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), once a skeptic of global warming, got a hint that the political winds might be shifting when a long-time supporter warned that he might vote against Inglis if he “didn’t clean up his act on the environment.”
The warning came from Inglis’s eldest son, Robert Jr., now 22.
His daughter was no less blunt about the congressman’s refusal to embrace the view that global warming was being caused by human actions and that a serious response is needed. “I have three more kids coming up—and they seem to share the same view,” said Inglis.
Family pressure worked. Inglis traveled to Antarctica and, most recently, to Greenland to witness the effects of rising CO2 levels and temperatures. He now believes the science behind global warming. And he believes the politics are equally conclusive: Republicans will “get hammered” if they do not reckon with the issue soon.
You wouldn’t know it from listening to President Bush or most GOP congressional leaders, but a lot of smart Republican thinkers are coming to the same conclusion as Inglis.
The changing politics of global warming will be a useful gauge to measure change in Washington. Two questions loom. The first is how will Republicans reposition themselves for a post-Bush era in which it appears that many ascendant issues--the environment and health care especially—are historically favorable terrain for Democrats. The second is whether even powerful shifts in public opinion, as have clearly taken place on global warming, can force action in a Congress where partisan stalemate has been the operating mode on most difficult issues for more than a decade.
At first blush, there are striking signs of motion.
Sen. John Warner, of Virginia, has said his top goal for his remaining days in office is not Iraq but passing legislation to combat global warming. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warming that Republicans will get whacked in swing suburban areas if they keep acting like global warming does not exist. And Ken Mehlman, the former top Bush strategist and one of the more innovative minds in GOP politics today, has been telling anyone who will listen Republicans risk losing young voters if they do not seriously deal with the issue.
Now these Republicans will come armed with some pretty persuasive polling data. Environmental Defense, a special interest group pushing for limits on greenhouse gases and other global warming solutions, commissioned Republican pollster Whit Ayres to survey voters in the 49 most competitive House races. The goal was to come up with polling data that even Republicans skeptics would consider trustworthy, especially when it’s attached to an environmental special interest group.
Eager to get their message out to Congress, Ayres provided Politico an exclusive look at their findings. In a presentation similar to ones provided to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle in recent days, Ayres illustrates how independents – who were responsible for ousting the GOP majority in 2006 – are unmistakably supportive of swift action to cut carbon emissions and require cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by cars, factories and power plants. Ayres seemed most surprised that independents and to a lesser extent Republicans wanted the U.S. to act even if China and India, two big polluters with rapidly growing economies, did not.
The swing district independent voters said they were much more likely to support a candidate who votes to cut carbon emissions.
Republicans voters were surprisingly supportive of efforts to combat global warming, but also made it clear they were much less likely to hold members of congress accountable if they failed to act anytime soon. This helps explain why the leading presidential candidates seem in basic agreement that global warming exists but are very cautious in talking about the issue or solutions. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an early supporter of global warming legislation, is the big exception.
Republicans are split in three camps: a small but vocal group who think global warming is basically a hoax (26 percent of GOP voters said it does not exist in the Ayres poll); a big group that includes GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani who agree the earth is warming but are reluctant to embrace plans opposed by business or viewed as burdensome government regulation; and a growing number who are pushing for specific, market-based solutions now.
The latter group is on the rise. It includes corporations such as Duke Energy, lawmakers such as Warner and strategists such as Mehlman (who is also paid by a client to push for a market-based solution) who thinks it’s in their best collective interest to move now on legislation. The companies want to avoid tougher government regulations later, and the politicians want to avoid ceding the issue to Democrats and suffering a backlash from younger voters at the polls.
That said, it is unlikely Congress will make big changes in this election cycle. Yes, the public agree with Al Gore that rising temperatures are troublesome. Yes, both parties see this as an increasingly powerful political issue, especially among younger voters. Yes, the Democratic presidential candidates are putting forward ambitious plans to curb emissions.
But the base in both parties is skeptical of the most talked-about bill, one drafted by Warner and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, which would create an economy-wide, cap-and-trade system (http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/page.jsp?itemID=27226959) for emissions. The legislation is designed to cap greenhouse emissions at 2005 levels by 2012. Some liberals and environmental groups say it does too little, too slowly. Some conservatives and corporate interests say it’s too onerous or unnecessary.
Politics aside, it is not clear the public is ready to stomach the pocket-book costs of curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. People want cleaner air, but are they willing to pay 30 percent more for natural gas to heat their home, or higher energy bills overall? Will they drive smaller cars or pay more to gas up their Durango? Probably not.
That is why even the most ambitious plans presented by the Democratic presidential candidates are setting goals so distant that they won’t be met until most of these contenders might be dead.
Inglis says he is studying the proper congressional response – three years after he was threatened with losing the family vote.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., has secured $80 million in federal funding for South Carolina in the Water Resources Development Act Reauthorization, his office announced in a news release.
“I am pleased to see this legislation finally receive reauthorization. Passage of the Water Resources Development Act is seven years overdue," said Clyburn, who represents the 6th Congressional District that includes Columbia.
"There are critical water and environmental needs in South Carolina and across the country that will now receive the support they need.”
Congressman Clyburn requested funding for the following projects:
Top state officials warned the state could be facing shortages of both water and funds beginning later this year.
At Gov. Mark Sanford’s cabinet meeting Tuesday, a representative from the Department of Natural Resources said that some parts of the state, such as the coast, could be facing drought-related water restrictions within a couple of months.
In addition, the head of South Carolina’s tax collection agency,
Ray Stevens, said national trends show state revenue growth has begun to slow. Especially important to South Carolina, Stevens said, is the slowdown in sales tax collections.
Final figures are not yet available, Stevens said, but June sales tax collections could show negative growth.
A bill allowing more bear-hunting in the mountains is dead for the year --- and that’s fine with state senators caught in the cross-fire.
Mountain-area Sens. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, and Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, said Wednesday they’re reluctant to support the bear bill until long-standing differences can be worked out. Conservationists, homeowners and animal welfare activists oppose the hunter-backed bill. “It isn’t going to fly’’ without more work, Martin said of the bill. The bill expands the two-week bear-hunting season in the state’s mountain counties by three days, which is a concern to ani-mal welfare groups that say bear hunting is a cruel trophy sport. But the major sticking point is a provision allowing hunters to let their dogs chase black bears in the woods before the hunting season starts.
The proposed four week “running season” from mid-September to mid-October will disrupt neighborhoods and state parks as dogs pursue bears through the forests, critics said at a hearing Wednesday. “Dogs can’t read “No Trespassing’ signs and apparently many of their handlers can’t either,’’ Pickens County resident Wes Cooler said.
The bill has been approved by the House, but it won’t be voted on by Martin’s senate committee before the legislative session ends next month. It would go to the full Senate if voted out of the Fish, Game and Forestry Committee. Upstate bear-hunters and the state Department of Natural Re-sources contend there are more bears in the mountains than in the past.
Bill proponents say they’re trying to expand a traditional mountain hunting practice. Hunters have killed hundreds of bears in Pickens, Oconee and Greenville counties since 2000, state records show. The DNR says the state has about 900 bears in the mountain counties, up from about 300-400 in the 1990s.
Critics say more population research is needed. Opponents said the legislation also needs tighter rules and better education requirements for hunters.
Hunters often walk public roads with guns at the same time tourists are in the mountains looking at the fall colors. The state’s existing two-week hunting season in late October is split into one week for hunting without dogs and one for hunting with dogs.
Gov. Mark Sanford will be in Hampton County tomorrow for the dedication of the Hamilton Ridge Tract, 13,000 acres of forestland environmentalists say is among the most ecologically significant land purchases in state history. The tract was previously owned by International Paper. But the state purchased it through the Department of Natural Resources with help from the Conservation Fund and the Nature Conservancy.
Friday's dedication ceremony will be held at the Webb Wildlife Center.
Led by its president, a key group of senators vowed Thursday to kill any Senate-originated legislation that would keep open the Barnwell nuclear burial grounds to any other state outside the three-state Atlantic Compact beyond July 2008.
"Those of us who oppose going back are prepared to fight, if that's what it comes down to on the floor of the Senate," said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.
A House committee last week voted down a bill that would have kept the waste burial grounds open to other state's and therefore reneging on an agreement reached by state leaders in 1999.
Senators are trying to head off any attempts to tack on legislation to the budget aimed at reviving the defeated House effort.
"Any attempt to insert it in the (budget) bill or anywhere else, we will fight it with everything we have," McConnell said.
Gov. Mark Sanford has named the remaining members of his Climate, Energy and Commerce Advisory Committee.
Those named to the panel Thursday represent agriculture, business, energy, conservation and other interests.
They are: Johnny Williamson, CEO, South Carolina Soys, LLC; Hugh Weathers, state agriculture commissioner; Crandall Close Bowles, CEO, Springs Mills; David Smalls, president, Walterboro-Colleton Chamber of Commerce; Joe James, CEO, Corporation for Economic Opportunity; Bob Fledderman, manager, Mead-Westvaco; Brad Wyche, executive director, Upstate Forever; Steve Smith, executive director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy; Emerson Gower, vice president, Progress Energy Carolinas southern region; Mike Olbrich, plant manager, BP Chemical; John Tiencken, former CEO, Santee Cooper; Bob Scott, president, S.C. Forestry Association; John Frampton, director, S.C. Natural Resources Department; Bob King, deputy commissioner, S.C. Health and Environmental Control Department; John Clark, director, South Carolina Energy Office; Paul Gayes, director, Coastal Carolina University Center for Marine and Wetlands Studies; Jim Byrd, deputy director, S.C. Insurance Department market services division; E. Bruce Morgan, mayor, City of Union.
These additions bring the total number of members on Sanford's committee to 27.
A bill to keep the Barnwell County low-level nuclear waste dump open to the rest of the country past July 2008 is effectively dead today.
The House Agriculture and Environmental Affairs Committee voted 16-0 to kill the bill. Two members, including committee chairman Bill Witherspoon, didn't vote.
Witherspoon, who sponsored the measure, said he would have preferred that the site stay open but he called today's vote "democracy in action."
The possible lack of space was the main issue cited by members voting against the bill.
The measure could be resurrected later this year or in 2008, which is the second year of this two-year legislative session.
About 200 people are in attendance at a House subcommittee meeting this afternoon where members will decide whether to advance a bill to keep the Barnwell nuclear waste dump open to the nation past July 2008.
There were so many people on both sides of the issue that officials had to move the meeting to a larger room.
At least 120 pro-Barnwell people came for the meeting, sporting green and yellow stickers with the saying "I support Barnwell."
The anti-Barnwell crowd wore red and white stickers reading "Dump the bill."
Twenty-three people signed up to speak before the subcommittee.
Former Greenpeace leader Patrick Moore, now chairman of Greenspirit Strategies, told representatives the landfill poses no threat to the community.
Former Rep. Harriett Keyserling, R-Beaufort, spoke against the bill and said the state should keep its word to shut the dump to all but three states in 2008.
Ben Johnson, chairman of the Atlantic Compact that represents the three states, spoke against the bill. He raised concerns about whether there was going to be enough room in the landfill for the three states who were promised space after next summer's scheduled closing.
A company lobbying to keep the state's nuclear waste landfill open has invited conservationists to tour the site tomorrow with legislators who will vote on the issue.
After initially planning a tour only for state lawmakers, Energy Solutions Inc. now says the tour is open to anyone and it offered conservationists seats on a bus from Columbia to the Barnwell County site.
"We wanted to make sure that everybody knows we are doing the right thing," said Tim Dangerfield, a spokesman for the Utah-based company that operates the site.
The decision to invite others for the tour headed off criticism that Energy Solutions was trying to influence lawmakers outside the public eye. Company officials said that was never the case and that they had planned a separate tour for conservation groups.
A company lobbying to keep the state’s atomic waste landfill in Barnwell County open to the nation plans to go through with a site tour for key lawmakers who will vote on the plan.
But the public is welcome to attend.
After initially planning a private tour for lawmakers, the site’s operator and a key legislative committee learned that the event could meet the definition of a public meeting.
Rather than cancel the tour, an Energy Solutions spokesman and the committee’s chairman said Monday they will hold the tour with the public invited.
The House Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee will leave Columbia on a bus after the House adjourns Wednesday. Lawmakers are expected to arrive at the Barnwell site between 1 and 1:30 p.m.
Tim Dangerfield, a spokesman for Energy Solutions, said the company will rent a 56-seat bus for legislators, some utility industry lobbyists and the news media. Others wanting to go on the landfill tour can ride on the bus to Barnwell with lawmakers as seats are available. The bus is scheduled to leave between 11:30 a.m. and noon.
Otherwise, people can meet the bus at the site about 1 p.m. Wednesday, he said.
Gov. Mark Sanford is naming nine members to his Climate, Energy and Commerce Advisory Committee, which will review possible climate change effects in South Carolina and formulate strategies to address those changes going forward.
Sanford named the following people to the group, which will be expanded to include representatives from various stake-holding groups:
A majority of Republican voters in South Carolina believe global warming is occurring, but is a problem people can resolve, according to a new survey.
Ayres, McHenry and Associates surveyed 500 Republicans likely to vote in the 2008 presidential primary. It found most respondents support a cap on carbon emissions and incentives for companies to stay below the carbon pollution limit.
Carbon dioxide pollution from cars and factories is a major contributor to global warming, according to researchers.
Ayres, McHenry and Associates conducted the survey from Jan. 24-28 for Environmental Defense, a national conservation group that has spent the past year raising awareness of global warming in South Carolina and selected other states. The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percent.
The Ayres company is helping Environmental Defense map strategy on climate change. Company principal Whit Ayres was once an advisor to Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell who held office from 1987-95.
"This says that a flat denial of global warming no longer has any credibility,'' Ayres said. "The debate now is over what we do about it.''
Rising sea levels, disruption of wildlife populations and more intense storms are tied to global warming in South Carolina. Climate change also has been linked to soaring insurance costs on the state's coast. An international panel of scientists is expected to release a report today reinforcing the significance of the problem.
Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic party chief in South Carolina, said the Republican survey shows that former Democratic Vice-President Al Gore's message has gotten out. Gore produced a book and a movie last year chronicling the problem of global warming.
"The nation owes a debt of gratitude to Al Gore for talking about it to begin with,'' Harpootlian said. "Even Republicans are beginning to be concerned.''
"This all feeds into people's fear for their lives and property -- and if there's one thing the Republican cares more about than anything in the world, it's his property.''
According to the survey of 500 South Carolina residents likely to vote in the 2008 Republican presidential primary:
Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, recently said he would appoint a climate change panel in South Carolina to study the effects of global warming and provide a plan to attack the problem at the state level.
Conservation groups are urging state senators to close South Carolina’s only low-level nuclear waste landfill to the nation in 2008, as scheduled.
The landfill, one of three atomic disposal sites of its kind in the country, is expected to be a topic of debate at the statehouse this year as the 2008 deadline approaches.
Nestled in the spongy soil of Barnwell County, the landfill has buried more than 27 million cubic feet of radioactive waste since opening more than 35 years ago.
"We have done far more than our fair share of managing ....the nation's so-called low-level nuclear waste," Bob Guild of the Sierra Club told about 20 senators today. "We ask you to stand firm and enforce the terms" of an agreement to close the landfill.
The Legislature agreed in 2000 to close the waste site to all states except South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey. The agreement takes effect July 1, 2008.
But the landfill has been the target of closure plans in the past, and each time nuclear waste lobbyists have persuaded the Legislature to keep the landfill open to the nation as a source of state revenue.
State Rep. Billy Witherspoon, R-Horry, says he may introduce a bill to keep the landfill open to all. The landfill’s operator, Energy Solutions, is interested in keeping the site open, said company spokesman Tim Dangerfield.
"The state has been fortunate with the funds it has gotten out of this," said Witherspoon, who leads the House Environmental Affairs Committee.
Figures were not immediately available, but the landfill in recent fiscal years has brought in more than $20 million.
Low-level waste ranges from lightly contaminated clothing to more toxic atomic refuse, such as nuclear reactor parts. Waste tritium has leaked at the site.
Guild used slides and photographs today to show rain-soaked areas at the site, which he says makes it ripe for atomic waste leaks. Site operators have long said it is safe from leakage.
The presentation was part of an effort by the state's major environmental groups to push their legislative agenda. The Conservation Voters of South Carolina organized the meeting.
Senators were also asked to:
Address global warming, which experts say is causing sea level to rise.
Set aside $20 million to protect natural areas.
Stop a bill requiring the government to pay landowners when regulations devalue their property.
Approve a bill to protect isolated freshwater wetlands from unregulated development.
Approve legislation to reform the Department of Transportation.
-- Sammy Fretwell
Gov. Mark Sanford's pick to lead the state Department of Health and Environmental Control Board is Edwin Cooper of Sullivans Island.
In 2004, Cooper was appointed to the board by Sanford to represent the 1st Congressional District and has served as vice chairman since that time.
If confirmed by the state Senate, Cooper will replace Elizabeth Hagood, who resigned last year.
Cooper received his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of South Carolina. He has practiced real estate and construction law and has consulted with landowners and developers on conservation planning. For three years, he has served as a broker with Holcombe, Fair and Lane, specializing in rural and recreational properties. He previously served as director of land protection for Ducks Unlimited's South Atlantic Region.
S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell is proposing $15 million in state grants and tax credits to companies that partner with South Carolina-based research institutions and conduct hydrogen fuels research in the state.
The Charleston Republican said today the incentives are needed to help make South Carolina a leader in alternative fuels technology, which he said could become a major creator of jobs in the coming decades.
The South Carolina Hydrogen Infrastructure Development Fund would be available to private companies that work with the University of South Carolina, Clemson University, South Carolina State University and the Savannah River National Laboratory, Harrell said, and the institutions would have a voice in who receives the financial incentives.
The fund, spread over three years, is front-loaded to encourage companies to commit to research partnerships sooner rather than later. It would be funded at $7 million in 2007-08; $5 million for 2008-09; and $3 million in 2009-210. Funds unspent by June 30, 2012, would relapse to the state under Harrell’s proposal.
The legislation also will require state agencies to consider purchasing equipment and machinery operated by hydrogen fuel cells. The proposal provides for a sales tax exemption for equipment or machinery operated by or used to distribute hydrogen fuel cells.
