DEP, Manchin take heat for shrinking stream

Chris Byrd took half a day off work Monday to drive to Charleston and tell state officials what he thinks of their ever-shrinking list of protected streams.

“It’s an absolute insult to the general public,” said Byrd, a Clarksburg jeweler and avid trout fisherman.

Byrd urged state Department of Environmental Protection officials to let science — not politics or orders from Gov. Joe Manchin — decide what streams receive special anti-degradation protection.

“I would ask this agency not to be influenced by our ‘Open for Business’ governor,” Byrd told DEP officials during a public hearing Monday evening.

Byrd was among several dozen anglers who dominated testimony at a DEP hearing on the agency’s latest “Tier 2.5” list. The list is proposed as part of West Virginia’s federally required stream anti-degradation policy.

Under orders from Manchin, DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer last month cut the number of streams on the agency’s preferred list from more than 300 to 157. Streams on the list are clean, and the anti-degradation policy aims to keep them that way.

Earlier this year, the Legislature refused to either approve or reject DEP’s list after it was vigorously opposed by the timber industry, farmers and other business interests.

Now, the list of 157 streams is out for public comment through the end of the day today. After DEP makes any changes, it will go back to the Legislature for consideration during the 2008 session.

About 50 people attended Tuesday’s hearing at DEP headquarters in Kanawha City, and the sentiment among speakers was heavily against Manchin’s actions. Representatives of both of the state’s Trout Unlimited chapters, along with various environmental groups and the Council of Churches, all lined up against the governor’s move to reduce the number of protected streams.

“I haven’t seen any science to back up this massive de-listing,” said Evan Hansen, a water quality consultant who works with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “This is based on what the governor has told DEP to do.”
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