Legislative Report: State council talks biomass, wildfire suppression

The Environmental Quality Council, which I have been given the honor of chairing this interim, met Jan. 7-8 in Helena with a very full agenda.

The EQC has been charged with four study resolutions as well as its statutory oversight responsibility of the Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

Two of our study topics – biomass and wildfire suppression – have a symbiotic relationship. The biomass study topic was generated from last interim’s Fire Suppression Committee while discussing ways to encourage removal of non-merchantable fuels that are perpetuating catastrophic wildfires in Montana.

The committee also realized that the legislature needed to follow up on its recommendations to reduce wildfire costs, which was the genesis for the wildfire suppression study of this interim.

Active forest management is the best short term and long-term tool to mitigate wildfire costs. With millions of tons of dead and dying timber in Montana, we need to find a way to deal with forest fuels that doesn’t include watching it go up in 30,000-foot plumes of smoke.

The question isn’t whether or not we have the material to feed the biomass boilers to generate heat and power; the question is how we access it. The same access hurdles on public lands that have been the driving force behind the closure of 27 mills in the last 20 yrs will be revisited as we continue to look for ways to address our forest health crisis here in Montana.

The EQC is also studying ways to help increase and create better recycling rates in Montana with an emphasis on rural areas. Costs of equipment and transportation are the biggest impediments in areas that don’t have a large population to cover the venture capital necessary to start and maintain new programs.

The council is looking at other rural success stories to see if there are any policy changes at the state level that can or need to be made to help recycling pencil out. Short of subsidizing, which the state cannot afford to do, it is looking like education and awareness on how citizens can best utilize the limited programs that are operating in the state will be our best solution for the short term.

Another topic the council has been studying how to improve monitoring public health statistics to better track and flag trends using hospital discharge data. The difficulty lies in coordinating the information in a manner that doesn’t violate HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) or incurs costs to hospitals that will in turn be passed on to patients.

The EQC heard from several ranchers in Beaverhead County that are more than a little upset with the incremental management of wolves with regards to stock depredation. Citizens testifying expressed great frustration with how and when managing agencies are issuing action orders in response to the loss of their livestock and are looking for better ways to react with results in a timely manner. I will give a more detailed report of this discussion in a subsequent article as it deserves a lengthier description. 

Improving access to private lands for sportsmen is yet another study topic in front of the EQC. Trying to find new ways to give landowners incentive to open up their properties for all outdoor activities (not just hunting and angling) is what the discussion is centering around. Again, revenue will be the big driver for this discussion as it is the only real incentive that entices participation.

The council was also given a presentation by Director Richard Opper (Department of Environmental Quality) on a rule that they were developing in anticipation of the EPA’s new rule regarding the regulation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas (GHG). Montana’s current regulatory framework would require us to have a threshold of 250 tons per year of GHGs and a change is needed to raise Montana’s permitting threshold ceiling up to the supposed federal threshold of 25,000 tons per year to exempt as many folks as we can should the federal rules become a reality.

This would be a must if Montana is going to have to regulate CO2, but the problem is that all of this is completely speculative. We don’t know when the EPA’s rules will hit the ground, what the true thresholds will be, or what the timeframe for compliance will be.

There are two legal challenges pending as well; one on the EPA’s “endangerment” finding that CO2 is in fact a GHG worthy of being regulated, and another that will challenge why the EPA set the threshold at 25,000 tons per year.

If the EPA does in fact believe that CO2 is an “endangerment” to U.S. citizens, why are they regulating it at 25,000 tons per year? The highest threshold for other GHGs is set at 250 tons per year. The lawsuit is going to raise some very important questions of the EPA and I don’t believe that they are prepared to answer them adequately enough without being declared arbitrary and capricious.

Besides the fact that regulating CO2 in America will do nothing to impact our global climate, it will have a devastating effect on our nation’s economy. While the EPA may answer that it set its threshold high enough to exempt most Americans from the permitting process and onerous costs of compliance, they cannot back it up.

The EPA hasn’t done a socio-economic impact of their rule. The EPA is attempting to make a common sense point in a courtroom but they have nothing to justify where they are at, or where they are going.

There are two Resolutions of Dissent in Congress right now that would require such an impact statement to be done before moving forward. We need to wait and see what happens before becoming the first state in the union to climb on board this regulatory train wreck.

With a majority of the EQC members agreeing that we need to look before leaping, a motion passed to object to this rule making process and as a result, we have delayed implementing it for six months. Let’s hope that Washington will get its act together on this important issue before further damage is done to our economy, perhaps irreparably.

(Rep. Chas Vincent invites constituents to call with questions at 293-1575. He can also be reached through e-mail at cvvincent@hotmail.com )