Our climate is changing. This is a known fact. The changes that have and will continue to occur will not only affect humans, but all species on Earth. As the creators of the change, we have a duty to protect these species.
Our Plan*
Our Plan*
- Support the addition of an Environmental Rights Amendment to the West Virginia Constitution.
- Require a mandatory review of impervious surfaces used in design for state construction projects and permits, and evaluate the potential alternative use of pervious materials (e.g. rain gardens, pervious pavers).
- Develop a sound spill prevention program, using the roadmap outlined by West Virginia Chemical Release Prevention Program (WVCRPP) Roadmap Planning Team in 2015 as a starting point.
- Ensure our laws require spillers to fully pay for any damages they do, including not only to community members, but also to local, small businesses. In the Freedom Industries spill, these WV businesses suffered losses of at least $61 million, which doesn't include the additional losses and impacts experienced by residents who couldn't work, or who suffered health impacts.
- Additionally, strengthen protections for citizens and small business owners by shifting the burden of proof to those whose actions threaten our land and water, rather than placing it on our communities struggling to protect ourselves against an army of corporate lawyers whose job it is to enable the profiteering.
- Repeal forced leasing, and oppose all further efforts at forced pooling. See also our full plan to End Election Buying, which will help prevent predatory out-of-state companies from directly purchasing more lawmakers year after year until they are able to legalize their theft from West Virginia mineral owners.
- Create a plan to protect our recreational and drinking water sources by purchasing conservation easements.
- Plug existing orphaned wells and prevent new wells from becoming orphaned by requiring sufficient bonding.
- Require companies to ensure access roads to extraction sites are maintained sufficiently that emergency vehicles can safely reach the sites when needed.
- Require gas companies to pay royalties to mineral owners for natural gas liquids produced and saved.
- Protect the interests of West Virginia workers, families, small businesses, and landowners against out-of-state companies.
- Prevent future Rockwool-style giveaways at the expense of taxpayers by creating a much higher bar for PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreements. We will also strengthen notification laws so citizens are more included in the process of economic development.
- Citizens must be individually notified by the company via certified mail or some other means that can be independently tracked. When they are in the potential blast zone or evacuation zone of pipelines, or if their water source will be put at risk, right now there is no proper notification required when citizens have industrial threats imposed on them.
- Prevent industrial waste producers from locating near elementary schools or within zones and peripheral zones of concern for drinking water intakes.
- Actively support the Justice for Minden campaign and any other local efforts to force federal action on superfund sites. Our Corporate Crime and Political Corruption State Police division will dramatically improve the regulatory oversight and investigative muscle of state government, and will also be directed to support citizen-led efforts to investigate corporate crime against communities like Minden and Paden City.
- Protect gas workers from radiation exposure by establishing the nation’s strongest TENORM regulations. Right now companies are profiting by putting our workers--our neighbors, our friends, our family members--at risk without proper training and equipment.
- Enact a bill ensuring a buffer zone to protect our homes from drilling sites and access roads, and provide for viewshed protections. We must strengthen regulations guiding setback distances and the impacts of extraction and industrial sites on homes, schools, parks, hunting/recreational properties, and public buildings.
- Strengthen the code and enforcement of laws protecting surface owners. Farmers and all surface owners should have their rights respected if they do not want a well pad on their properties or disrupting their lives.
- Surface owners must be compensated for any damage done to their properties by extractors, and neighbors must also have the right to protection from noise, lights, fumes, etc.
- Improve efforts to protect the land and ecosystems connected to our water. Acquire direct funding for reforestation, revegetation and habitat enhancement (preservation of native species of flora); and create a healthy soils initiative through improving government agencies, incentives for building soils and healthy ecosystems and research/education.
*Taken from West Virginia Can't Wait, including my own contributions as part of the WVCW network.