From the Oregon Council Chairman, Tom Wolf:
The TU Oregon Council has had a legislative presence in Salem for the last 12 years , represented by a contract lobbyist (for 10 years Doug Meyers and currently Dave Moskowitz) and with myself, Tom Wolf, as the voice of TU testifying on different bills and working with legislators.
For most of that time, we have been on defense. During the 2007 session, the legislative bodies, for the first time since 1992, had Democratic majorities who were friendly to pro environmental legislation.
The 2007 session was good for conservation groups with 17 pro-environment bills passed, the most in almost 20 years. Unfortunately, because of the perceived needs to pass land use, energy, e-watse and other type of bills, habitat, water and salmon legislation did not get passed.
The good news is that key legislators and Governor Kulongoski’s office have promised to make the 2009 session one where water quantity, pro-fish and habitat bills will be passed. Therefore, based on my own thoughts and from talking to Oregon TU members, I have come up with 2009 legislative priorities for the Oregon Council TU.
1. Non-native aquatic invasives bill: This will include legislation that will deal with illegal stocking of non-native fish, ballast dumped from ocean freighters. Within the budget process we will be seeking money to implement boat check stations at borders to check for aquatic invasives (such as zebra mussels), and funds to educate people about the dangers of non-native invasives.
2. Water Storage management bill: Governor Kulongoski is planning legislation that would divert peak winter flows and store them in either offsite storage, tributary reservoirs and in the aquifer. Waterwatch and TU will be working on that bill or one of our own to make sure that impacts will not have a negative impacts on wild native salmonids.
3. Woody debris bill: There is currently no law in Oregon that prevents people from removing woody debris from streams. We will be working on a bill to prevent this, except for emergency reasons.
4. ODFW budget: Currently, as many of you know, ODFW is proposing an 18-25% license fee increase for 2009 session to meet their current budget needs. The Oregon Council plans to work to make sure that some of the money goes to protecting and restoring wild native fish and habitat. We are also looking to increase General fund money and other means of funding agency.
5. River Navigability and access bill: Our goal is to produce a bill that will better define Oregon’s Public Trust doctrine and allow anglers access to navigable rivers.
6. Other Natural Resource agency budgets- Oregon DEQ, Oregon Department of Forestry, and the Oregon Department of Water Resources.
7. Global Warming/Climate bill: We will be supporting climate change legislation to mitigate global warming impacts on coldwater fisheries. See NWF’s Target Global Warming campaign for more info.
Other areas we may be involved with include: Marine Reserves, pesticides control bill, the LNG bill, land and use bills.
The Water priority and non-native invasives concepts have been included as part of the Oregon Conservation Network legislative priorities for 2009 session. This means we will be getting support from other conservation groups and the OCN legislative representative. That’s a very good plus for us.
I will be explaining this in further detail at the next state council meeting. If you have any questions or have some ideas of your own, contact me. Tom.
