WV Green Legislative Update from the WV E-Council

SPRING FUNDRAISER LETTER and GREEN LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

Dear friends, I am writing to ask for your help.

For the past four years, I was one of hundreds of West Virginia citizens who fought to protect our homes and land from a proposed transmission line across the state. The PATH project wasn’t intended to benefit anyone in the Mountain State – it was the first step in a plan to deliver “coal-by-wire” to New Jersey and other Northeastern states. It would have cost billions of dollars, and every West Virginian would have seen their electricity bill increase to help pay for it.

In that fight I learned first-hand that the West Virginia Environmental Council is the most valuable tool we have to reach the state legislature. We discovered we do have allies in Charleston. We learned the ins-and-outs of committee hearings, and how to rally support from citizens all across the state. And the E-Council was with us every step of the way.

Well, the 2013 session of the West Virginia legislature is upon us, and the E-Council again needs our support.  Here are just a few of the issues that the E-Council is working on this session:

>> Opposing attempts by First Energy and AEP to shove the cost of Ohio generation plants onto West Virginia ratepayers;
>> Creating rules that better regulate Marcellus Shale drilling for natural gas in the state;
>> Asking the state to require utilities to implement least-cost planning to protect ratepayers, and to require those utilities to meet Energy Efficiency Resource Standards;
>> Supporting better management of Coopers Rock State Forest;
>> And update the Energy Code provisions within the State Building Code.

And we know that every year some bad piece of legislation will be introduced that citizens all across the state will have to scramble to address!

We need funds to pay for our lobbying team; we need money to pay for community outreach, to educate our fellow West Virginians about how we can all work together to get legislators to listen to us, not to out-of-state corporate interests.

I learned from the PATH fight that we can stand up to corporate interests, we can make our legislators listen to us, and we do make a difference.

Please contribute to the West Virginia Environmental Council, so we can continue to help make a difference.

Signed: Patience Wait
Executive Committee member, StopPATH WV
Vice President, WV Environmental Council

P.S. ## Read the Green Legislative Update here.

P.S. ## The E-Council Interactive Update for March 8th.

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Tagged as: drilling, fracking, marcellus shale, water pollution, WV Legislature, WVEC