by , @jbruggers –

Without any support from the Energy and Environment Cabinet or the Kentucky General Assembly, some question whether environmental advisory panel should continue to exist

The decades-old Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission, which once functioned as a semi-independent watchdog over state environmental programs with diverse political voices, has fallen into limbo after a year under the Bevin administration.

With no executive director and only four of seven board positions filled – two of those by people whose terms expired at the end of last year – even the commission’s chairman now questions whether it’s time for the General Assembly to get rid the ombudsman-like advisory body it created in 1972.

“If there isn’t a commitment to it, is there really a need for it?” asked Steve Coleman, the commission’s chair. “Has the EQC been missed this past year? There doesn’t seem to be an outcry.”

Former commissioner Gordon Garner, an engineer and former Metropolitan Sewer District executive director, agreed.

“If governors and legislators aren’t going to listen to EQC, appoint people to EQC who care about the state’s environment, and fund it to hold public meetings and provide information, then it might as well be dissolved and let the current group of leaders own the results,” said Garner, who is also president of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a water advocacy group. He said he worries about future environmental degradation and disasters.

In an interview, Coleman said he wasn’t even sure he was still on the commission because his term expired Dec. 31. Cabinet spokesman John Mura wrote in an email that Coleman “will stay on for now.”

 

Mura declined a request for an interview about the future of the commission.

“As with every agency program, the purpose and value of EQC must be evaluated to determine its priority relative to other core functions that the cabinet is required to administer and in relation to the funding provided by the legislature,” he wrote in an email.

But Garner and other former commissions and executive directors said the commission has a successful history of participating in the development of Kentucky environmental policy, tracking the state’s environmental performance, and helping to resolve conflicts between citizens, industry and state officials.

It’s served as a forum on issues ranging from mining to factory-scale farming to children’s environmental health.

The legislature tasked the commission with advising the governor on environmental matters. Its commissioners have come from the ranks of business, environmental groups, academia and former state employees.

Laura Knoth was appointed in 2010 by former Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, when she ran public affairs for the Kentucky Farm Bureau, which lobbies on environmental issues and sometimes clashes with environmentalists. Knoth, who now runs the Kentucky Corn Growers Association, declined to say whether the commission had outlived its usefulness.

“I appreciated what I learned from being a part of it,” she said. “I am supportive of the cabinet and the direction they are trying to go.”

But lawmakers have cut its funds back for years, eventually prompting the cabinet to bring the commission under the budget of the office of the energy secretary. Secretary Charles Snavely fired its last executive director, Arnita Gadson, one year ago and has not filled that position – instead assigning remaining commission administrative tasks to another staffer with other duties.

Decisions made by the cabinet in recent years to keep funding the commission after legislative budget cuts resulted in less money to priority areas, Mura wrote.

Snavely doubts

A few days after letting Gadson go, Snavely attended the first of three commission meetings and questioned its value.

“The commission was created in 1972, before cable TV, before cell phones,” and the development of other new communication methods, Snavely said at the time. In deciding whether to keep funding the commission, he said he was looking into whether the cabinet’s own education, outreach and public relations staff could carry out the function of the commission.

That kind of skepticism goes back years, said Gadson.

During the Beshear administration, Gadson said she was “constantly questioned as to why I was working with the communities and (asked) who told me to take on public initiatives. The answer (is) you have to hear and get involved with both sides to make fundamental and meaningful recommendations.”

 

Garner said the commission was “neutered” years ago amid a political climate in Kentucky that’s tipped against the environment. Bevin, a Republican, in November told an eastern Kentucky radio audience he hoped President Donald Trump would “gut” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and let states handle environmental protection. Arguing that environmental regulations have grown burdensome and were damaging the state’s economy, Kentucky under Beshear and Bevin have joined legal challenges against some EPA rules that targeted coal burning.

“Nobody with influence is speaking up and regular people who care aren’t listened to,” Garner said. “The only venue for environmental stewardship beyond individual actions is the courtroom or aggressive demonstrations of opposition.”

Mura defended the cabinet’s public outreach under Snavely. “It is wholly inaccurate to say that the agency is not interested in public discussion,” he wrote, citing its efforts to engage the public in issues related to alleged illegal dumping of radioactive waste at an Estill County radioactive waste, and ongoing discussions with wastewater and drinking water utilities.

However, the cabinet’s initial position on a new drinking water work group was that its meetings did not have to be public because “this work group is advisory in nature and thus is not subject to the open meetings law.” That changed after a successful open meetings law challenge by the Courier-Journal, and both wastewater and drinking water groups were opened to the public.

Former commission executive director Leslie Cole led the Environmental Quality Commission for 20 years, retiring in 2005.

“During my tenure as director of EQC we came up with so many innovative initiatives that would have not been possible without that dialogue,” Cole said. “One of these initiatives dealt with mine reclamation requirements that were actually making it more difficult to establish vegetation.  EQC, University of Kentucky, and coal and environmental groups came together under EQC to address these concerns.”

Cole said the commission can help resolve environmental conflicts “through cooperation rather than litigation.”

Commissioner Ron Brunty, a counselor at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Whitesburg, said “the bulk of our time right now is trying to prove our relevance,” with no director and “technically no budget.

“We feel like we are still relevant” but “nobody wants a watchdog in your own agency, your own department. That’s what they perceive us as.”

His term also expired in December, Coleman said.

Pipeline safety

Mura said it will be up to lawmakers to decide the future of the commission, including funding questions.

But House Democratic minority Leader Rep. Rocky Adkins disagreed while saying the commission has served as an important source of information on environmental issues.

“The future of the agency, though, relies heavily on the current administration of the Energy and Environment Cabinet, their funding priorities, and the role they see the commission playing going forward,” he said in a written statement.

John Cox, spokesman for the Republican majority leadership in the Kentucky Senate, declined to comment while the Bevin administration is reviewing a number of boards and commissions.

Under Cole, with a larger staff, the commission would publish periodic “state of the environment” reports, tracking subjects like air and water quality, and spills. In 2001, the commission questioned the cabinet’s crackdown on open dumps, concluding it had taken a toll on other enforcement areas.

More recently, it raised concerns and offered suggestions on how the state could better navigate industry efforts to repurpose old natural gas pipelines to carry a different product. And under Gadson, it helped get EPA to revisit pollution concerns at Louisville’s Lees Lane landfill, once on list of the nation’s list of most toxic places.

Gadson also launched the use of video teleconference at the commission’s quarterly meetings to allow people from throughout the state to participate.

“If the EQC were allowed to function according to its mission and bylaws, the impact would be tremendous,” Gadson said.

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 and at [email protected].