2-28 House Committee amended to appropriations

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2-28 House Committee amended to appropriations Page 16 of 22 other on this, you'll remember in the original bill, that the General Assembly and the Governor ultimately had to ratify these Compacts before they could be final and binding. What we've done is we've asked the Interbasin Compact Committee, you make that decision for yourself with the one caveat that every basin roundtable whose waters are affected by the Compact, the local basin roundtable, have to sign off. So that's the one requirement in the ratification process because certainly I don't think anybody in this committee would want a situation where one basin could impose a - two basins could impose it's will on a third basin against its will. Subparagraph B is an attempt to - the directive for the Interbasin Compact Committee to really, thoroughly integrate this new process with existing processes. Again so we don't create layers of bureaucracy. We want to integrate this into the existing planning and permitting process with, again the caveat that we're not waiving on pairing or modifying 1041 or other local government authorities. So those are kind of the broad mandates. But again, the key to this provision was rather than us spelling out what the negotiating framework would be, we've asked the Interbasin Compact Committee to develop its own charter, its own plan. And the way it's stmctured, I know the Chair has an amendment, this charter will have to be referred to us next year, January 31, the Chair wants to give the Committee a little more time to work that out. Once we approve that charter then the negotiations would begin. So if you back up, if you take a step back and view the bill in it's totality and really in the first year, if this bill as it's presented now becomes law, the basin roundtables are gonna be doing their due diligence. They're gonna be finishing SWSI, they're gonna be doing their needs assessment, really the legwork that they have to get in place before negotiations can begin. And that's gonna take a year, and maybe longer, for many of these basins to get their own house in order. Meanwhile, the Interbasin Compact Committee is gonna be developing the framework for negotiations once the General Assembly approves that charter, then the negotiations will proceed early next year. Madame Chair: Members of the Committee, Representative Penry and I talked a lot about this bill over the last few weeks, and he's received so much input from folks. And you know, the overarching comments www.escriptionist.com Page 16 of 22