The bill that is the starting point of my environmental policy paper is is HR 135 - The Establishment of the 21st Century Water Commission.
Rep. Linder from Georgia introduced this bill again, for the fifth time since 2003. He hopes to establish a nine person commission with a three year life and a budget of nine million. The nine would compose commission and staff and be salaried. The hope is for the commission to study and come up with recommendations for a comprehensive water strategy for the U.S.
The commission is a good idea and would be focusing on strategy rather than policy. Linder would like the commission to focus on conflicts and duplication of effort in federal agencies and water quality issues. On the flipside, the bill indicates that the director will be appointed by the Speaker of the House. Shouldn't the commission of nine determine who is the director? The horizon of the commission is fifty years, which is really a drop in the bucket(no pun intended. It would be better to have a long range strategy of 100 years in my mind.
This sounds really interesting Kristina. I agree with you about how there should be a long range strategy. Do you think that there could be some benefit to a 50 year strategy though, such as allowing for technological improvements etc?
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