When it comes to campaigning, Republicans at all levels seem congenitally predisposed to run against the government they want to lead. Among their anti-government themes, they especially condemn environmental laws that protect our air and water from toxic degradation and reckless development, and they rant against almost any taxes on businesses, their major donors. So it was predictable that Rep. Zach Wamp and Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey would tune up their nascent campaigns for governor in a forum before a Chamber of Commerce somewhere with full-volume criticism of Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation.
They found such a venue Thursday in a GOP candidates' forum hosted by the Chamber of Commerce in Brentwood, a well-to-do Nashville suburb where business executives were sure to like their message. They couldn't unload on TDEC fast enough.
"They're out of control," exclaimed Mr. Ramsey. "At one time, they would regulate what was supposed to be regulated, but they've crossed their bounds on that," he exaggerated.
Mr. Wamp pounced on TDEC as well. "They need somebody at the very top that understands business, local government and what it means to move things forward," he blustered.
Shelby County Attorney General Bill Gibbons, another gubernatorial candidate, also pandered to the business crowd. He vaguely referenced a West Tennessee businessman who, he said, complained that state regulators, particularly TDEC, delayed his attempt to open a business for more than year.
We cite their statements because such criticism, though common by Republicans, has generally been wildly off the mark. It's rendered mostly to pander to audiences whose membership may contain business people who resent the obligation or expense of meeting reasonable and necessary environmental safeguards. But such criticism is generally baseless.
TDEC has been much too reticent for years to do anything more than minimal regulation. It typically takes too much time to implement federal standards to protect water resources and clean air standards, and it rarely imposes effective deadlines, much less fines for non-compliance.
Consequently, Tennessee has thousands of miles of endangered wetlands and streams that are not safe for swimming or for consumption of fish.
A recent report by the National Wildlife Foundation, Tennessee Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited said 60 percent of Tennessee's stream miles and half of Tennessee's 787,000 acres of remaining wetlands are at risk of losing Clean Water Act protection if state law is not clarified to meet pending legal challenges under recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and if trends of pollution and development are not stopped.
Recent spills in Tennessee waters, from TVA's toxic ash waste disaster to Chattanooga's 137-million-gallon spill of raw sewage last month, underscore the vulnerability of water resources. But most pollution comes from industries, construction sites, roads and parking lots. What we allow to run into our streams and rivers affects our drinking water supplies with chemicals and toxins.
Similarly, the vehicle, industrial and commercial emissions we put into the air are already known to cause and worsen asthma, respiratory and heart disease. Air pollution also harms forests, farms and water resources. Regulatory rules to protect our air and water are widely acknowledged to be too weak, and unevenly enforced.
Tennessee may not be at the bottom of the enforcement list, but it's a far distance from the top. Chattanooga, for example, nearly failed air pollution control caps and barely escaped being barred by the EPA from allowing new industrial emissions six years ago. The city was measured at 85-parts-per-million -- one point off the minimum standard -- for particulate emissions, which clog the lungs' ability to transport oxygen.
Had city and county governments not established an auto emissions monitoring program, Chattanooga would have been classified as a "non-attainment" zone for failure to attain minimum air quality standards, and we would not have been allowed to let new industry -- including Volkswagen -- locate a new plant here.
Chattanooga and other metro Tennessee cities, and their surround counties, still struggle to meet ozone-and-particulate air standards, and to adequately protect our water supplies. Signal Mountain, for example, is under a moratorium on home-building for failure to install sewers and keep e-coli bacteria out its three main creeks, which flow straight down the mountain and directly into the Tennessee River.
Political candidates may spout off against environmental regulation to grab knee-jerk applause from unthinking audiences, but they do us all a disservice. And they do not demonstrate good credentials to lead state government.