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For State Rep. Joe McCord, House Bill 4185 is about better definitions concerning waters under the authority of the state Water Quality Control Act. For opponents, however, the bill is about stripping government protection from streams.

McCord, R-Maryville, is sponsoring a bill that defines "limited resource waters" as "ephemeral bodies of water that flow primarily in response to rainfall, for which groundwater is not a significant source and that do not support a significant indigenous population of native fish or aquatic life."

This bill would exclude "limited resource waters" from the definition of "waters" under the Water Quality Control Act, under which the State Water Quality Control Board classifies and adopts quality standards for all waters of the state. The bill also adds the value of the waters to any owner of riparian rights, as a factor to be considered in preparing the classification of waters.

The Tennessee Clean Water Network claims that the bill would remove protections from 30,000 miles of streams throughout the state. "I am shocked at Rep. McCord's attempt to remove protection from thousands of miles of Tennessee's streams," said Renée Hoyos, TN Clean Water Network executive director. "It is especially disturbing because his district felt the effects of drought this summer."

According to the General Assembly's Fiscal Review Committee, however, removing these waters from regulation by the WQCA places the state in conflict with the federal Clean Water Act and will place approximately $2.1 million in federal funds in jeopardy.

"According to information provided to us by the Department of Environment and Conservation those are dollars provided to the department by the federal government to operate the Water Pollution Control program," Committee Executive Director James W. White said.

McCord disputes TDEC's analysis.

"That is absolutely not the case because Oklahoma has had this in place and has been practicing under this for several years and has not had a problem," he said. "We're not really trying to make the definitions lax. We're just trying to get a definition. The uncertainty of what is or is not a wet weather conveyance has caused this problem to be inconsistently enforced. We're just looking for consistency. We're not trying to get away from it."

Current state law does define "wet weather conveyances" as "man-made or natural watercourses, including natural watercourses that have been modified by channelization, that flow only in direct response to precipitation runoff in their immediate locality and whose channels are above the groundwater table and which do not support fish or aquatic life and are not suitable for drinking water supplies. [T.C.A. § 4-5-202, T.C.A. § 69-3-105.]"

"I'm staking out the position that the existing program is appropriate for the protection of Tennessee's water," said Paul Davis, division director for Water Pollution Control. "The existing system for protecting surface waters separates wet weather conveyances, you might say ditches, from streams. All of the protections that Tennessee applies to waters, apply to streams."

State law does require that water quality standards are protected downstream.

"Waters identified as wet weather conveyances according to the definition found in 1200-4-3-.04 (4), shall be protective of humans and wildlife that may come in contact with them and shall not adversely affect the quality of downstream waters," according to TDEC regulations. "Applicable water quality standards will be maintained downstream of wet weather conveyances."

The bill's standard of a "significant indigenous population of native fish or aquatic life" would seem to differ in degree from the existing state definition for wet weather conveyances, which "do not support fish or aquatic life."

"I've learned from the biologists and come to accept that if you're going to protect aquatic life and systems, they have to be protected in whole," Davis said. "I don't know how to tell you that some of what's alive is significant and the rest of it isn't. What we've learned over time is to think of systems as a whole. That's what the biologists and ecologists will tell you."

The House Environment and Conservation Committee will discuss the bill on March 12.