Water in the 2005 Virginia General Assembly

The 2005 Virginia General Assembly convened January 12 and adjourned February 27, with a reconvened (“veto”) session on April 6. The legislature considered 3363 measures (2938 introduced this year and 425 carried over from last year); 1610 measures passed both houses, while 1753 failed. (No legislation carried over from this year, because it was the second year of a two-year Assembly, with elections scheduled for November 2005). Among the most important business was consideration of amendments to the current biennial state budget. This article lists 126 measures related to water resources or to land activities with a potential impact on water. The list came from the Legislative Information Service (LIS) Web site, at leg1.state.va.us. The measures were located by searching the following LIS subject categories: Conservation; Drainage, Soil Conservation, Sanitation, and Public Facilities Districts; Fisheries and Habitat of Tidal Waters; Game, Inland Fisheries and Boating; Health; Mines and Mining; Waste Disposal; Water and Sewer Systems; and Waters of the State, Ports and Harbors. This list of water-related bills is organized by the LIS categories (alphabetically). Where LIS listed bills under more than one category, this article places the bill in category that seemed most appropriate (no bills are listed under Health or Mines and Mining). Within each category, bills are listed in order of their bill number, using the following abbreviations: HB = bill started in House of Delegates; HJ = joint resolution started in the House; SB = bill started in the Senate; and SJ = joint resolution started in the Senate. The bill summaries were taken directly from LIS, with some editing for space, clarity, or emphasis. Water Central has numbered the bills consecutively to help refer readers from one bill to another; these numbers, however, have no legislative significance. A table on page 2 lists bills that received significant press attention, according to Water Central’s reading of several state newspapers.