1998 General Assembly Legislation Related to Water

The Virginia General Assembly held its regular session from January 14 to March 17, then reconvened April 22-23 to respond to the governor’s vetoes. A special session on April 23-24 passed the budget along with car-tax and school-construction-grant legislation. During the regular session, 2152 bills were considered (939 passing, 651 failing, and 562 carried over until 1999), along with 730 joint resolutions (580 passing, 115 failing, and 36 carried over). Among all this legislative action were 97 water-related bills and joint resolutions.1 (Hereafter, we will use “bills” to include both bills and joint resolutions.) To identify bills related to water, we used the Legislative Information System’s subject index, looking first under two categories: “Waters of the State, Ports and Harbors” and “Water and Sewer Systems.” Of the 97 bills listed below, 73 were in one of these two categories. We then found 24 other pertinent bills under these categories: Conservation; Fisheries and Habitat of Tidal Waters; and Game, Inland Fisheries and Boating.