AIR BOARD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 8, 1992                   TAG: 9202100205
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
AIR BOARD
A BILL allowing representatives of regulated industries to serve on the state's Air Pollution Control Board is being pushed by Sen. William Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, on behalf of Southwest Virginia's coal industry.
State law now prohibits anyone who is paid a significant amount by a regulated industry from sitting on the five-member board. Big Coal, much affected by regulatory decisions, would like to have more influence over those decisions.
Wampler's proposal would be an exception to the general rule against including foxes among henhouse sentries. The board presumably gets the information it needs from the industry without having a representative on the board. Still, it's wrong to believe that sound environmental-policy decisions can never be made with input from people connected to a regulated industry. Cooperation and compliance needn't be contradictory.
In any case, never mind. What's really amazing is the board's regional imbalance, highlighted by the Wampler bill: None of the air board's current members is from west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not one!
Administration officials told a Senate committee Monday that Gov. Douglas Wilder had "tried hard" but was unable to find someone from Southwest Virginia to serve on the board when he had an appointment to make last year.
That caused some lawmakers' eyebrows to shoot up. Said Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr., R-Winchester: "You're telling me that in the western part of the state you can't find one person with credentials to sit on this board? That's almost inconceivable to me."
Why "almost"? It's flat-out inconceivable. And we have to wonder how hard the governor tried.
Environmental and industrial interests in these parts are not bit players in the state's overall scheme for controlling air pollution. It's unfair and shortsighted to dismiss them as such.
Western Virginia definitely ought to have a place at the air board's table. Maybe a Virginia Tech professor?

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB