Still no action taken on the Stream Buffer Zone Rule change

For those of  you who have been trying to follow the twists and turns of the saga that has been the rule making of the changes to the Stream Buffer Zone rule, the good news is that so far the Bush administration has not changed the rule. As you will remember in the earlier blog post  there was an informal commenting period on the proposed new rule change up until November 23. Apparently part of the hold up is that the EPA needs to sign off on the proposed rule change and so far they have not made that move.

The thinking early on was that the rule change needed to be adopted 60 days before the next administration takes over, however after further research we now believe that since the rule change will likely cost less than 100 million dollars a year to implement then the rule only needs to be approved 30 days before the next administration takes over.

If you are trying to follow this issue there was a good article written in the Washington Post today that helps to diagram the situation for all of the new rule changes, not simply the Stream Buffer Zone rule change.

We are all paying close attention to see what actions the Bush administration will take in these final days.