COLUMBUS, Ohio – It may not sound like algae and telephones have much in common, but when you are a lame-duck legislative body looking at a holiday break, politics can make strange bedfellows indeed.
A sweeping agricultural bill that addresses both Ohio’s toxic algae problem and the future of basic telephone service in the state cleared the House Wednesday on a 71-18 bipartisan vote and now heads to the Senate.
The bill’s telecommunications provisions lay out Ohio’s rules for transitioning sometime in the next few years from traditional land-line phone service to a digitized Internet-protocol network. It includes safeguards for consumers whose basic service would be terminated, but still met with opposition from Democrats and activists who warned it opened loopholes for telephone providers to deprive the poor, elderly and rural residents service.
The advocacy group warned that, under the legislation telephone providers will “not be required to meet many of the consumer protection standards that some Ohioans rely on” and the bill would eliminate a requirement to make basic landline service available.
According to Rep. Ryan Smith (R-Bidwell), the bill’s co-sponsor, the bill calls for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to work with the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, consumer representatives and lawmakers to “identify and map those who have limited options for their basic local exchange service.”
The legislation also addresses toxic algae blooms that have cropped up in Ohio waters, especially Lake Erie, through several new requirements. An algae bloom was blamed for high levels of toxins that contaminated Toledo’s city-provided drinking water this summer.
The requires the monitoring of water phosphorous levels in publicly owned treatment works, prohibits a person from depositing dredged material in Lake Erie and its tributaries and regulates the application of fertilizer or manure on frozen farmland in the western-Ohio Lake Erie basin. It also increases criminal penalties for certain violations of the Water Pollution Control Law and authorizes the state’s Director of Environmental Protection to study nutrient loading in Ohio’s watersheds.
The Senate yesterday confirmed Craig Butler as Gov. John Kasich’s pick to lead the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. He had been serving as the agency’s interim director since early January and Democratic state Sen. Lou Gentile had raised concerns recently over revelations that the Kasich administration paid for but never released results of a $435,000 survey tallying clean-energy jobs while Butler was serving as a senior policy adviser.
Meanwhile, federal regulators are hoping to release new guidelines next year that would give cities a blueprint for how to tackle the same type of toxins that contaminated the drinking water in Toledo. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday that the new health advisory is on target to be finalized sometime next spring.