House Natural Resources committee approves amended bill 02/24 to consolidate river basin statutes, raise accident-reporting thresholds

The House Committee on Natural Resources on Tuesday approved an amended version of bill 02/24 that consolidates river basin commission statutes and makes a range of administrative changes to Title 14, including raising the monetary reporting threshold for certain accidents.

Chair Shane Landauer opened the hearing and described Amendment No. 11 as a code cleanup intended to place river basin commissions under one section of statute without stripping any existing powers. "We were simply trying to, I think, probably put simply, it was a kind of a code cleanup," Landauer said when introducing the amendment.

Matt Meersman, director of the Saint Joseph River Basin Commission, told the committee the amendment preserves each commission’s authority while creating a flexible model other basins could adopt. "It's not gonna, you know, take away any of our powers or change anything about the way we do," Meersman said, and indicated his commission supports the…