Senator Champion is strongly opposed. The senate webmaster was apparently not forwarding mail to the senators regarding SB 364...Hmmmmmm. Interesting. I'm sure it was just a computer "glitch." Right?

Most of our region's water quality and conservation orgs are lobbying against this bill, and I am told by them that so are our city and county officials. There is one NFP watershed org here that I still have not gotten any response from...2 weeks after initial contact (with multiple follow-ups). That organization is the James River Basin Partnership. I have no idea what's up with them. Southwest MO Fly Fishers works very closely with them on Stream Team projects and so forth. Several members have expressed their concern and disappointment to me regarding this lack of response. I guess they have bigger fish to save.

The thanks I have gotten for making everyone aware of this threat to our regional ecology is that I have been threatened and harassed by several members of the Arkansas Guide Association and the two top employees of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks. They seem to me to be more concerned with anything that might call attention to any imperfection than they are with a piece of legislation set for passage by the state senate that would be a HUGE step backwards in terms of environmental protection in this region. But I will say Watershed Committee of the Ozarks is working aggressively within their charter to combat SB 364. But they sure didn't say, "thanks for bring this to our attention." Instead, they spent about an hour of their time threatening me for mentioning that I had tried to contact them and not yet gotten a response on Monday. I was a bit taken aback that I had to do it, but I explained to them that trying to intimidate journalists for reporting facts is NEVER a good career move. So, instead of me singing nothing but their praises in today's blogs and posts (that reach about 15,000 people per day), I will be discussing press intimidation from an environmental protection non-profit's leadership in response to me calling for a pro-environment response to a very bad piece of legislation. What the heck are these folks thinking?