News - Sen. Casey Cagle

Three weeks ago, Cagle, R-Gainesville, told CL that he was tabling a bill that opens up small streams and riverbanks to development because it had too many loopholes and didn't protect streams enough. And he repeated at least three times during a phone interview that he'd never do anything to damage water quality in Georgia.

But when Cagle said he didn't want to "damage" water quality, he must have meant he wasn't satisfied with merely damaging it; he wants to obliterate it instead.

In late February, he started pushing his bill, again, after he made it even more destructive than the original.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee passed it unanimously March 4. The committee members did so at Cagle's urging, and at the request of the deceitfully named Council for Quality Growth, a self-proclaimed trade association for road builders and developers.

It also passed after the committee had just been told that 85 environmental groups were opposed to the bill, which the groups nicknamed the Headwaters Destruction Act. One reason the enviros don't like the legislation is that it allows almost every spring and small stream in the Piedmont region — the northern third of the state that supplies coastal Georgia with water — to be buried in pipes and paved over without any scientific or public review.

The full Senate could vote on it any day now.

This nasty piece of legislation alone easily makes Cagle Scalawag material. But wait, there's more.

Cagle is also a sponsor of another bill that will make it harder, if not impossible, for citizens to stand up to destructive construction projects.

This time Cagle's target is what's called the stay rule. The stay rule says that if a citizen appeals a construction permit, then construction has to stop until the appeal makes its way through the courts. Some examples of projects that need permits are power plants, subdivisions and deep-water harbors.

Without the stay rule, the permitting process will be rendered pointless because a project could be finished by the time an appeal gets before a judge.

Georgia Power, coastal developers and other big guns have been pushing to kill the stay rule for years. The Board of Natural Resources didn't cave to their intense pressure last fall, so the businesses went to their buddies in the General Assembly to kill it.

If this is the way Cagle protects Georgia's environment, we'd be better off without him.

Cagle, the next time you feel like protecting Georgia's environment, don't bother.