A bill that would allow plants and refineries in the oil and gas industry to keep violations hidden from the public won’t be moving forward.
The legislation was proposed by State representative Stuart Bishop faced plenty of criticism, including from the department of environmental quality.
Some were concerned that this bill would shield the public from knowing about potentially harmful chemicals if accidents were to happen. It’s one of the reasons bishop pulled the legislation
“My next step is I want to see how DEQ sits down with industry and sits down with all the stakeholders and all considered citizens, and how they work it out. Because DEQ says they already said they would promulgate their own rules and self-auditing and therefore if that’s the case the bill will not be necessary,” Bishop said.
Bishop says he doesn’t think there’s a way to approach everyone’s concerns in a short amount of time with 2 weeks left in the session.
