Remarks of Gov. JUDY MARTZ
MEPA Rally
Noon, Capitol Rotunda
February 12, 2001

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Thank you, League of Rural Voters, Bruce Vincent and Tammy Johnson for organizing this rally today. Thank you, all of you, for taking time out of your busy day to show your support for reducing bureacracy and reducing red tape.

We're going to make sense of the Montana Environmental Policy Act and we're going to make it work for Montana's natural resource industries. And we're going to do it in this legislative session.

The theme of this rally is "Keep Montanans working" -- everyone here today is an environmentalist. We are common sense environmentalists because we know that those of us who work in natural resource dependent industries can work profitably and WELL -- within our current environmental quality laws.

Those who say we have to choose BETWEEN environmental quality and natural resource industries are wrong. And they are destructive to the good stewards we have in Montana. ASARCO is a good corporate citizen. We have many outstanding corporate citizens in natural resource industries. We want diversity in jobs in Montana. We can diversify and expand with a better, more efficient process in MEPA.

We support a clean and healthy environment, and we also value a standard of living. We can have both. We are willing to stand up to those who want to shut down more of our timber mills, shut down responsible mining, oil, and gas industries and smelters.

Their endless lawsuits are taking the food out of the mouths of the families who work there. We support workers' rights; we also support their ability to hold a good paying job.

Those who join us in seeking diversity through high tech job creation, must join us in expanding our power supply. While saying we need to focus on clean high tech jobs, some of the same people are also saying no to natural gas and oil development, no to clean coal fired generation plants, and we need to blow up hydroelectric dams. Simply saying "no" to everything is not an energy policy or an environmental policy that Montana can live with.

MEPA was passed into law in 1971 -- thirty years later, the environmental industry tells us that the endless litigation is just fine, that lost jobs are unfortunate, and that there is no room for bringing MEPA into the next millenium.

There is room. We will not diminish even one environmental quality law. But we WILL reduce the red tape and the bureaucracy associated with MEPA. We have to modernize MEPA.

When MEPA was passed, we did not have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. We did not have the clean air act and the clean water act, and the whole host of other environmental protections laws both on the federal and the state level. Those laws are still there.

We want to streamline the PROCESS. MEPA is a PROCESS. We can make MEPA more efficient.

This is about families, it is not about Republicans vs. Democrats. It is not about Labor vs. Industry. It is about jobs. Good jobs. Jobs that do matter in Libby Montana, and Glasgow, Ekalaka and my hometown of Butte.Streamlining the MEPA process is and should be a nonpartisan issue.

I grew up in Montana. My family grew up in Montana. I want my grandchildren to grow up here. I want a clean environment for all of us -- now, and for the future. That is why I will not allow environmental quality laws to be diminished. I DO support cutting red tape and bureaucracy.

Thanks again for your support. Thanks for your dedication to your communities and your families. And thanks for your CAN DO attitude, because we can improve Montana.