EDITORIAL: HB-1433 REPEAL and LEGISLATIVE MALPRACTICE William Jud
Missouri, 14 February 2005


House Bill 1433, signed into law last year by Governor Holden, must be REPEALED immediately. Not fixed or tinkered with, REPEALED!

HB-1433 is an outstanding example of legislation with a hidden agenda, and is sufficient reason for requiring Legislator Competency Testing to help prevent future Legislative Malpractice caused by elected officials voting for legislation they have not read and do not understand.

The original Bill was swapped for a floor substitute bill at the last moment before the vote was taken. Between the time the original Bill was drafted and the floor substitute Bill was introduced, extensive and very objectionable changes were made. Based on content, it appears that the floor substitute Bill was created by the same people in the Department of Natural Resources who did not object to their proposed role as official government attack dogs for The Natural Streams Act.

The final Bill incorporates Well Volume Monitoring, or in plain English, requires that every water well be fitted with a water meter.

The United Nations has long sought to control use of fresh water as an important part of the U.N.'s overall program of nitpicky global control of natural resources and people's lives. United Nations Agenda 21 recommends that the best policy for land use control is the Wildlands Project. Wildlands seeks to remove people from up to 85% of the land area of North America, so that the land will revert to glorious Wilderness. One very effective way to remove people is to remove access to water. Without access to water, there can be no farming, ranching, business, industry, or even rural residency.

Denying access to water is the hidden agenda within HB-1433. As has happened in other States, once water meters are installed and water usage is reported to a government agency, it shortly follows that current water use is declared 'excessive' and must be reduced, with the end result being complete elimination of the use of well water. While this reduction of use is happening, well water production will be taxed. Eventually, all water that is put to any use will be taxed, including water flowing from seeps and springs.

In Maine, a somewhat different approach is taken. All water produced from wells is officially assumed to end up in septic tanks or sewer systems. Limits are placed on the amount of water going into septic tanks or sewage treatment systems, and based on the assumption that all well water ends up in sewers, there is a de facto limit imposed by the state on production of water from wells.

When Missouri has a problem with water, the problem generally is floods, not insufficient water from wells. Sewage treatment matters should be handled as needed and appropriate, on the County level, not as required by a state law applicable to all Counties. There is no actual need for the material contained within HB-1433.

The provision that action leading to state control of water can be triggered by the request of two people in a county is a giant red banner with the words 'THIS BILL IS A SCAM DESIGNED TO PUT GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE OF PRIVATE WATER WELLS.' For any place, and for any issue, it is possible to find two people who are in favor of substituting government control for freedom to use resources found on one's land. The same applies to voting to form a sewer district, with only a very small percentage of the county population required to vote YES to apply provisions of HB-1433. Groundwater depletion is a technical, geological issue, best handled by professional scientists and engineers, not a political issue to be decided by voters. If voting worked to control natural resources, we would vote to require rivers to flow back upstream each night so that water would not be lost downstream and rivers would not run dry.

Passage of HB-1433 clearly illustrates why Legislator Competency Testing must be instituted. Individual, successful completion of a comprehensive examination on the content of a Bill must be required before an individual legislator would be allowed to vote on that Bill. Successful completion of the examination by the Governor, and by a minimum of 95% of the members of the House and Senate, must be required before the Bill can be voted upon. A time limit of no more than six months would be required between Bill introduction and final voting, and if the time limit is exceeded, the testing certification process must begin anew. Successful completion of an examination on the law which the Bill becomes, also must be required of all members of the bureaucracy who would be in charged of applying and enforcing provisions of the new law, before taking any action based on that law.