Georgia's DNR Board Count Important - To Floridians

From the Jacksonville Times-Union, about our Sonny stacking our DNR board with developers and builders. Sally Bethea was also on WABE this morning too, with an excellent interview in which she said Georgians surely want more diversity on a Natural Resources board than just developers and building interests. Got that right.

The ouster of three of the most pro-environment members of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources board has critics concerned that the department's mission of safeguarding the state's rivers, streams and estuaries will be compromised.

Environmentalists became particularly worried last month when the Senate rejected Gov. Sonny Perdue's reappointment of Sally Bethea, the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and one of their main allies on the Board of Natural Resources.

That move followed the ouster of two members of the panel whom Perdue did not reappoint because a 2005 round of congressional redistricting left them in the same district as another board member, the governor's office said. Thirteen of the board's 18 members are appointed according to their congressional districts.

"The board is just way out of balance," charged Gordon Rogers, executive director of Satilla Riverkeeper. "And it's been systematic."