Report from the June 17 Hearing on Georgia’s HB 201, Brunswick, GA
Cruisers Net wishes to thank all those whose efforts went into preparing for the meeting, those who sent letters and for all those cruisers who attended. Even without speaking, your physical presence spoke volumes! And a big thank you to Kelly Hill for this report.
WOW! Everyone, just wow! What an amazing evening, cruisers speaking out!
Thanks first of all to everyone who made it to the DNR meeting in Brunswick – I know the DNR was impressed by the fact the room was full. That means a lot.
Thanks to all who commented, your voices were heard loud and clear.
Thanks to the folks who were thinking ahead and livestreamed the meeting – I was so wrapped up in what was going on I didn’t even think of it. Had I done so, we could have announced that so that everyone here could have watched the meeting.
As you can gather, it was a high energy meeting – a VERY high energy meeting. Not a single soul spoke in favor of the DNR’s plans. The upset with them was obvious. The biggest considerations were that laws already exist to deal with issues such as pumping out and derelict boats; that the fee/permitting setup was possibly not legal, couldn’t be enforced and was basically unworkable.
Condemnation of the DNR’s plans was universal – from Kim Russo of the SSCA, from Boat US and the NMMA, even from GAMBA president Charlie Waller, and about 25 speakers from the boating and cruising community.
The bill’s sponsor, House rep Don Hogan, spoke, and kudos to him for being brave enough to get up in front of that audience. It was clear that the officials heard what the audience was saying – that this was a bad bill, not properly prepared, with no data to back it up and without adequate predication. At least three people, if not more, stated that the bill should not be enforced, that it should be put aside until the 2020 legislative session, when it can be reviewed and the problems in it corrected.
What will the DNR do? That’s hard to say. If they’re responsive to the public, this bill is dead in the water (sorry for the pun!). If not – we have a problem.
So – we need to keep the pressure up. The DNR has received 70 letters to date, not counting the official responses from we of the Save Georgia’s Anchorages, the SSCA/MTOA/AGLCA coalition, Boat US and the NMMA.
So if you aren’t one of the 70 who already wrote in – we need you to write in your opposition to HB201 today. Send your opposition to this bill to
Kelly Hill
Coastal Resources Division
One Conservation Way
Brunswick, GA 31520
Once you’ve done that, copy at least three boating friends with this information and get them to do the same. If you want a prewritten letter to make it easy, you’ll find three of them in the FILES section of the Save Georgia Anchorages Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/
Just do it, and then post here that you did, pour encourage les autres.
Again everyone, thanks for your support. We’re winning this fight, but we’re not quite there yet. We’ve all still got work to do!
Once again, huge thanks to Cruisers Net for their support of the boating community.
Comments from Cruisers (1)
Larry,
Thanks to you and Cruiser's Net as well as all the folks who attended the meeting in Brunswick yesterday. This is an excellent start to minimizing the damage from the needless anchoring law, but there are a couple more important parts of the process. We need comments mailed or emailed to DNR during the open comment period which will end mid-July. You've included this information in your update. PLEASE EVERYONE DO THIS!!
Next, we need folks to stay tuned as the Coastal Resource Division of DNR formulates rules to present to the full DNR board for approval sometimes in December. We may need to mobilize an email campaign to DNR prior to this date if the Coastal Resource Division doesn't back off on the adverse rule implementation.
Finally, the boaters groups will be keenly aware of the next legislative term for GA which starts in mid January 2020. The permanent fix is for much of HB201 to be changed, and we will need to pressure legislators to rewrite this law to make it more specific to address the real problem of derelict vessels and to be friendlier to the responsible boating community.