Governor's Executive Order Creating an Environmental Flows Advisory Committee

Executive Order RP50 established a 9-member study commission that provided recommendations to the 80th regular session of the legislature (2007) on how the State of Texas can protect water for environmental flows.

What was the Advisory Committee's charge?

Who was on the Advisory Committee?

What was the relationship between the new Advisory Committee and the Study Commission on Environmental Flows?

Online Resources

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What was the Advisory Committee's charge?
The Committee made recommendations on how the legislature might create a consensus-based, regional approach to integrate environmental flow protection with flows for human needs.

Who was on the Advisory Committee?
The Committee consisted of nine members appointed by the Governor. They were as follows:

E.G. Rod Pittman, Chairman of the Texas Water Development Board

Joseph B.C. Fitzsimons, Chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission

Kathleen Hartnett White, Chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

Lori J. Ryerkerk, Refinery Manager for the ExxonMobil Beaumont Refinery

Jeff Taylor, Deputy Director within the Public Works and Engineering Department for the City of Houston

Jerry Lynn Clark, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Sabine River Authority of Texas

Richard Chalkley Bartlett, Vice Chairman of the Board of Mary Kay, Inc.

David K. Langford, Vice President emeritus of the Texas Wildlife Association

Ben F. Vaughan IV, Associate Professor of Economics at Texas Lutheran University

What was the relationship between the Advisory Committee and the Study Commission?
The Study Commission on Water for Environmental Flows was created in 2003 by Senate Bill 1639. In 2004, the Study Commission issued an influential report, which became the basis for the environmental flows provisions in Senate Bill 3, an omnibus water bill. Those provisions gained a lot of support on both sides of the aisle during the 2005 legislative session but the bill ultimately ran out of time in the House. The executive order explicitly states that the Advisory Committee will use the Study Commission's December 2004 report as a starting point.

Online Resources