Issue Position: Protecting Our Environment

Issue Position

Protecting our environment is not only important to our health, it is also important to the health of our state.

In many ways, the economy of our state depends on the more than 3,000 miles of shoreline that surround Maryland. Everyone from the fishermen industry to the tourism industry, depend on the quality of our air, land, and water. During the 2013 legislative session, I had the opportunity to work on a number of initiatives that will protect our environment for generations to come.

The Transportation Infrastructure and Investment Act, for example, includes over $400 million in pollution reduction projects. However, the single most important environmental legislation that I supported this year was the Offshore Wind Energy Act. This legislation will lowers our states dependence on dirty polluting energy sources and invest in a renewable energy source off the coast of Ocean City.

In future legislative sessions, I plan to continue to support legislation that protects our environment, such as the fracking moratorium and the Prince George's community cleanup program. The fracking moratorium allows us to fully study the effects of fracking in Maryland and the surrounding states.

In the 2013 General Assembly, I was disappointed that the Prince George's community cleanup program did not pass. This policy would have improved our environment by encouraging the use of reusable bags. This legislation is particularly important because ONLY 3% of Prince George's County's streams and creeks in are in good condition most of which suffer from the collection of plastic bags which take decades to degrade.

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