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able to the fear factor than I would have thought the Senate capable of.”
Sen. Mitchell contends that farmers around Suffolk and the Eastern Shore would benefit from complying with a permit system, because it would assure them of their current level of water use.
That could prove important in places such as the Eastern Shore, where new industries compete with vegetable farms and homes for a water supply that is not only dwindling, but is being tainted by saltwater that creeps into aquifers that cannot replenish their freshwater supplies quickly enough.
If those aquifers run dry, Sen. Mitchell said during a committee meeting, “you either abandon agriculture or import water from other parts of the state. ”
“The greatest way to destroy agriculture,” he added, “is to destroy the resource on which it’s feeding.”
Sen. Frank W. Nolen (D-Augusta) led a small group of rural legislators in the battle against the bill and another measure, which the Senate also passed, that would impose statewide well construction standards that the health department would enforce.
“It’s just more government regulation, more government intervention in the private lives of people,” Sen. Nolen told the Senate.
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