Tennessee Senate Bill SB0877

Tennessee 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 2/5/25

Caption

AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 4; Title 7; Title 59; Title 65; Title 66; Title 68 and Title 69, relative to water.

Summary

SB0877 makes a narrow change to Tennessee’s water law by requiring the Department of Environment and Conservation to publish, in a publicly accessible location on its website, a list of water withdrawals that have been registered under Tennessee Code Annotated section 69-7-304(a). The bill does not change the underlying registration requirement itself; instead, it adds a public disclosure requirement for the existing registry of withdrawals. In practical terms, the measure is aimed at increasing transparency around water use and water withdrawal registrations. Because the bill amends Title 69 and references other titles in its caption, it is part of Tennessee’s broader statutory framework governing natural resources and environmental regulation, but the operative change is limited to online public access to withdrawal records.

Impact

The bill would amend Tennessee Code Annotated section 69-7-304(a) to require the state to post registered water withdrawal lists on a publicly accessible website. This affects the Department of Environment and Conservation’s administration of water withdrawal registrations and makes those records easier for the public, local governments, researchers, and potentially competing water users to review. The bill does not create new permitting standards or withdrawal limits; it primarily changes disclosure and access to existing records.

Sentiment

No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate or partisan division in the available materials. Based on the text alone, the bill appears to be a straightforward transparency measure with a limited administrative burden. The absence of recorded opposition or amendments suggests the proposal may have been noncontroversial or at least not heavily debated in the materials supplied.

Contention

Because there are no transcripts or vote records, no specific points of contention are documented. In a bill of this type, the likely areas of concern would be administrative workload for the department, privacy or proprietary concerns from water users, and whether public posting could affect sensitive operational information. However, none of those issues are explicitly raised in the provided record.