CHARLESTON — A visibly angry Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler led the Senate into erasing the hotly disputed “tier 2.5” level of guarding West Virginia’s streams from pollution.

In another major move, the Senate read HB4076 that would hand lawmakers a $5,000 annual pay increase and raise their per diem expense allowances to $131.

No action was taken on the proposed pay increase, intended to be the first one in 14 years, after the House approved it in a surprise move the night before.

But it easily cleared Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick’s panel earlier in the day with what one panelist termed “two no votes and one grumble.”

For years, lawmakers, environmentalists, farmers and industrialists have battled over the proper way to protect waterways, with the Legislature ultimately creating its own level of 2.5, although the Environmental Protection Agency only recognizes three levels.

In the ongoing feud, environmentalists have held out for the highest level of 3.0, while industrialists and landowners argued it should be 2.0.

Kessler led the Senate into killing the tier 2.5 with a strong floor speech in which he portrayed it as a blatant flop and a waste of everyone’s time.

“It’s apparent to me it’s been a terrible, terrible failure,” he said.

No one among the stakeholders was ever happy with it, Kessler, D-Marshall contended, so the time is to “walk away and let us go on to the other business of the state.”

“This is not doing anybody any good,” he said.

By ending the tier 2.5, the judiciary chairman said, West Virginia could approach the matter of protecting streams from degradation as the rest of the nation.

“It’s time to put it to sleep once and for all and bring us into the mainstream of classification of every other state in the union,” he said.

Helmick agreed, and took a swipe at the state Department of Environmental Protection in the process, pointing to the huge number of streams in his home county, adding he’d hate to see them fall under the Tier 3 umbrella.

“I don’t trust the department,” he said. “They’ve played all kinds of games with the state.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com