Posted by Max Naylor on Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The hotly-debated Water Act proposes giving landowners rights to all the water on and under their land. The act has even driven some citizens to incessantly e-mail one particular MP.
It will come as consolation to many, then, that the adoption of the highly-controversial Water Act has been postponed until 1st October 2011. An agreement on the issue was reached this evening between the cabinet and the opposition. The agreement states that a new bill concerning changes to the Water Act will be put forward in the autumn.
The Water Act was originally passed in 2006, but there has been a lot of controversy in the Alþingi surrounding the bill ever since its original passage. A section in the original bill stipulated that the adoption of the act should be postponed until 1st July 2010.
The Minister for Industry Katrín Júlíusdóttir proposed abolishing the bill entirely in the spring, but the opposition disagreed, instead suggesting that the adoption of the act should be again postponed, and that ministers should try and reach an agreement about the most controversial elements of the bill. Discussion of the bill was made a priority in parliament today, as other issues were put aside.
Katrín announced that her ministry is now working on a new draft of the bill for the Industry Committee. She has also distributed a memo identifying particular issues that demand further examination before the bill can presented to parliament once more. The issues are mostly pertaining to the rights of the public and definitions of the rights of the consumer.
To help complete the work, the Minister for Industry has turned to barristers Karl Axelsson and Ástráður Haraldsson. Together they will go over the draft with the memo sent by the minister, in consultation with lawyers from the ministry and the group have been working on the draft. They will issue their recommendations in the autumn.
Source: mbl.is
Image: Peter Allen
Labels: Politics
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