The Texas Sunset Commission wants to abolish the Geoscience license. Look at today's headlines. Environmental issues are often in the top 10 lists of voter's concerns. To say that the environment is not important to merit assessment by government licensed professionals or that geoscience is not used in the evaluation of the environment is not correct. My company, Terrain Solutions, often finds itself privy to information about unreported adverse environmental conditions which has not even entered the radar of environmental regulatory agencies. Geoscientists serve on the front lines to protect an uneducated public from the dangers. To say that the current manpower of regulatory bodies can adequately address all the environmental concerns, undervalues the importance of environmental assessment. Every additional educated and trained body is needed in the environmental arena from safe drinking water identification to risk assessment of chemical releases.

Understanding the history of how we convinced a group of independent-minded geoscientists to accept governmental oversight is complex. Efforts towards Texas geoscience licensure failed in the 1980s and was resurrected to become a Geoscience Act in 2001 and a funded board in 2003. I will give my version of the road that brought us the Sunset report, a look towards consequences of the return to pre-licensure, what we can do to improve enforcement, continuing education, and the ethics of our profession to improve licensure, and ultimately, why we believe licensure is good for all geoscientists and critical for the future of Texas.