Clean water will be under threat in this year’s General Assembly, plus more news, this week in CIB:

• Legislative Watch: More Delay on Tap for Lake Cleanup
• Washington Watch: EPA Launches Soot Control Program
• Nuclear Update: Mothballs Predicted for Duke’s ‘New’ Nuke
• Administrative Watch: Duke Seeking Rate Hike for Coal, Gas Plants

Legislative Watch: More Delay on Tap for Lake Cleanup

Over the objection of clean water advocates, the effective date of rules requiring the cleanup of Jordan Lake has already been delayed more than once. Rules on polluted runoff from new development in the Jordan Lake basin were delayed from 2012 to 2014; and on cleanup of sewage treatment plant discharges from 2014 to 2016, and again to 2018.

Now, some municipalities affected by those rules are seeking yet more delay in implementing controls on runoff from new development, as well as other changes. Among the changes being sought by Burlington and some other towns, the responsibility for monitoring riparian buffer protections would be returned from local governments to the state. The philosophy of that shift is debatable. What’s clear, unfortunately, is that the state agency charged with enforcing clean water rules is being systematically starved of the staff and resources needed to do its job. Widely flung new responsibilities are certain to be inadequately served, unless the General Assembly reverses course and beefs up the Division of Water Quality’s (DWQ) staff and budget instead.

As clean water advocates are quick to point out, parts of Jordan Lake have been on the federal list of “impaired waters” since 2002. The General Assembly finally passed legislation in 2009 mandating preparation of a comprehensive cleanup plan. After a lengthy public and stakeholder development process for the plan, however, its opponents have managed to delay and undercut it through subsequent legislation. Protecting and implementing the long-delayed cleanup plan for this water supply source for a quarter-million Triangle residents is certain to be high on the legislative priority list for conservationists again in 2013.

Additional detail on these efforts is available here and here.

Washington Watch: EPA Launches Soot Control Program

The Environmental Protection Agency last week announced a new program designed to help communities hold down pollution from fine particulates (soot), an air pollutant closely linked to contributing to health problems from heart attacks and strokes to aggravated asthma among children.

Known as “PM Advance”, this program is focused on areas not subject to the mandatory controls applied to communities whose air pollution already exceeds the new federal air pollution limits for soot. It’s a voluntary effort to help these cleaner-air communities identify and implement strategies for keeping their air clean.

More information on the PM Advance program is available here.

Nuclear Update: Mothballs Predicted for Duke’s ‘New’ Nuke

CIB has previously reported on the crippled Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida which the newly expanded Duke Energy has “inherited” from its acquisition of Progress Energy. Much debate has been aimed at whether Duke should try to invest the billions which would be needed to repair the plant, or write it off as a lost investment.

Last week, a national financial ratings firm analyst predicted Duke would decide to close the plant. The analysis points out that repairing the plant could cost as much as $3.4 billion. Alternative means of producing the same amount of electricity are available at lower cost. Further, the plant’s original owner, Progress Energy Florida, had secured a regulatory agreement that it could recover in rates the costs of building the plant if it is retired now. If an effort to repair it instead is renewed, however, rate recovery of those costs could be challenged, with uncertain results to the utility and its stockholders.

Progress Energy Florida had shut the plant’s reactor down in 2009 to replace its steam generator. The repairs were botched then, and again in 2011, leading to serious damage to the plant’s environmental containment unit.

Information for this item was taken from a 1/16/13 article in the Charlotte Business Journal.

Administrative Watch: Duke Seeking Rate Hike for Coal, Gas Plants

Still on the utilities front, we note that Duke Energy is already committed to another rate hike request in North Carolina. That’s in addition to the rate hike it received last year, and the pending rate hike request already filed by its Progress Energy Carolinas subsidiary last fall.

Duke filed its Notice of Intent to File a General Rate Application on January 4, in anticipation that it will file the actual rate hike request in early February. The request is intended to cover the cost of new coal and natural gas power plants, including the new Cliffside coal plant which started commercial operation in December.

North Carolina’s state legislators should keep in mind all these rising costs for nuclear, coal, and gas-generated electricity before it takes ill-advised steps to cut off the pipeline for renewable energy development.

That’s our report for this week.