Victory for our coast! This week in CIB.

Coast Watch: Obama Plan Drops Atlantic Drilling Proposal

Coastal conservation advocates in North Carolina and neighboring states were delighted last week by the news that the Obama Administration was withdrawing its proposal to open tracts off the Mid-Atlantic coast for oil and gas exploration leasing.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the decision that the Interior Department and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) were no longer considering Atlantic offshore waters for drilling leases in its five-year management plan. Jewell and BOEM Director Abigail Ross Hopper told reporters that the decision was influenced by the potential conflicts with other ocean uses and the intense opposition from many coastal communities.

Conservation advocates including NCLCV helped to organize and channel many thousands of public expressions of opposition to the leasing. Hundreds of coastal communities, groups, businesses, and local elected leaders joined in the movement to block the leasing plans.

We encourage our supporters to take a moment to celebrate this important and unambiguous victory for clean and enduring natural resources for our shared future. Thanks to your involvement, we have all won

And now let’s turn to an update on the process of selecting new national and state leaders to protect this victory and make further progress.

Campaign Watch: LCV & NCLCV Endorsees Win in NC

In North Carolina’s voting last week, all the LCV and NCLCV endorsed candidates on the ballot won their primary contests.

NCLCV’s endorsees won in the Democratic primaries for governor and three state legislative contests.

Incumbent state Attorney General Roy Cooper won the nomination to the general election contest for governor. To review NCLCV’s news release endorsing Cooper, see here.

NCLCV’s endorsed candidates also prevailed in the three state legislative primaries in which NCLCV made endorsements:

• Rep. Rosa Gill (D-House 33),
• Rep. Jean Farmer-Butterfield (D-House 24), and
• Sen. Angela Bryant (D-Senate 4).

For the full text of the endorsing news release, see here.

NCLCV’s national partner group, the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund (LCVAF), also won both contests in which it made endorsements for March 15.

First, Hillary Clinton won the NC Democratic primary for president by a nearly 14-point margin. LCVAF’s full Clinton endorsement release can be reviewed here.

Second, Deborah Ross received the nod for the Democratic nomination to challenge Richard Burr for the U.S. Senate seat he currently holds. As CIB has previously reported, Burr’s National Environmental Scorecard scores have been routinely extremely poor over time, dropping to a mere 4% in 2015. The full news release announcing why LCVAF recommends Ross as his replacement can be read here.

Other results of interest to conservationists from the March 15 tallies include the passage of a state bonds package that includes most of $100 million for investments in our state parks system.

Executive Watch: McCrory Dissolves Commission Without Notice

There’s nothing to see here, and you have no need to know anyway. Move along.

This appears to be Gov. Pat McCrory’s attitude toward the public when it comes to the NC Coal Ash Management Commission. The Commission was created by the state legislature in 2014 to oversee development and implementation of a management plan for Duke Energy’s coal ash pits. Because most of its members were to be appointed by the legislature, it was challenged by McCrory as an infringement on executive authority. In January, the state Supreme Court agreed with the challenge, leaving the Commission in legal limbo.

With no public announcement, the Governor’s office abruptly notified the Commission and its staff last week that it was being dissolved, effective immediately. Word reached legislators from departing staff. The Governor’s office did not respond to media requests for comment.

State environmental advocates are concerned that such sudden action, without public notice or explanation, can only further undermine already shaky public confidence in the ongoing process of creating a working plan to deal with coal ash pollution. Acting like a thief in the night always raises questions, and normally creates more problems than it solves for any holder of a position of public trust.

Administrative Watch: Clean Up All the Coal Ash Pits

Speaking of coal ash management plans: this week is round three of public hearings on the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) coal ash cleanup plans, and it brings three more opportunities for citizens to speak out for faster cleanup of more Duke Energy coal ash pits.

This week’s hearings include two tomorrow night, Tuesday, March 22, and one more this Thursday, March 24:

Tuesday March 22

• Dallas (Gaston County): Gaston College Myers Center Auditorium, 201 Hwy U.S. 321 S, Dallas 28034.
• Salisbury (Rowan County): Catawba College Center for Environment Building, Rm 300, 2300 W Innes St, Salisbury 28144.

Thursday, March 24

• Danbury (Stokes County): Stokes County Courthouse, 1012 Main St, Danbury.

Each of the hearings begins at 6pm. Concerned members of the public are encouraged to attend. Those who wish to speak should show up early in order to sign up.

Comments can emphasize that all of Duke’s unlined, leaking coal ash sites across North Carolina are high risk and should be cleaned up by moving the toxic coal ash to dry, lined storage away from rivers and groundwater. The communities and people of our state deserve to have clean water, protected from the threat of toxic coal ash pollution.

None of the sites are in fact “low risk” and they cannot safely be capped and left in place to continuing seeping into our water supplies. More than 200 seeps from Duke’s coal ash pits collectively send about three million gallons a day into our waters. It is past time for DEQ to order swift cleanup of these continuing pollution sources.

NCLCV also continues to offer this quick way to submit comments online.

Judicial Watch: Who Is Merrick Garland—and Why Do Environmentalists Care?

Finally this week, we take note of the greatly-anticipated nomination by President Obama of a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. This nominee is of particular interest to environmental advocates (among others) for the potential of swinging the closely-divided Court’s judicial philosophy on matters of environmental law.

Obama’s choice is Judge Merrick Garland, the long-serving Chief Judge of what is arguably the nation’s most important U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: the District of Columbia Circuit. Among other responsibilities, the D.C. Circuit is the most common forum for challenges to rulemaking decisions by federal administrative agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

During his service on the Court of Appeals, Garland has established a reputation as a jurist who is likely to accord the traditional deference to agency determinations when they are supported by the law and factual record of the case. He shares the traditional judicial view that it is not the proper role of the courts to substitute their own judgment for that of the agency in determining whether it has made the “best” decision. Instead, it is the courts’ role to determine whether the agency has made a decision that is supportable by the law and facts of record.

As a practical matter, this has translated into important wins for EPA rules and programs, which have been routinely challenged by industry interest groups. Among those decisions supported by Garland have been key recent clean air rules on regulating mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants and on regulating greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) as a climate-altering pollutant.

Even though Garland’s nomination to the Court of Appeals in 1997 by then-President Bill Clinton was overwhelmingly approved on a bipartisan basis, the Senate’s current top majority leadership has pledged to refuse to even give his nomination a hearing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has led the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee into declaring that they will not schedule hearings or a vote on any nomination by President Obama to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.

This declaration is being broadly condemned by neutral observers as a hyper-partisan and unprecedented abandonment of the Senate’s Constitutional obligation to advise and act upon presidential nominations. National LCV president Gene Karpinski said last week that “Merrick Garland has impeccable qualifications and will be a welcome addition to the highest court in the land.” LCV called for the Senate majority leadership to “stop obstructing” and consider and act on the Garland nomination.

President Obama and his allies in the Senate have begun a public pressure campaign to push the Senate into action on the Garland nomination. This is a key battle to shape the judicial environment of our nation, potentially for years to come.

That’s our report for this week.