In a final flurry of action, the 2013 session of the N.C. General Assembly hammered the environment hard–but some targets escaped. This week in CIB:

Legislative Watch: Way Down but Not Entirely Out

State legislators hammered the environment hard in their final week of the 2013 session. The damage was extensive, but advocates still have some green spots on which to stand and fight back. Here’s an early look at some of what happened.

Fracking and offshore drilling: The legislature gave final approval last week to a bill which will require that NC join with other mid-Atlantic states to push for offshore drilling, and exempt rulemaking regarding oil and gas production from some of the state’s more onerous procedural requirements. The final bill (SB 76) did not include some of the worst provisions proposed by the Senate, including allowing the underground injection of fracking wastes, and fast-tracking fracking permitting before rules to govern it are even completed. However, the State Senate majority never gave up on the idea of outright repealing the moratorium on permitting fracking projects without going through the remainder of a rulemaking process and legislative review of protective rules first. The Senate tacked that change onto an unrelated bill authorizing a reorganization of the state Commerce Department and economic development programs. The House continued to balk, and so that primarily Commerce-related bill was left stalled when the chambers adjourned the session. It is still alive for the 2014 short session or a special session before then, but for the moment the fracking moratorium has held.

Regulatory deform: We refuse to call this approved mess of terrible ideas “reform”. HB 74 contains an odorous laundry list of damaging changes to state environment laws, including these:

• All existing state environmental rules are to be reviewed on an accelerated timetable, and to be retained must go through the excruciating new rules review and readoption process.
• Limits on new landfills, including “environmental justice” restrictions on clustering undesirable facilities near poor communities, have been weakened.
• Groundwater protections from the spread of underground pollution out of contaminated sites have been weakened.
• Even more tree-clearing along public rights-of-way will be allowed to make billboards more visible.
• Rules limiting air pollution from heavy-duty trucks are repealed.

As bad as these items were, the final bill did not include some of the other proposals that were as bad or worse:

• A proposal to categorically eliminate water quality protections for so-called “isolated” wetlands, which can be enormously important for wildlife habitat and clean water purposes, was struck from the package which was approved. (The Senate, at the bidding of anti-environmental forces in the N.C. Homebuilders Association, kept trying to insert this disastrous provision in other bills, but the House wouldn’t go along.)
• A proposal to ban all new local government ordinances protecting air or water quality more stringently than applicable federal or state minimums, and to repeal existing local rules that do so, was pulled out of the package. Taking its place was a greatly scaled back one-year moratorium on some such rules–still bad, but far less so than the original.

Jordan Lake cleanup delay: Once again, legislative policy on the cleanup plans for Jordan Lake water quality took on the nature of an old football cheer–push ’em back, push ’em back, waaaaay back. Jordan Lake, and those depending on it as a clean resource, may be delayed to death.

“Terminal groins”: Legislation was approved modifying some of the previously legislated requirements for the four “terminal groin pilot projects” authorized in the previous session. However, this was another one of those “coulda been worse” bills: The original version of this year’s bill would have deleted the cap on projects (four) and removed some of the most important financial accountability requirements. More detail and commentary on this and other late-breaking environmental legislation can be found here.

Environomics: NC Universities Shine on Solar

Four major North Carolina universities are cooperating in a research and development project to further reduce the cost of generating electricity from sunlight. If their project works as intended, it will produce more efficient concentrators of sunlight to turn onto the already-improved technology of the photovoltaic cells themselves.

The universities involved are N.C. A&T State University, UNC-Greensboro, Wake Forest University, and Winston-Salem State University. It’s yet another indicator that both the research and private sectors view the future of solar energy as bright, even if some of our more ignorant politicians do not.

For more details, see here.

Campaign Watch: Senate Ads Starting Early

The fight for control of the U.S. Senate in 2014 is so vigorous that it’s already underway now. The North Carolina seat held by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) is near the top of both sides’ target lists, and as a result she is drawing both hostile and favorable issue ads more than a year out from the vote.

The latest case in point comes from a national environmental group thanking Hagan for her votes last week in favor of confirming Gina McCarthy as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. It follows another run of “thanks” ads following Hagan’s votes last spring against federal budget amendments that would have killed EPA clean air standards on carbon pollution and the mercury and air toxics standards. Both ads were funded by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Hagan has previously been hit by pro-coal groups with ads attacking her for her votes on the clean air items.

Education & Resources: Wind Power

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is holding a webinar on the Value of Offshore Wind Energy. It will be held on Tuesday, August 13, at 11 a.m. Study suggests that offshore wind for the Carolinas and Georgia has the potential in particular to help meet one of the highest demand periods for utilities here: hot summer afternoons during cooling season. For more information and to register, see here.

That’s our report for this week.