A key clean water protection rule takes effect in North Carolina and most of the nation, plus more news, this week in CIB.

Washington Watch: Clean Water Rule Takes Effect

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) on Friday marked the effective date of the Clean Water Rule in most of the United States, including North Carolina.

The Clean Water Rule represents the culmination of several years of work by the EPA and Corps to clarify the definition under the Clean Water Act of what constitutes “waters of the United States.” In other words, the rule spells out which streams and wetlands are protected by federal law from being dumped with pollution or buried by developers’ backhoes.

The definition of these protected waters had been clearly established in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, it was thrown back into doubt and chaos by two confusing decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 and 2006. The effort to re-clarify the extent of legal protection for our waters has ground slowly since then with heated controversy from all sides. The latest formal rule-making process received more than a million public comments, the great majority of which supported strong rules safeguarding the waters and wetlands which were protected by the definitions in place prior to the court case confusion of 2001 and 2006. The resulting final “Clean Water Rule” was announced by the EPA/Corps earlier this year, and (with one last-second hiccup) went into effect at the end of last week.

Read here about how and why this rule is so important to clean water.

Judicial Watch: McCrory DENR Wants Cooper to Oppose Clean Water Rule

As part of the inevitable litigation which these days follows the announcement of any major national environmental rule – including the “Clean Water Rule” – dozens of states have joined in the lawsuits contesting the rule. Sadly, the McCrory Administration’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was among those supporting state challenges to the rule.

Last week, the McCrory DENR publicly pressed the NC Attorney General’s office to support that litigation against the new Clean Water Rule. The Attorney General, normally the state’s lawyer in such cases, has thus far declined to do so, although his office publicly said that it had received the DENR letter and was reviewing it.

This is not the first time recently that DENR has attacked Cooper for declining to back one of its anti-environmental positions. DENR Secretary Donald van der Vaart recently criticized Cooper for not joining in the McCrory DENR’s illogical attack on the Clean Power Plan. If nothing else, the DENR attacks are making clear a line drawn between the two front-runners for the North Carolina governor’s contest next year. Thus far this month, it’s been Cooper pro-environment twice on the key issues, and McCrory anti-environment twice on the same. Is this the image McCrory wants to carry into 2016 – the governor most opposed to clean air and water?

Supporters of clean water are calling for Attorney General Cooper to stand fast for the laws that help keep our drinking water clean and our rivers and lakes themselves healthy.

Legislative Watch: No Visible Progress on Environmental Issues

Time continues to crawl at the NC General Assembly, as it skates past another ‘deadline’ for budget adoption. With tempers wearing thinner, yet another ‘continuing resolution’ names September 18 as the new target for final budget adoption.

It’s typical in legislative situations like this for details to be resolved with sloppy speed once the main logjams have been broken. For the current legislature, most of the many anti-environmental provisions tacked on to the budget bill by the Senate appear to be among the details. For citizen advocacy to have an effect on those outcomes, therefore, our comments need to be going in now. Once the process starts visibly moving again, there may be little time left for alerts.

As we reviewed last week, NCLCV is leading the push to save North Carolina’s sedimentation control effort from being hamstrung by a “special provision” in the state budget. To recap, what’s at stake is the continued existence of the N.C. Sedimentation Control Commission (SCC), which since 1973 has drafted rules and provided expert guidance for implementing state law to keep eroded soil (sediment) out of our creeks, rivers, and reservoirs. Even many active conservationists are surprised to learn how important this issue remains: Muddy water from sediment is still the number one pollutant destroying vital aquatic habitat and filling up drinking water and recreational reservoirs. The proposed change eliminating the SCC is contained in Section 14.26 of the Senate’s version of the budget (which includes a host of egregiously anti-environmental provisions). Under the Senate’s bad plan, the duties of the SCC would be rolled into the already broad responsibilities of the Environmental Management Commission, losing the expertise and experience of multiple specialists on construction and erosion control management who sit on the SCC.

NCLCV Enforcement Director Robin Smith, who has extensive experience with the SCC, says it’s a bad trade which will undercut the effectiveness of the program. Quite possibly, meaningful citizen commission oversight of the sedimentation control program will be lost, as the multi-tasking EMC lacks the time or the expertise to do the job.

There is still time now for concerned supporters of NCLCV and clean water to advocate for protecting our waters from sediment overload, by taking action here.

Around the State: Orange-Durham Light Rail Moves Forward

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) last week released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the proposed Orange-Durham light rail line. The 17-mile, 17-station system would be the first modern passenger rail line to connect two North Carolina communities outside of Charlotte.

The DEIS and much more information on the project can be found on a website set up by the Triangle Transit Authority at www.ourtransitfuture.com.

As our state’s metropolitan population continues to grow, public transit will become increasingly important as means for both moving people at less pollution per person, and shaping development away from highway-fed urban sprawl.

Climate Change Update: Muslim Scholars Call for Action

Just last month, it was news that Pope Francis, the head of the largest branch of the world’s most populous faith group (Christianity), released a major church statement on the moral imperative of action to address climate change. Now, a group of Muslim scholars from 20 nations have called on adherents of the world’s second-most populous faith group – Islam – to support action on climate change as well.

As reported by The Climate Post, on August 18 Muslim scholars from 20 countries issued an “Islamic Declaration on Climate Change,” calling on Muslims to work to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and support the development of renewable energy sources. The declaration was finalized at the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium in Istanbul, Turkey, and is to be presented at the global climate summit in Paris later this year.

One would hope that moral calls to action for the earth’s protection shared by the world’s two most populous faiths will catch the attention of international secular policy-makers as well.

That’s our report for this week.