The biennial budget adopted by the NC General Assembly last week was full of environmental bad news – plus, there’s one big legislative fight still left to go this year. This week in CIB.

Legislative Watch: Sandbagged, Trainwrecked, and Unplugged

Into its biennial budget adopted last week – months behind schedule – the NC General Assembly shoehorned another lengthy list of controversial and environmentally damaging special provisions. As has been its pattern during recent terms, the Senate in particular demanded (and got) a wide range of non-budget-related policy changes attached to the must-pass budget bill with minimal public debate and scrutiny.

Senators and Representatives outside the majority party leadership complained bitterly about being forced to vote on the complex 400-page-plus budget bill on short (even overnight) notice, to no avail. The final terms were dictated by fiat of the narrowest possible top leadership group, and dutifully endorsed by their legislative majority. Governor Pat McCrory complained about some of its tax provisions, and as usual signed it anyway.

Among the budget bill’s worst anti-environmental policy provisions were the following:

It let the Renewable Energy Investment Tax Credit (REITC) expire. The demise of the REITC pulls the plug on one of our state’s strongest tools for development of our booming renewable energy industry. This is a dangerous blow to our state’s nearly $5 billion renewable energy industry (largely composed of clean solar energy development).

Some analysts believe that renewable energy development will continue in North Carolina so long as the legislature does not approve separate legislation still under consideration which would kill the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS). Some observers believe that the absence of REPS repeal from the final budget bill indicates that a tradeoff was struck to permit expiration of the tax credit in return for non-action on the free-standing REPS repeal legislation.

Conservationists are already starting to prepare a hard push for restoration of the renewable energy tax credit next year.

Back to the bad news in the budget bill: it directs the Coastal Resources Commission to relax limits on oceanfront sandbag walls, and increases the number of allowed oceanfront “terminal groins”, both of which will put more of our barrier islands and pristine beaches at high risk of accelerated loss. These changes continue the creeping legislative undermining of the “hard structure” ban that previously kept North Carolina’s beaches the envy of the east coast.

It also caps state support for new passenger rail projects at a level that could kill expansion of this greener alternative transit mode in our state. The Orange-Durham light rail line, with local funding approved by voters in both counties and far advanced in its planning and development, is at immediate risk

As one informed observer noted, “The measure to defund the light rail project was not included in either the House or Senate budget proposals or any other bills this session. It was instead slipped into a budget conference report in the hours before it was printed. This is a return to the [bad] old way of transportation politics in this state.”

• The budget jeopardizes clean water by weakening penalties for erosion and sedimentation from new development.
• It undercuts groundwater protection by eliminating the noncommercial leaking underground storage tank cleanup fund.
• It again delays key rules for cleanup of Jordan Lake and instead throws more money (another $1.5 million) into the boondoggle “SolarBee” project.
• It throws more public money into shale gas exploration (another $500,000). Legislative leaders under the sway of their political patrons in the oil, gas, and coal industry are thereby boosting direct taxpayer subsidy for dirty fossil fuel development at the same time they are revoking policies which have been boosting the development of clean energy projects and jobs. What’s wrong with this picture?
• The budget bill cuts the Natural Heritage Program by 41%, jeopardizing a leading non-regulatory state effort to protect rare species and ecosystems.
• It undercuts state parks by directing them to “maximize revenue” from public user fees so that other state support for parks can be cut, turning the principal of publicly-supported state parks, open to all regardless of their income, on its head.

With the budget now done, consideration turns back to other bills still eligible for action this year. That brings us to what is likely to be the outstanding remaining environmental legislative fight: the latest iterations of so-called “rules reform.”

Conservation Action: Stop the Polluter Protection Act!

The big environmental fight surely looming over the remainder of this legislative year deals with HB 765, now better known as the Polluter Protection Act.

Why is that? In brief, imagine this: A corporate polluter – one of those occasional bad actors whose irresponsible behavior undercuts the efforts of the more ethical majority of businesses – has been carelessly dumping unpermitted pollution into your local river. It realizes that it is finally about to be caught, either by concerned citizens or one of the overworked remaining state environmental enforcement staff. It quickly runs a “self-audit” and confesses to its regrettable “mistake” of dumping excess pollution into the river feeding the local water supply. Hey, presto! Said corporate polluter gets immunity and is let off the hook from fines and penalties on the basis of its promise to do better from now on.

This isn’t satire; that kind of provision is actually contained in the Polluter Protection Act. And that’s not all; here are some of the other worst provisions of this so-called “rules reform” bill:

• It severely limits state protections for isolated wetlands and intermittent streams, both of which can be critical to protecting clean water in other streams and rivers across the state.
• It attempts to chill private individuals from contesting state projects or permits for polluting activities, by requiring courts to force the citizens to pay the state’s attorney fees if they lose the challenge. (Such awards of “attorney’s fees” are normally considered by the court in its discretion, and granted only when the claims filed were frivolous.)
• It further tilts the field in favor of applicants for air pollution permits by mandating that a permit issued by the state will go into effect even when it is challenged in court by a private party who would be injured by it. (It’s almost unheard of for a court to order a permitted plant or operation to shut down after it’s up and running.)
• It would require the state’s air quality protection agency to shut down about half of the air quality permitting stations now in operation. (And unfortunately, what we don’t know that we’re breathing in our air can indeed still hurt us. Plus, such willful blind spots in our monitoring network makes effective regulation that much more difficult.)

For more details on these and other polluter protection items in HB 765, see here.

The original HB 765 was a short and limited bill passed by the state House. Unfortunately, the Senate took that small bill and mutated it into a long and complex one including a broad variety of bad environmental items. The House did not go along with the revisions, and the two versions of HB 765 went to a conference committee of members from the House and the Senate. Now that the budget is done, conservationists expect some version of HB 765, likely a bad version, to come back for another round of voting in both chambers.

The severely bad contents of HB 765 are why the citizen conservation community is united in calling on our members and supporters to let your legislators know how important it is to stop the Polluter Protection Act before it’s too late.

You can take a key conservation action now by contacting your state House member and Senator, in opposition to HB 765. A quick note or call will suffice. Be sure to refer to the bill by its number (HB 765) and let them know that even though it’s called formally named “rules reform”, you know that it’s so full of pollution-promoting provisions that it has come to be known as the Polluter Protection Act. Urge them to vote no when HB 765 comes back for a vote.

If you don’t know the contact information for your representative, you can find out here.

The time to stop HB 765, the Polluter Protection Act, is now.

That’s our report for this week.