Legislative Watch: Bad Bills Rush Through
State legislators rushed to bad judgments last week, shoving through bad environmental bills to protect corporate hog polluters, litter the Outer Banks and choke sea turtles with plastic bags, and cut back on voting rights for all of us.
First, let’s look at HB 467, titled by its sponsors “Agricultural and Forestry Nuisance Remedies” but better called the Hog Pollution Protection Act. It would limit the amount of damages that the giant corporations that control the hog and poultry factory farm industries could be hit with under damage lawsuits from neighbors who have to deal with the stench and pollution.
As Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram (D-Hertford) pointed out during floor debate, the bill’s terms practically define the meaning of “environmental injustice.” Families living in poorer minority communities with lower property sale values would be most adversely impacted by the bill’s new limits on legal remedies.
This bad bill passed both chambers and has been sent to the Governor for action. It smells like veto bait to us.
The latest anti-environmental “regulatory reform” bill has also been passed by both chambers and sent to the Governor. SB 131 (Sec. 313) includes the particularly egregious provision which would double the length of stream that a development project could destroy with no environmental mitigation. If possible, from a clean water standpoint this one stinks worse than the hog pollution bill.
In the arena of bad bills which passed one or another chamber to stay alive for further consideration, SB 434, the latest generically named “Amend Environmental Laws,” stands out. Among its bad contents were provisions to repeal the popular Outer Banks plastic bag ban (which reduces litter and protects endangered sea turtles) and to eliminate the riparian buffer protections in the Catawba River basin.
When a bill is primarily known for what it would do to choke sea turtles and foul Piedmont lakes at the same time, one has to wonder, what are these guys thinking? We think the answer is, “not very well.”
Up next: judges restrain the latest legislative partisan powergrab >>
