Legislative Watch: Big Hog Wins Override Vote
Last week, supermajorities in both the state House and Senate decided that protecting Big Hog’s profits is more important than safeguarding the property and health of its North Carolina neighbors.
The Senate voted 37-9, and the House followed suit 74-45, to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 711, “NC Farm Act of 2018.” The bill severely restricts injured neighbors’ rights to sue corporate factory farms to compensate them for and stop the polluting practices that dirty their water, air, and land. Through this bill, legislators have taken away North Carolinians’ historically recognized property rights in order to protect a mammoth international hog company from liability for its irresponsible actions.
The legislature’s decision to throw neighbors under the hog truck didn’t stop a second North Carolina federal jury from delivering a $25 million blow to Big Hog late last week. It appears that the hog giant’s determination that it was losing its ability to win a fair fight in court over its grossly polluting practices is accurate.
By similar margins, legislators also voted to override Cooper’s veto of HB 374, this year’s so-called “Regulatory Reform Act.” Among other provisions, HB 374 delivers several blows to environmental protection:
- It weakens stormwater cleanup requirements for as many as 150 subdivisions impacting coastal water quality.
- It opens the door to make “temporary” oceanfront “erosion control” structures permanent, turning beach sandbag walls that were intended to buy time for the relocation of threatened structures into massive permanent seawalls replacing what was once public beach.
- It knocks out of contention some of Gov. Cooper’s clean-energy-supporting nominees to the N.C. Utilities Commission.
These latest overrides of Cooper’s vetoes of terrible environmental bills provide a newfound urgency to produce major changes in the General Assembly’s makeup this fall.
