Former North Carolina environment chief Donald van der Vaart took as his mission the weakening of state pollution control rules. Naturally, the state Senate now wants him on the environmental board whose job it is to write those rules.

Van der Vaart, the polarizing former Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) under then Gov. Pat McCrory, was forced out of his DEQ job after the election of Gov. Roy Cooper. Cooper’s DEQ team rightly viewed van der Vaart as a skilled technocratic infighter who would do everything he could to undermine the new administration’s environmental protection efforts from within. 

That made it especially disappointing this month when Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger tapped van der Vaart as one of his nominees for a seat on the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission (EMC). The EMC is the most important of the state’s rulemaking bodies when it comes to shaping the regulations governing air and water pollution control permits. Van der Vaart’s presence on the EMC will amount to giving polluter interests a direct voice and vote on the board which writes the rules governing their behavior.

Van der Vaart was among 120 appointments rolled up into Senate Bill 686, which easily passed both chambers of the General Assembly last week. The governor does not get to sign off on legislative appointments, so Van der Vaart will take his seat.

NCLCV and other advocates will keep a close watch on the behavior of this fox loosed in the environmental henhouse.

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