Executive Watch: Cooper Seeks Investments in Clean Water
It’s a most pleasant change to have a governor who wants to invest in clean water, instead of neglect it.
Gov. Roy Cooper last week presented his proposed state budget for the coming biennium. In contrast to his predecessor’s record, the Cooper budget includes a healthy (and badly needed) increase in investment in clean water.
Two items stand out:
1) He proposes adding 20 staff positions to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in the first year, and 28 more in the second year. Most of these would be in the permitting sections of water resources, sediment control, and dam safety. Under ex-governor McCrory and the current legislative leadership, there had been a 41% reduction in regional water quality and resources staff since 2011. (That came on top of another big cut in sedimentation control staff even earlier.) These are the key people who are responsible for making our pollution control laws work. If they’re too swamped to do their jobs well, we all suffer from dirtier water in the rivers, lakes, streams, and sounds that we need for drinking, fishing, swimming, and wildlife.
2) The Cooper budget also proposes a return to real funding for the Clean Water Management Trust Fund (CWMTF). For over a decade, the CWMTF had been North Carolina’s key tool for investing in capital projects (like natural area stream buffer lands) for the protection or restoration of clean water. That key tool has been starved nearly to death in recent legislative sessions. Cooper would invest an added $19 million annually in the CWMTF, plus an extra one-time infusion of $10 million to help get its work started again.
Now, of course, it’s the General Assembly’s turn at the budget process. Given the stark policy value contrasts on display between Cooper and the current state legislative leadership, it’s unlikely that these good proposals will be readily accepted. However, they provide a critical solid start for which conservationists and our legislative environmental champions can fight.
