Dan Crawford, Director of Governmental Relations

June 23, 2023

We call on the legislature to sustain Governor Cooper’s veto of SB582 – The Farm Act. This bill shouldn’t have passed in the first place. It allows for mass destruction of our wetlands – millions of acres representing half of those currently protected. The real beneficiaries of this legislation are builders and developers; nobody who calls themselves a friend of the environment, clean air, or clean water can consider this anything other than a catastrophic rollback of protections fought for over the past 50 years. When you consider that a single acre of wetlands can store a million gallons of water – at a time we are in the midst of hurricane season and facing increasingly severe storms – there is no justification for supporting this bill. If we allow our wetlands to become parking lots, developments and highrises, this destruction will create irrevocable harm to our state. We will ultimately pay billions to repair the storm damage our current wetlands would protect us from. This bill is bad for clean water, bad for flood and storm mitigation, bad for the environment, bad for taxpayers, and bad for North Carolina.

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The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters (NCLCV) is a pragmatic, results-oriented, non-partisan organization whose mission is to protect the health and quality of life for all North Carolinians, with an intentional focus on systematically excluded communities of color. We elect environmental champions, advocate for environmental policies that protect our communities, and hold elected leaders accountable for their decisions. We create a political environment that will protect our natural environment.