Usually, by this time of the year, we expect a budget proposal to have been passed by one of the chambers and in a conference committee to work out the fine points. This year, leaders planned to skip straight to the conference, with House and Senate committee members producing a single, final proposal for votes in each chamber.
It didn't work out that way. Budget negotiations collapsed this week; the House now plans to run its own budget next week, but the Senate has already signaled that it won't agree.
Environmental bills in play:
H864, PFAS Pollution and Polluter Liability, had a good hearing in the House Environmental Committee and was referred to Appropriations. The bill sponsors, Ted Davis Jr. (District 20, New Hanover) and Frank Iler (District 17, Brunswick) set a high bar for liability under this legislation, which would squarely target Chemours. An offending company must meet three criteria: manufacturing PFAS, discharging PFAS into the waters of the state, and exceeding federal limits for contamination. The polluter would have to pay for remediation, with the responsibility retroactive to 2017 – the year that PFAS discharges by Chemours came to public attention.
H385, Various Energy/Environmental Changes, is in Senate Judiciary. The Chapter and our legislative allies consider this to be a "code red" bill, with several problematic provisions:
- An expansion of last year’s carve-out on 401 permits that was added to benefit the Mountain Valley Pipeline's Southgate extension into North Carolina. The bill would apply the same loosened permit requirements to other energy generation facilities, threatening the ability of state regulators to fully vet projects' impact on water quality.
- A section that allows for rebuilding of docks, piers, and walkways, along with a 5-foot increase in their size, without a Coastal Area Management Act permit. The poorly written provision doesn't take into account whether the structure was originally built with a valid permit, whether the area has naturalized over a long period of time, or if the expanded structure will cross into a neighbor’s riparian area. The proposed process also would be inconsistent with federal permit requirements, which would disrupt a federal/state permitting process that's currently one of the fastest in the nation and lead to significant delays for permit applicants.
- A section that exempts swine farms with an NPDES permit from a ban on siting in floodplains and from a requirement to notify neighbors when they’re sited, modified, or expanded. (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits ensure adherence to state and federal clean water standards.) Apart from jeopardizing, rather than protecting, floodplain environments, water quality, and farm communities, it complicates the situation for farm neighbors who might wish to file nuisance legislation. A law passed several years ago requires them to file those actions within six months of the siting of a new facility, but they might not hear about it in a timely way under this proposed change.
The bill also would clear the way for developers in 20 coastal counties to dig up and overbuild significant archaeological finds, by blocking the N.C. Division of Coastal Management from slowing permits in designated coastal Areas of Environmental Concern. At issue right now is a development in Carteret County that state archaeologists believe holds undisturbed artifacts and human remains from a long-term settlement dating back thousands of years.
We still haven't seen any attempt to override Governor Cooper's veto of the billboard bill (H198, DOT Legislative Changes). Three-fifths of a chamber's attending members must vote in favor for an override to succeed. The GOP won its House supermajority by only one seat, so leadership needs full attendance to be sure of winning, and they've been hamstrung by members' travel schedules and family vacations.