Path to cleaner waters

Raleigh and Durham residents shell out a little money each month to their municipal governments to help ensure that rainwater doesn't wash directly into area rivers and lakes. What washes from roadways, parking lots and even lawns can be pretty nasty stuff -- oil, gasoline, heavy metals, fertilizer, animal waste.

It is perfectly appropriate that coastal counties also control stormwater from reaching the Atlantic, along with other waterways that are important habitat for marine life. Certainly contamination from pollutants and disease-carrying organisms ought to be kept to a minimum to protect humans who use the waters for livelihood and recreation. Less pollution means fewer shellfish areas closed to harvesting, to cite another specific benefit. And as development explodes along rivers and streams in coastal counties, smart stormwater management is at a premium.

That's simply common sense, but it has seldom stopped development interests in the state from opposing sensible regulation -- even though clean water is essential to the coastal economy. Now builders have sicced their lobbyists on a bill by Sen. Dan Clodfelter of Mecklenburg County that would required engineered stormwater controls if a development within a half-mile of shellfish waters reaches 12 percent of roofs, roads and other hard surfaces.

The bill wouldn't limit the size or number of projects in a community -- although some coastal counties clearly need to apply the brakes on unbridled growth. It would impose appropriate state limits on the dangerous stuff that reaches the public's waters.

Given the pace of growth Down East, passage of Clodfelter's bill would be among the most farsighted steps that lawmakers could take this session.