Report critical of SolarBees goes online, then disappears

Some environmentalists fear state officials are suppressing information about efforts to clean Jordan Lake after the state Department of Environmental Quality published and then retracted a report critical of the “SolarBees,” water-churning devices designed to reduce the impact of algae in the lake.

Department officials say the report was a draft that was mistakenly published online. But the move prompted suspicion from the the Sierra Club and WakeUP Wake County, as well as state Rep. Chuck McGrady, a Henderson Republican who co-chairs the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission.

The state budget passed last year mandated that the DEQ produce the report by April 1. DEQ officials say the Legislative Analysis Division extended that deadline. But Paul Coble, a former Wake County commissioner who oversees the legislative staff, says the division did not grant an extension.

“The staff of the Legislative Analysis Division has no authority to extend a statutory deadline,” Coble wrote in an email Tuesday. “At no point did anyone on the Legislative Analysis Division staff ever state that an extension of the statutory deadline was being granted.”

McGrady, whose commission is scheduled to review the report, said he’s unaware of any statute that gives legislative staff or any individual legislator the power to amend state law.

“The report is part of a law, the law being the budget,” said McGrady, who added that he’s aware of the retracted report and is concerned.

In addition to being popular for recreation, Jordan Lake provides drinking water to 300,000 Triangle residents. The lake has been designated as impaired under the federal Clean Water Act because it often exceeds state standards for chlorophyll a, the green pigment in algae and plants that thrive off nutrient pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus entering the lake.

SolarBees, which stir the water in an effort to keep algae from forming, are at the center of a battle between those who represent the areas that use the lake and those who represent upstream communities where most of the pollution originates.

In 2014, the Republican-led General Assembly turned to SolarBees as a cheaper alternative to implementing stringent restrictions on upstream communities like Greensboro that the then Democrat-led General Assembly approved in 2009. Lawmakers worried that harsher development restrictions could further hamstring a feeble economy.

Doubters seek proof

Environmentalists, meanwhile, doubted that the Bees’ would be as effective as upstream protections and have waited on reports to validate their claims. The DEQ last fall found that the devices hadn’t significantly improved water quality after a year on Jordan Lake, but SolarBee supporters called on doubters to be patient.

The DEQ report published online last month found that deployments of SolarBees in “larger waterbodies to mitigate nutrient impairments have not resulted in improved water quality conditions.

“The initial two year Pilot Project on Jordan Lake cost $1.3 million and has shown no improvement in water quality in impaired areas,” says the report that DEQ later removed from online. “The extension of the project is funded at $1.5 million and will continue through 2018. With the quickly changing nature of Jordan Lake and continual high input of nutrients, it is not likely that improvements in water quality will be realized.”

DEQ retracted the report because it wasn’t finished, according to Stephanie Hawco, the department’s deputy communications director.

“It is not our practice to publish drafts that are by definition a work in progress, so we removed it,” Hawco wrote in an email. “It will be reposted when it’s final and we’ll be able to speak to the findings at that time.”

The move surprised some on the Environmental Management Commission’s water quality committee who saw the report on their agenda and expected to talk about it at their meeting in mid-March. The report didn’t include any marks or labels to indicate that it was a draft.

“People wondered why it was pulled at the last second when there was an April 1st deadline and we weren’t scheduled to meet again until May,” said Steve Tedder, an environmental consultant for 37 years at the Division of Water Quality, who chairs the committee.

Environmentalists worry that DEQ is trying to change the tone of its reports, which they claim the department has done in the past.

“The only way to clean up the lake is to stop the pollution at the source,” said Jennifer Dean of WakeUP Wake County. “When they pulled it down, it was a little unnerving. You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Buffer report revised

In the same month DEQ published and retracted the SolarBees report, it did the same with a report on the state’s Riparian Buffer Protection Program. Riparian buffers are the strips of natural land next to waterways that filter out pollutants before they reach the water.

The first version of the buffer report, dated March 10, included a recommendation to maintain the current process for creating buffer protections. That recommendation doesn’t appear in the second version, dated April 1, which instead offers additional options for providing “regulatory relief.”

The first buffer report included a paragraph about how buffers help prevent potentially harmful contaminants from draining into a body of water. The paragraph also included information on how waterfront property owners benefit financially from keeping the buffers in place. The second report excluded that information, as well as a graph from the first report showing how forest buffers are more cost-effective than wastewater treatment plants in removing nitrogen.

“Unfortunately, the revised report seems to be more concerned with accommodating developers and polluters than protecting the waters of the state,” said Dustin Chicurel-Bayard, communications director of the N.C. Sierra Club.

“We are concerned by what appears to be an emerging pattern at DEQ whereby reports prepared by the Department’s professional staff may be revised at the direction of senior leadership to fit a predetermined political outcome that is not supported by data or science,” Chicurel-Bayard said. “This practice denies legislators and the public the information needed to make well-informed decisions on issues that are critical to the state’s future.”

DEQ revised the March buffer report because it “did not align with the statutory requirement,” Hawco said. “Some information from the March report was removed because it was not requested in the statute.”

The changes didn’t sit well with Rep. McGrady.

“We’ve asked for these reports and don’t get them or they come out and then are altered,” McGrady said. “It doesn’t seem like the department has its act together.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Report critical of SolarBees goes online, then disappears."