McCrory should veto polluters’ bill

Gov. Pat McCrory’s environmental record hasn’t fared well amid the Duke Energy coal ash mess, but now he has an opportunity to show responsible leadership and vigilant environmental stewardship.

He can do it by vetoing House Bill 765.

This bill is a case of a sloppy legislative process opening the way for serious environmental damage, especially to groundwater. Like so many other bills last session, this one was passed with little public debate in the waning days of the session. It’s called the Regulatory Reform Act of 2015, but the more accurate name would be the Regulatory Rollback Act.

House Bill 765 has some reasonable modifications, but it includes a grab bag of changes favored by developers and generators of regulated waste. Among the most significant changes:

▪ The bill allows businesses that self-report violations of environmental laws to be exempt from penalties. Self-reporting should be encouraged, and state and federal policies already provide some relief from penalties for businesses that come forward. However, allowing businesses to profit from breaking the law and then shielding them for self-reporting creates an incentive to ignore the law.

▪ Requirements that businesses clean up their polluted sites would be weakened. Instead, the bill expands “risk-based remediation” under which a site of polluted groundwater or soil is simply identified and monitored rather than completely cleaned.

▪ Intermittent streams – waterways that appear seasonally – will lose state protection, and it’s unclear what federal protections will remain. These headwater streams are vital for filtering out pollutants, and they help control flooding and provide spawning grounds for fish. Intermittent streams account for nearly half of the state’s 112,000 total stream miles.

▪  Coastal water quality, including water off popular beaches, could be degraded by a provision that weakens control of stormwater pollution.

Advocates including the Environmental Defense Fund, the N.C. Sierra Club, the N.C. Coastal Federation, Environment North Carolina, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the N.C. League of Conservation Voters and the N.C. Conservation Network have alerted McCrory to the sweeping risks in this overstuffed bill and urged him to veto it.

Jane Preyer, director of the North Carolina office of the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote to McCrory that some provisions of House Bill 765 “are inconsistent with North Carolina’s values and will allow more pollution of our air and water, degrade our land, harm wildlife, and jeopardize the health of families and communities.”

Supporters of the bill say it should become law because it’s “good for business.” But the best thing for business, and for all of North Carolina, is a state with less pollution.

This story was originally published October 22, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "McCrory should veto polluters’ bill."