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The Southport sewage plant improvements came in two phases. The first involved $1.6 million to buy land for waste sprayfields, followed by a larger amount to build pump stations and improve the sewage plant.

While the initial phase removed sewage pipes from the Cape Fear River and reopened shellfish waters, board member Karen Cragnolin objected. She noted that the trust fund wasn't supposed to fund projects that promoted growth and that the grant was going to a wealthy county. The trust fund's charter directs it to give priority to poor counties for sewage plant repairs.

Howard responded that the board was not prohibited from funding projects in wealthy counties, according to minutes of the meeting. In the past 10 years, the board has spent more than $27 million in Brunswick, a wealthy coastal county and one of the largest recipients of Clean Water grants.

When the town of Southport requested $6 million more for the project's second phase, the staff instead recommended $3 million, in keeping with the legislative cap. Howard made a motion in a committee to keep the project eligible for $6 million, on the chance the legislature would repeal or delay the cap on grants. In August, when it was clear the cap would stay, the board agreed to provide $3 million.

Howard, who resigned as chairman this month, was out of town, according to his office, and could not be reached for comment. He remains on the board.

Sen. Tony Rand of Fayetteville, the Senate majority leader, said he is concerned that the grant making process has become political.

"Are the projects, the criteria by which they are judged, well founded and are they followed?" Rand said. "Or is it somebody calling and saying 'give me that money'? If it's going to be a straight political process, we need to know that. Then we'll play politics. I didn't think we were doing that on this."

The Robeson project

In early 2005, the staff recommended funding $95,000 of a $238,000 request for designing a stormwater collection system at the Carolina Commerce and Technology Center, an education and industrial campus in Robeson County. The staff recommended not funding part of the amount -- $105,000 for surveying -- that would have to be done regardless of the stormwater system. But the board voted to fund the entire amount.

In August of the same year, Robeson County requested an additional $1.2 million to construct the project. The staff said paying for the construction phase was premature because an evaluation of the needs couldn't be done until the planning was finished.

Some board members pressed for full funding, and the board approved it, although the application was incomplete, hadn't been through the ranking process and had no score until one was arbitrarily assigned just before approval.

Dickson McLean, a Robeson County lawyer and board member, defended the project as one county's attempt to pull itself up by its bootstraps.

"There was $20 million of buildings which needed to get under way and required a stormwater project to be in place before they could properly construct the buildings," McLean said. "There was an urgency to get those buildings."

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