NC House should block bill that cuts environmental rules

State Senate Republicans are making reckless moves to weaken environmental regulations. It’s up to House Republicans and officials at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to stop them.

The Senate’s latest effort to clear-cut regulations came this week in the form of a one-page House bill that the Senate filled with 50 pages of regulatory changes called the Regulatory Reform Act of 2015. It reads like a wish list for developers and polluters. The bill would loosen, or study the potential for reducing, regulations for air quality, water quality, isolated wetlands and recycling. It would also impede the ability of citizens groups to sue the state over the environmental impact of its projects or its decisions to grant permits.

The proposed changes are another annual round of hammering at regulations that developers and polluting industries want to end but that even pro-business legislators have found good reason to keep. Sen. Trudy Wade, a Guilford County Republican pushing the bill, thinks it’s time to try again.

“It’s the same thing that we have been doing for the past two or three years,” Wade says. “What we’re trying to do is eliminate burdensome and unnecessary regulations and make business thrive.”

Easing regulation of businesses at the expense of the state’s habitats and ecosystems doesn’t seem to be a concern for Wade. But it should be a concern for her fellow lawmakers. North Carolina’s greatest wealth lies in the richness and diversity of its natural resources. Ultimately, businesses benefit from that richness, too.

Sponsors of the reform act made changes after DENR officials objected to some elements. Significantly, the sponsors backed off a proposal to ease coastal stormwater rules and buffer requirements. But the overall bill still is poised to weakened regulations and endanger resources and people’s health.

One change would shield companies from fines and other penalties if they self-report pollution events. The proposal was amended to exclude coal ash spills, but it could provide immunity to large polluters.

The bill would eliminate funding for local government programs for collecting discarded electronics. That could spur illegal dumping of computers, TVs and other items not accepted at regular landfills.

The proposal would reduce by about half the state’s 74 air quality monitors by restricting the monitor numbers to the minimum required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. State regulators should have the flexibility to put air quality monitors in as many locations as they see fit.

Perhaps the most far-reaching aspect of this assault on environmental regulations is the bill’s attempt to make it more expensive for citizens groups to sue the state over environmental concerns. Legal action or the threat of it by such groups was crucial to forming the response to Duke Power’s coal ash spill and plans for replacing the Bonner Bridge on the Outer Banks. Citizens groups are vital to effective monitoring of environmental conditions.

The Senate bill originally proposed that citizens groups be required to pay the state’s legal costs in any environmental case the groups fail to win. That has since been narrowed to environmental cases involving state construction and permitting. But making something less wrong doesn’t make it right. Citizens groups, often supported by scant resources, shouldn’t have to weigh whether they can afford the state’s legal costs if they lose a lawsuit. There shouldn’t be a financial penalty for serving in a watchdog role.

Molly Diggins, head of the Sierra Club’s North Carolina chapter, rightly says, “It’s ironic that on the eve of the July 4th holiday weekend, the N.C. Senate saw fit to discourage open access to our courts when citizens seek to challenge state actions that have an environmental impact.”

Let’s hope House members return from the Independence Day holiday with a stronger sense of protecting and preserving the land and the legal freedoms entrusted to our keeping.

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 6:59 PM with the headline "NC House should block bill that cuts environmental rules."