* S. 1862, Reducing Nutrient Offset Payments, approved by the Senate, now in House Finance.  In an effort to give developers flexibility, the state allows developers in the Neuse and Tar-Pam basins to build near streams if they pay for the cost of restoration elsewhere to remove pollution.  This bill cuts the new fee for developers from $57 per pound of nitrogen pollution to a totally inadequate $11/ pound – boosting developer profits at the expense of the health of the Neuse River.

* H. 2162/ S.1600, Land Disturbing Activities Near Trout Waters.  For years, state law has been clear: no permanent destruction of trout streams or their buffers.  But it took a court case to get the state environmental agency to implement the law.  Now mountain developers want an official loophole to let them continue destroying trout streams for golf-course communities, roads, and sewer lines laid beside sensitive streams.   

* H. 2884, Disapprove Air Rule/ Older Plant’s Emissions.  Two years ago, Duke Power and Progress Energy fought to weaken state air rules for expansions of existing power plants.  They won, but the new rules are unexpectedly stronger in one respect: they say that when a utility has passed the costs of pollution controls to ratepayers, a utility must measure proposed increases in pollution at a plant against the new, lower baseline of emitted pollution.  That is, it can’t have customers pay for pollution control, and then expand pollution while claiming there’s been no total change in emissions.  However, this bill puts the old rules back in place temporarily, letting Duke Power claim exactly that as it seeks to expand at its Cliffside plant in Rutherford County.  The upshot: if the bill passes, Duke could do less to control pollution from the proposed new plant. 

* H. 1778, Risk-Based Environmental Remediation/ Fund.  For years, the top lobbying priority of the chemical industry has been to weaken North Carolina’s very strong groundwater standards, which essentially forbid polluters to add any contaminant to groundwater in excess of background levels.  Industry wants to replace this with a system that lets companies walk away from contamination if they make modest contributions to a state fund – contributions far too small to actually cover the cost of remediation. The shift – to ‘risk based remediation’ – would reduce the incentive for companies to avoid spills, and would turn pollution into a minor cost of doing business, far below its actual cost to our groundwater resources and to our children, who will need that water in the future.

* Billboard amendment to H. 1827, General Contractor Licensing.  In a favor to the billboard industry, legislators in the House Transportation committee have added an amendment to an unrelated bill to dramatically reduce trees and shrubs along public roads to make billboards more visible, and to eliminate the fee billboard companies currently pay to replace public trees they cut down.   

To read any of these bills, just go to the General Assembly website (www.ncleg.net) and type in the bill number.