The GOP is quietly rolling back NC’s environmental protections | Opinion

Bills involving transgender children, abortion and election changes are drawing attention this legislative session, but how North Carolina Republican lawmakers are undermining environmental protections is an equally important concern.

Perhaps the biggest threat to environmental protections is likely to advance Wednesday when the state House votes on House Bill 600. Its sponsors titled it the “Regulatory Reform Act.” Environmentalists call it “a polluters’ wish list.”

The bill includes provisions that would weaken regulations on discharges into waterways and spare the hog industry from having to adopt cleaner waste disposal methods. Other provisions would impose highly restrictive timelines on how long the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) can assess permit applications involving the distribution or transmission of energy or fuel. DEQ would have 30 days to accept an application as complete and rule on the completed application within 60 days.

DEQ, hobbled by a 15 percent job vacancy rate and inadequate funding, would struggle to meet such deadlines on complex applications that can run for hundreds of pages. If a deadline is missed, an application would be accepted and approved by default with little opportunity for the public to be heard.

Geoff Gisler, a program director at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told me, “Clearly the legislature does not want this done well if they are not funding the agency and enforcing these arbitrarily short timelines.”

House Bill 600 follows the 2023 North Carolina Farm Act, which the legislature approved over the governor’s veto. The law includes provisions that end state environmental protections for millions of acres of isolated wetlands.

If passed by the legislature and approved over a likely veto by Gov. Roy Cooper, House Bill 600 may have its first major environmental impact by easing approval of a proposed pipeline. The MVP Southgate project, an extension from the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia, would run for 70 miles through Rockingham and Alamance counties.

Until recently, the MVP, running from West Virginia’s fracking fields into Virginia, appeared doomed by costs and litigation. In 2020, DEQ denied a water quality permit for the Southgate project.

But as part of the federal debt-ceiling deal, the Biden administration gave the MVP fresh support. Now pipeline builders also are reviving plans for the MVP Southgate extension. The pipeline’s construction in North Carolina would cross hundreds of streams, fell trees, take private land and could impair the Haw River, which feeds Jordan Lake, a Triangle water supply.

Many along the pipeline’s path are strongly opposed. Democratic U.S. Reps. Valerie Foushee and Kathy Manning have asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject the project. But the project is supported by most of the region’s Republican state senators, including Senate leader Phil Berger, whose district includes Rockingham County.

“This is a transformational project that will create jobs and boost our local economies. It is vital to our state’s growth and energy security to complete the MVP Southgate project,” Berger told The News & Observer.

Opponents say the pipeline would degrade the environment and create a threat of leaks when the natural gas it would carry isn’t needed. The pipeline also would lock in fossil fuel use at a time when the state is committed to using more clean energy and the residential use of natural gas is being phased out.

Efforts to once again block the MVP Southgate project are about to launch. Indigenous and environmental groups are hosting a “No Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate” event from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on July 16 at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw.

Some may think the MVP Southgate project is only a concern for the counties involved. But changes that could allow a pipeline to roll past regulators and local opposition should be a concern to all who value North Carolina’s vast but vulnerable natural resources.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com