Coal Ash Spill Shows How a Watchdog Was Defanged

[FriendlyFire]

Coal Ash Spill Shows How a Watchdog Was Defanged

RALEIGH, N.C. — Last June, state employees in charge of stopping water pollution were given updated marching orders on behalf of North Carolina’s new Republican governor and conservative lawmakers.

“The General Assembly doesn’t like you,” an official in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources told supervisors, who had been called from across the state to a drab meeting room here. “They cut your budget, but you didn’t get the message. And they cut your budget again, and you still didn’t get the message.”

From now on, regulators were told, they must focus on customer service, meaning issuing environmental permits for businesses as quickly as possible. Big changes are coming, the official said, according to three people in the meeting, two of whom took notes. “If you don’t like change, you’ll be gone.”

But when the nation’s largest utility, Duke Energy, spilled 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in early February, those big changes were suddenly playing out in a different light. Federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the spill and the relations between Duke and regulators at the environmental agency.

The spill, which coated the river bottom 70 miles downstream and threatened drinking water and aquatic life, drew wide attention to a deal that the environmental department’s new leadership reached with Duke last year over pollution from coal ash ponds. It included a minimal fine but no order that Duke remove ash

Under the federal Clean Water Act, citizen groups may sue polluters if state regulators do not do their job. But the law also allows states to intervene and take over the lawsuits, which is what the Department of Environment and Natural Resources did last year. Environmentalists say the state offered a favorable deal to Duke and blocked their lawsuits, which could have forced Duke to relocate the ash to lined pits away from drinking water.

“I was asked directly by members of my staff, ‘Do we even do enforcements anymore?’ ” said Ms. Adams, who wrote an opinion column about the agency’s “soul-crushing takeover” for The News & Observer of Raleigh after she resigned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/u...rmation-of-north-carolina-agency.html?hp&_r=0

If only Republicans has disbanded EPA this would never have happened.
Delicious coal flavored drink water for everyone.

Joseph G. Anthony
Lexington, KY 4 hours ago
You have to give the Republicans credit: they created numerous jobs to clean up the environmental catastrophe their criminal environmental policies created. But will that satisfy those anti-job greenies?

 

[Thedrin]

The Dan river flows through the towns of Danville and South Boston in Virginia before reaching the sea. Federal laws allow the North Carolinan government to persue a lawsuit against Duke Energy which prevents residents of the state from suing. Does this also prevent residents of Virginia, or the Virginian government from persuing damages, assumming any damage has been felt in Virginia?

 

[amadeus]

Was this an editorial?

 

[Formaldehyde]

It probably seems that way to those who like how Republicans frequently "defang" the federal and state EPA organizations when they are in power. To everybody else, it is likely considered to be a feature story.