Rollback on environmental regulations clears NC Senate, with biggest concern removed

A large package of regulatory reforms, described earlier this month as a “polluter’s wish list,” moved forward at the statehouse Wednesday, but with a key section removed.

That section was perhaps the most controversial part of House Bill 600, because it would have limited the state’s ability to keep industrial chemicals out of waterways that feed drinking water systems.

The section was dropped after an amendment from Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, whose district has had water quality issues for years because of chemicals in the Cape Fear River.

The most prominent of those chemicals are made in North Carolina by Chemours, which is up river near the border of Bladen and Cumberland counties. A Republican bill sponsor said this week that he’d hoped to find language that took water pollution “very seriously” while also protecting industry from business-killing regulations.

Lee said Wednesday that lawmakers need more time to come up with language like that.

With this key section gone, the bill moved forward 31-13, with full support from Senate Republicans in attendance and three of 16 Senate Democrats voting for it.

The Southern Environmental Law Center earlier this month called House Bill 600 a “polluter’s wish list,” in part because of the now deleted language. By removing it, and approving a handful of other changes Wednesday, Senate Republicans addressed some concerns, but the measure “remains an environmentally damaging bill,” SELC Legislative Counsel Brooks Rainey Pearson said in a text message.

Republicans shot down a Democratic effort to amend the bill further Wednesday by beefing up state regulations on key pollutants like PFAS and PFOA chemicals, as well as 1,4 dioxane and chromium 6.

Sen. Val Applewhite, who represents parts of Cumberland County with polluted wells, talked about visiting Gray’s Creek and Alderman Road elementary schools, where the water fountains are off limits and cases of bottled water are stacked against walls. She said stronger enforcement is “long past due.”

The Senate’s Republican majority voted to table her amendment, killing it.