At one point Thursday morning, it looked like the Senate might spend the day debating sex education, a statewide smoking ban, and school violence prevention legislation, three of the most contentious issues being considered by the General Assembly this session.
But after a break to allow Senate Democrats and Republicans to meet privately in their respective party caucuses, the smoking ban was removed from the calendar and Senate leaders decided not to bring the other issues up until at least next week.
The crowd in the Senate gallery dissipated, but the session rolled on and it was business as usual, in more ways than one.
With virtually no debate, the Senate approved a change to North Carolina's coastal regulations that could have disastrous effects on North Carolina's shore. The bill would give the Coastal Resources Commission the ability to allow the construction of permanent, hardened structrures to prevent select beaches from eroding.
North Carolina currently bans seawalls and the hardened structures, called terminal groins, because they increase erosion further down the coast and could encourage more development in fragile areas.
The Senate passed a bill last year that would have allowed one terminal groin as a pilot project, on the exclusive Figure Eight Island a gated-community where many of the state's wealthy elite and major political donors have vacation homes.
The island's residents formed a political action committee and hired lobbyists, including former Lieutenant Governor Dennis Wicker and Peter Hans, a member of the UNC Board of Governors—the well-connected trying to protect the well-connected.
The Senate vote wasn't close but the House balked at putting the coast at risk and the Figure Eight bill died. It is back this session and it's worse. It wouldn't limit the number of terminal groins that could be built, turning a pilot project into an all-out assault on the North Carolina's shore.
Expanding the bill increased its financial support and its lobbying force, which now includes two more contract lobbyists employed by The Inlet Committee, which like to be known as Save our Sand; the Inlet Solution.
The committee is funded by cities on the coast, taxpayers money paying to influence state officials to ruin the coastline for all of us. Wicker and his assoicates are still busy too, working for the Figure Eight Homeowners Association to protect the mansions on the island the public can't access.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is fighting the bill and more than 40 scientists signed a letter opposing it.
That's a compelling reason not to buy the claims from the terminal groin proponents that the structures will preserve beaches, not destroy them, beaches the Inlet Committee calls 'both a public trust and economic resource." Interesting phrase considering that this year the public's money is being used to breach that trust.
Duke professor Orrin Pilkey, the state's preeminent coastal geologist, wrote last year on the Progressive Pulse that everything about the proposed structure on Figure Eight Island was disingenuous, including calling it a terminal groin, which Pilkey called a lie of "Baron Munchausen proportions," created to avoid the word jetty.
None of that mattered to the Senate last year and it didn't appear to matter to many Senators Thursday either, as there were only 10 votes against the proposal.
Now its up to the House to listen again to the scientists more than the lobbyists, no matter how well-connected they are, and protect the coast for all of us, not just the millionaires beyond the guardhouse on Figure Eight Island or the developers who want to turn our sand into their profit.
