Setting the Record Straight

Business interests continue to call most of the shots at the General Assembly

One of the great myths of modern American politics is the one about the supposedly all-powerful environmental lobby. Spurred by the skillful propagandizing of corporate polluters, their high-priced lobbying and P.R. firms and loyal lapdogs over in the far-right think tanks, many Americans have come to accept the fairy tale that every lawmaking body stands at the ready - waiting for orders from a large and monolithic cadre of well-heeled environmental advocates.

Recently, in an essay attacking the usefulness of recycling programs, a staffer at a local right-wing think tank even claimed that one of North Carolina's more modest environmental protection laws was the product of "the left-dominated NC General Assembly."  

Now, returning to the planet Earth, here's how things really work - especially in North Carolina:

Big business (the energy industry, homebuilders, meatpackers, et al) tells the governmental powers-that-be what it wants. This request will then lead to the following alternatives results.

a) Lawmakers move swiftly to pass the request into law - often as a "special provision" buried in the budget or some other bill, or

b) If some of the state's scattered and disparate collection of nonprofit environmental groups raise a stink, lawmakers will allow there to be a hearing or two on the matter before they pass the request into law - perhaps with an amendment that gives a small nod to environmental concerns, or

c) If the state's scattered and disparate collection of nonprofit environmental groups unifies, goes completely crazy, mobilizes hundreds of grassroots activists, secures a large number of editorials from major news outlets, and provides the names and addresses of each of the families whose children will be poisoned as a result of the industry request, lawmakers convene a "stakeholders process" in which staffers from the legislature and the administration convene several meetings with 30 or 40 people around the table. Then, when the legislative deadlines are rapidly approaching, a bill will be put together behind closed doors that peels off an environmental group or two by giving in on a couple of issues and giving industry 80-90% of what it wanted in the first place. This bill is then passed into law as a "consensus," "compromise" measure.

If an environmental group seeks to pass a bill of its own design, the measure is immediately buried in committee so that it never sees the light of day or, in the best case scenario, something akin to the pattern of (c) is followed - with the exception that the environmental groups will be lucky to get half of what they were seeking.

As absurd and distressing as all this sounds, this has been the basic state of affairs at the North Carolina General Assembly for decades. Before that, things were even worse. It actually took years of scratching and clawing by environmental pioneers like one-time lobbyist Bill Holman (and the many grassroots activists and groups he represented) to get to this point.

Cases in point

Anyone who doubts this account would do well to examine two recent developments at the General Assembly surrounding the issues of hog farms and drought prevention.

As reported on the NC Policy Watch blog, The Progressive Pulse, earlier this week, the hog farm issue concerns the latest effort by the all-powerful pork industry to ease the state's modest efforts to control the staggering environmental degradation that results from raising and butchering millions of hogs each year.

For more than a decade now, of course, large segments of North Carolina have been inundated in hog waste that has resulted from the industry's explosive expansion - particularly in the southeastern section of the state. The crown jewel of this expansion is the Smithfield Foods meat factory in the tiny Bladen County town of Tar Heel which kills eight million hogs per year - each of which deposits three times the excrement of a human into the waste lagoons of the surrounding farms.

This week, in a classic case of what might be called "boss hog" politics, the industry succeeded in rushing a new bill though the Senate that amends the 1995 Swine Farm Siting Act. Its basic objective is to gut some key environmental protections surrounding "hog houses" and the waste "lagoons" that surround them. Here's how a scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund describes the bill:

"This bill would allow hog houses to be re-built in violation of the 1995 Swine Farm Siting Act, without regard for public health risks, if the buildings are damaged by fire, hurricanes or other ‘Acts of God.'  Provisions established in 1995 requiring that neighbors of hog farms agree to variances in the set backs would become meaningless if the General Assembly passes these amendments.

Hog farms grandfathered from the 1995 Siting Act would become de facto permanent sites for hog farms with open air lagoons and sprayfields without any regard to the new Swine Farm Environmental Performance Standards passed in 2007."

Aside from the substance of the bill, what is perhaps most disturbing and instructive was the way the measure was raised and passed - namely via a late-session amendment to a House bill on an unrelated matter with no real notice. According to the Senate sponsor, he had been working on the issue pursuant to an industry request for nearly a year, but had only gotten around to informing environmental advocates early last week. The bill passed the Senate by votes of 42-6 and 40-8.      

Though containing less of an overt power play by those who would put the welfare of the state's environment in jeopardy, the recent debate over drought prevention legislation is, in some ways, equally disturbing.

Unlike the hog issue which directly confronts and threatens a relatively small minority of the state's population - usually people of modest means in rural areas - the drought issue is one that has plagued the vast majority of North Carolina's nine-million residents for some time. Almost everyone has been made aware repeatedly of the need to change our water consumption patterns in light of the state's exploding population and the likelihood of more frequent droughts resulting from global warming.

This broad awareness, in combination with repeated strong statements from Governor Easley, helped lead to the introduction of legislation this year that sought, at least initially, to begin a comprehensive overhaul of North Carolina's water management policies. Under the original version of the legislation, all water systems in the state would have been required to adopt water conservation plans that would have resulted in usage reductions of specified amounts - as much as 20% during "exceptional" droughts.  

Unfortunately, as is so often the case when it comes to ambitious or innovative environmental protection bills, this section of the bill was severely weakened in a House committee. While still containing some important provisions worth enacting into law (better reporting and metering of water use, for example) the bill is now much more to the liking of industry and their allies at the local government level. Moreover, despite having passed the House Environment Committee this week, the measure is still no sure thing. It must still pass the full House and negotiate the entire Senate process prior to the legislature's final adjournment - which is tentatively scheduled for late next week.

The bottom line  

Though it has come a long way and is a strong and important player in the ongoing policy debate over the future of North Carolina's vulnerable natural resources, the environmental community is anything but the monolithic political juggernaut that the big polluters and the right-wing think tanks would have us believe. As this week's events remind us, a more accurate description would be of a disparate collection of well-meaning, nonprofit advocates, doing their best to help save the planet while combating the moneyed interest in a tough often hostile political crucible. We would all do well to get off of our butts and lend them a hand.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Setting the Record Straight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.