McCrory irks lawmakers in coal ash pond announcement

by Taft Wireback, Greensboro News-Record, April 18, 2014.

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory miffed some leaders in his own party earlier this week when he unveiled what he termed a “comprehensive plan” for dealing with North Carolina’s coal ash crisis.

Key GOP state legislators said they didn’t get any meaningful advance notice of the plan, which at least one thought went too easy on Duke Energy in some areas.

“We received a phone call late Wednesday,” said Sen. Tom Apodaca, the chairman of the influential Senate Rules Committee. “It really would have been helpful if it had been given to us in advance, so we could have been prepared.”

After being in office for nearly 18 months, McCrory should have a better grasp of how things work in Raleigh and how proposals become law, said Apodaca (R-Henderson).

Both houses of the General Assembly would have to approve any changes to current laws governing the coal ash ponds before they could take effect.

Apodaca was assigned weeks ago by Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham County) to lead the way in crafting legislation tackling the same coal ash issues as those covered by the governor’s new proposal. Apodaca has been working with fellow Republicans in the House — also controlled by the GOP — to develop a joint approach to tightening state laws that deal with all 33 of Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds.

“We had no notice anything was coming,” added Rep. Chuck McGrady (R- Hendersonville), one of the House Republicans working with Apodaca. “Frankly, we thought we were working with (the administration), but this surprised us. There was no consultation.”

Coal ash zoomed into the headlines statewide after the Feb. 2 spill of 30,000 to 39,000 tons of the toxic material from a storage pond at the retired Dan River Steam Station in Eden.

Duke Energy has only begun cleaning up a 70-mile section of the Dan River dotted with deposits of the mucky gray waste. It announced recently that it already has spent about $15 million on the task.

The remainder of that work and what happens at Duke Energy’s other ash ponds likely will emerge as a hot political topic for the General Assembly’s short session that begins May 14.

McCrory’s new proposal drew criticism almost immediately from environmental groups for taking it too easy on the utility, especially in not setting firm deadlines for closing the ash ponds and for disposing of their waste.

But the governor’s approach is not specific or demanding enough for Apodaca, either.

“Our legislation will mandate that the dangerous, wet ash ponds be done away with, and within a short period of time,” Apodaca said about the bill he and his legislative colleagues are assembling.

Apodaca said he and the other GOP legislators have yet to settle on a deadline for eliminating the most serious coal ash threats, but five years would be a good target.

“I think it’s critical that we have an end date,” said Apodaca, who represents Buncombe, Henderson and Transylvania counties.

McGrady echoed Apodaca’s unease with the Wednesday afternoon surprise: “It just doesn’t feel like a collaborative effort.”

House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenburg) tapped McGrady, the vice chairman of the House Environment Committee and a former president of the national Sierra Club, and several other Republican state representatives to work on coal ash regulation, including the possibility of streamlining the legislative process by developing a bill with Apodaca that both houses could support.

McGrady said officials with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources briefed him and several other GOP representatives working on coal ash about McCrory’s new plan on Thursday .

McGrady did not want to go into detail about what the legislators said at the meeting with DENR Secretary John Skvarla about being caught off guard the day before: “Let’s say it was a testy start to the meeting. ... I think Secretary Skvarla understood how irritated people are.”

McCrory fared pretty well in an initial assessment of his plan Wednesday from Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro), who focuses heavily on environmental issues. Harrison initially said it sounded like a good start, although it needed to be tougher in several important areas.

But like her Republican counterparts, Harrison only had the governor’s news release to review at that point. After looking at the actual details in a document she didn’t receive until Wednesday evening, Harrison changed her mind.

The plan in its entirety treats Duke Energy too gingerly, repeating too much of the language from a letter the company’s president, Lynn Good, wrote last month, describing how utility executives think the coal ash threat should be tackled, Harrison said.

“A lot of what’s in there seems to follow what Duke Energy says its own plan would be,” she said about the administration’s proposal.

Other parts of the full McCrory proposal echo a so-called sweetheart court settlement that the DENR proposed as a way of sidestepping efforts by environmental groups to make Duke Energy pursue more aggressive cleanups at some of its plants that have problems with coal ash ponds, Harrison said.

McCrory and the DENR’s staff did not mean to offend anybody by blindsiding legislators or by encroaching on their authority, said Drew Elliott, the DENR’s communications director.

They view Wednesday’s proposal as a starting point open to change by the legislators, but still as a good baseline to help guide legislators’ deliberations, Elliott said.

“This particular plan was something DENR had worked on and the governor wanted to get it in front of the legislature so they could consider it as soon as they convened,” he said. “We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

Elliott acknowledged that the plan contains details that repeat some of what Duke Energy has promised to do in cleaning up its ash ponds and others that might sound similar to the proposed court order the DENR later rescinded.

The administration simply wanted to write Duke Energy’s cleanup promises into a state statute to “hold them to it with the force of law,” Elliott said.

He said language harkening back to the abortive court order stemmed from the fact that “the same staff experts within DENR worked on the consent order and on the proposed legislation as well.”

“It’s the same people looking at the same problem, so it’s not surprising to get some of the same answers,” he said.

Apodaca said he also wanted more specifics in the McCrory plan about Duke Energy plants near Asheville, Charlotte and Wilmington, with ash ponds that he called the “most volatile.”

McCrory’s proposal names a similar list of ash ponds for early action but does not include a timetable for closing them.

“Those ash ponds must be removed, done away with and moved off site. ... We want them gone,” Apodaca said, adding that the material should be disposed of only in a landfill specially designed for handling such waste.

Duke Energy has already committed to permanently closing its two Eden ash ponds and removing their waste to a lined landfill or for use as “structural fill” in building projects.

http://www.news-record.com/news/dan_river/article_2f330dea-c771-11e3-9511-0017a43b2370.html