Legislature Passes Coal Ash Cleanup, Adjourns Quietly | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Barry Smith, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Drama of recent days absent as chambers wrap up session

    RALEIGH     For all the drama in the days leading up to the adjournment of the 2014 "short session" of the General Assembly, the final day proved anticlimactic. While Tuesday saw the House defeating an economic incentives plan pushed by House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, Wednesday saw a more subdued House approving a bipartisan coal ash cleanup bill, adopting a scaled down economic incentives bill to help a mountain paper mill plant convert its energy source to natural gas, and agreeing to leave for good — or at least until January 2015.

    The Senate Wednesday night figuratively turned the lights off in the Legislative Building after adopting the same coal ash cleanup bill and approving a fix that preserves confidentiality of unemployment insurance information.

    The coal ash compromise requires all coal ash ponds to be cleaned up within 15 years. However, not every pond will be cleaned up in the same manner, said Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson.

    "A coal ash pond in the mountains is very different than a coal ash pond sitting at near sea level down in a bunch of water," McGrady said. "They really need to be looked at separately."

    McGrady said the legislation requires Duke Energy, which owns the ponds, to develop cleanup plans for each individual pond.

    "There are going to be some of these coal ash ponds that are dug up and put in landfills," McGrady continued. "There are going to be some of these coal ash ponds that the ash is used for beneficial purposes for structural fill. I suspect there are going to be some of these coal ash ponds where the coal ash went dry will actually be burned again so that the coal ash has the chemical composition that can be used in cement."
The North Carolina General Assembly from the History Museum court yard: Above.    photo by Stan Deatherage
    Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, said he originally thought that all coal ash ponds should be dug up, but changed his mind after touring some of them.

    "You began to realize this is not a one-size-fits-all solution," McKissick said.

    The bill leaves undecided who will pay for the cost of the cleanup — Duke stockholders or its ratepayers.

    Rep. Pricey Harrison, R-Guilford, said the bill was "a good step for our state to be taking," but it didn't go far enough. She said she wished that it had mandated that cleanup costs would not be borne by ratepayers.

    Lawmakers critical of the measure said if ratepayers had to foot the costs of cleanup, average monthly power bills could increase by $20 to $30 a month.

    The House also approved a bill, previously passed by the Senate, that would provide natural gas infrastructure to help an Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Haywood County convert the energy supply for its boilers from coal to natural gas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had mandated the switch without providing the company money for the transition.

    "This is an important infrastructure improvement in western North Carolina to a facility that has a 100-year history of providing great jobs and strong input into our communities," said Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Haywood.

    The Senate agreed with the House on a measure addressing a legal battle with the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Unemployment Insurance over client confidentiality. Since 2004, the Employment Security Commission (now the Division of Employment Security) had sold attorneys who paid a monthly fee a list of contested unemployment insurance cases. USDOL said the practice violated the confidentiality of workers who lost their jobs.

    Dale Folwell, assistant commerce secretary for employment security, initially increased the monthly fee, and then halted the practice entirely. An attorney who purchased the lists sued the state, claiming her practice would not survive if she couldn't purchase the lists.

    Employers in North Carolina could have faced a penalty charged on every employee if the issue had not been resolved.

    "It reduces the risk to the state on any potential problems in giving out private information on potential beneficiaries," said Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg.

    Folwell said the court case on the issue is scheduled for next week. "When the governor signs this piece of legislation, we will file a dismissal motion based on the fact that this is the statute," Folwell said. "We've been aggressive in our attempt to comply with federal law by using judicial remedies."

    Talk of the General Assembly reconvening after the November elections to tackle Medicaid reform faded in the waning days. On Wednesday, both chambers adjourned sine die, though Tillis said Gov. Pat McCrory may call a special session to deal with economic incentives, including a tax credit for movie production that is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.