Maybe they’ll just go away

by | Apr 1, 2014 | Editor's Blog, Environment, NCGov | 5 comments

I don’t believe the people running the Department of Environment and Natural Resources don’t care about protecting the environment. It’s just that they care about protecting businesses more. At least that’s the impression left by John Skvarla and his team.

Throughout the coal ash debacle, Skvarla and company sided with Duke Energy instead of environmentalists. Last week revealed that he’s opposed to additional regulations on ground water contamination. Now, it appears, his agency was at odds with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency when it issued a slap on the wrist instead of a harsher penalty for violations at coal ash ponds.

Before the spill, Skvarla ridiculed the environmental community. Governor Pat McCrory has made reducing regulations a centerpiece of his legislation. And, now in the emails released from DENR, it appears that Duke Energy expected more lenient treatment. In response to questions about heavy metal released into streams, Duke’s chief lobbyist noted, “…We were looking for a kinder, gentler regulatory framework according to the governor, etc.”

In addition, it appears that the administration was at odds with its regulators in the field. According the emails released, DENR employees couldn’t get information or clarification about new rules. The picture from the emails seems to reinforce the one portrayed by employees Susan Wilson and Amy Adams when they left last year. They both indicated that under Skvarla, DENR had lost sight of its mission.

I’m not sure that they have lost sight of the mission. I think they are consciously trying to change that mission. They have so convinced themselves that environmental regulations are bad and businesses are good, that they’re looking for reasons not to enforce rules.

And Pat McCrory has been absent in the debate. Just like he checked out of the debacle over at the Department of Health and Human Services, he’s exerting no leadership over DENR. It seems a head-in-the-sand approach to governing. If he doesn’t pay attention to the problems, maybe they will just go away.

It’s a mess of an administration. In 2016, I hope they all just go away, too.

5 Comments

  1. Eilene

    My husband works for DENR. It is a joke these days. They have been greatly discouraged from filing notices of violation when something is wrong, and are told that they should be helping the offenders figure out how to get it right. Would you spend $5000 or $10,000 to do the right thing, when doing the wrong thing is cheap or free? Add to that the fact that filing fees with DENR are still $65 an acre, and haven’t been changed in years and years, and you begin to see the uphill battle they face. They have to review permits, drive to the site, usually several times over a period of months, write inspection reports, etc all for that $65. Then they say that they don’t have the money to keep staff. I wonder why. They spend more that $65 in gas to get to the site two or three times. Never mind the employee’s salary, the electricity for the office, the computers that they need to run the system, etc. Many local programs had much, much higher fees, and still got plenty of business. They also had stricter environmental regulations. So, of course, the repugs in the house and senate thought that was too strict, so they passed a law that said you couldn’t have any regulations that were stricter than federal rules. Wait a minute… federal rules are a skeleton that you are supposed to fill out with your local regulations. These guys are idiots. I would have said that compared to the state legislators, Pat McCrony is powerless to do much, but he did appoint Sklavara, so he too can help burn the place to the ground.

  2. Paleo Tek

    This phenomena is sometimes called “regulatory capture”, it’s even in Wikipedia. And clearly, it’s alive and well in NC. I think part of the problem is that the Republicans have been mad at the environmentalists since the Nixon era, and they’ve come to believe their own spin: “Environmental protection is a Bad Thing. And now that we’re in charge, we’re going to get rid of as much of it as we can.”

    These attitudes are nested in a whole bunch of other interlocking memes, daily reinforced by Faux News. But still, I find it difficult to believe that thinking adults can be so one-sidedly against things like clean air and clean water. Do they have families? Do they think that environmental toxins will magically miss them, because they’re so exceptional?

    It reinforces the idea that it’s a recipe for disaster to put the government in the hands of people who don’t believe in government. The new strain of ‘libertarianism’ loose on the far right is really more corporatist. At least the libertarians think that environmental offenders should pay the full consequences of the damage they do. But the NCGA just seems to think that corporations should reap the benefits of public infrastructure without incurring any of the expenses.

  3. Mick

    Totally agree. DENR used to truly care about the state’s natural resources and environment-related public health issues (I know this first-hand, as I was state-employed before retirement and worked in the environmental arena). But its staffing and budget have been reduced (by the “let’s starve government so it can’t do things we don’t like” leaders in the NCGA) to levels at which monitoring or implementing state/federal laws and regulations is difficult if not impossible. It has refused federal grants to carry out wetland studies and to establish water quality baselines that could help monitor any effects from future fracking. DENR’s new driving notion that businesses are “partners” and the state’s environment can be compromised to enhance the business partners’ ends and desires is a dangerous and sad way to run an agency that is the state’s chief environmental protector.

  4. James Protzman

    Big difference between the leadership of DENR and the rank and file. It’s the leadership that’s the problem, as you point out. I see a staff so totally demoralized, it’s a wonder they can get anything done.

    For his part, McCrory’s simply irrelevant. It would take a monumental act of courage and integrity to fire Skvarla and put a true steward of the environment into place. In other words, that’s never going to happen.

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