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N.C. House tweaks, passes Easley drought bill
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Published: July 8, 2008
RALEIGH
A drought response plan originally proposed by Gov. Mike Easley was approved by a House committee today, after legislators modified the proposal to quell the concerns of farmers and local government officials.
"After six weeks of working groups, two environment committee meetings, this is about as much as there can be anything close to consensus on," said sponsor Rep. Pryor Gibson, D-Anson. "This, as somebody alluded to, is a start. Should we add more things to it? Absolutely. Can you get enough votes for them in this complex a bill? I don't know."
The bill now heads to the House. It needs the approval of both chambers before it can be sent to Gov. Mike Easley.
The proposal builds on an existing state law which requires municipalities and local water systems to file conservation plans with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Those plans are supposed to include increasingly stringent conservation levels, to correspond with increasingly severe droughts.
Under the legislation approved by the committee today, state officials could approve or disapprove of the plans if they determine the plans won't reduce water consumption.
During droughts, the also department would have the authority to direct local officials to ramp up their conservation plans, by moving to a more severe tier in their plans, if they aren't conserving enough water.
"There's not a numerical standard, but there's an expectation that the plans would conserve more water corresponding to more severe droughts," said Robin Smith, the department's assistant secretary for policy and planning.
The House committee removed a provision which would have mandated units reduce water consumption by 10 percent during extreme droughts and 20 percent during more severe exceptional droughts.
Municipalities and officials with local systems had objected to that provision because some of their plans - many of which had already been created and submitted to the state - didn't use drought classifications as the triggers for their conservation efforts. Some plans, for example, use location-specific triggers, such as water levels in specific reservoirs.
The revised bill enables local units to stick to their original conservation plans, even though they may not include specific water reduction percentages.
"That work will not be wasted," said Kim Hibbard with the N.C. League of Municipalities.
Farmers would not be required to report additional water use data to the state. Instead, the Department of Agriculture would be instructed to collect water use data during an annual, voluntary survey on farm operation it conducts.
"Farmers have told us they're opposed to lowering that reporting threshold," said Mitch Peele, with the North Carolina Farm Bureau. "They feel more comfortable reporting information like water use or any personal information about their operations in the survey."
While the bill eases the concerns of local governments and farmers, some lawmakers questioned why the plan doesn't direct the public to conserve water.
"If we get serious about promoting and conserving water, we could achieve something like a 25 to 35 percent savings just by promoting water conservation," said Rep. Cullie Tarleton, D-Watauga, "and there's nothing in this bill that does that."
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