Pat McCrory may not want to read tomorrow's edition of the New York Times. It's going to contain a devastating story on how things have changed at the state's main environmental regulator, the Department of Environment and National Resources, since the GOP took full control of state government and 2012--and the changes haven't been for the better. Several current and former employees claim that with the ALEC-flavored rollback of some "job-killing" environmental regulations has also come pressure to soft-pedal others. Those changes have really come into sharp focus in the aftermath of the Dan River coal ash spill.
“They’re terrified,” said John Dorney, a retired supervisor who keeps in touch with many current employees. “Now these people have to take a deep breath and say, ‘I know what the rules require, but what does the political process want me to do?’ ”
Soon after McCrory took office as governor, he appointed John Skvarla as secretary of the department. To give you an idea of what this guy's approach is, Skvarla once said that
oil is a renewable resource. One of his assistant secretaries is Mitch Gillespie, a former state representative who once put a bullseye on a window in his office framing DENR's headquarters in Raleigh. McCrory also changed the civil-service rules so that some 179 department employees are now exempt from civil-service protections.
The effect, said midlevel supervisors who now serve at the pleasure of the governor, is that they are hesitant to crack down on polluters who might complain to Mr. Skvarla or a lawmaker, at the risk of their jobs. Several spoke anonymously out of fear of being fired.
“They want to have a hammer to come down on anybody who hinders developers by enforcing regulations,” said a supervisor whose department is supposed to regulate businesses under laws devised to protect water quality. “We’re scared to death to say no to anyone anymore.”
A second supervisor, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “A lot of us never considered ourselves political creatures. What’s happened here has really blown us out of the water. People speak in hushed tones in the hallway to each other. We go offsite to talk. It’s totally changed the culture of this organization.”
According to three other supervisors, they are now under orders to approve permits for businesses as quickly as possible. They are also told to issue deficiency notices to polluters, rather than violation notices that can trigger fines.
Current and former DENR employees, as well as environmental activists, are particularly upset at DENR's sanctioning of Duke Energy, the utility responsible for the Dan River spill, for leaks of coal ash ponds at two Duke power plants. DENR originally wasn't going to do anything until environmental groups threatened to sue Duke. DENR then intervened and imposed a paltry fine of $99,111 with no requirement to remove the ash. It was only after a firestorm of criticism over the Dan River spill that DENR backed out, instead saying that it may order Duke to move the remaining Dan River ash to a lined landfill--what environmental groups were seeking all along.
We may get a chance to peer more into the guts of the changes at DENR. Federal investigators have launched a criminal investigation into the Dan River spill, and employees of both Duke and DENR are due to appear before a federal grand jury on March 18.