In 2013, a coalition of environmentalist groups sued Duke Energy "to clean up nearly three dozen leaky coal ash dumps spread across the state." So last summer, Duke Energy had North Carolina legislators change the laws to make make it much more difficult. Michael Biesecker and Mitch Weiss report that Duke's Coal Ash Pits Protected By Provision In North Carolina Regulatory Bill.
An investigation by the Associated Press show that Duke's lobbyists had Republican legislators insert a 330 word section into a 60 page Regulatory Reform Act that:
allowed Duke to avoid any costly cleanup of contaminated groundwater leaching from its unlined dumps toward rivers, lakes and the drinking wells of nearby homeowners. ... "This sweeping change gutted North Carolina's groundwater law," recounts D.J. Gerken, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. ... Still, regulators alone could not protect the company from its huge liability if the environmental groups persevered in court. So Duke officials lobbied — successfully — to change state law, itself.
Their vehicle was the Regulatory Reform Act. And they took aim at a provision in state law that had been on the books for decades, requiring Duke to halt the source of contamination if its subterranean plumes of pollution crept more than 500 feet from its ash dumps.
So, the law was changed so Duke does not have to do anything about underground contamination of groundwater on land it owns, but only react in proportion to levels of pollution that reaches a neighboring property.
In a March 6 ruling, Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway found that last year's lawsuit filed by environmentalists seeking to require the state to enforce the 500-foot contamination limit is now moot — citing the Regulatory Reform Act that became law in August. ... Another section of the new law gave the state's blessing to another way for Duke to avoid liability for pollution: It could buy up residential properties abutting its leaky dumps. ...
This is a total outrage. We must expose the politicians who have done this to the citizens of North Carolina. And, change these laws back to the way there were before they were gutted.
Seriously, North Carolina, WTH?