Category Archives: Water

Discussion of water pollution, water supply and the law of water rights

A Preview of 2014 Environmental Legislation

March 19, 2014.  On March 12, the N.C. General Assembly’s Environmental Review Commission (ERC) met to hear reports from several  working groups created to follow up on 2013 legislative issues. [The ERC is a joint House/Senate committee that meets between legislative sessions to study and develop  legislation on environmental issues.]  The reports included recommended legislation, but the ERC did not really discuss  the  bill drafts. The ERC will vote on legislative proposals for the  2014 session  in April.  The working group bill drafts   represent a starting point for development of 2014 legislation; the ERC co-chairs indicated a willingness to consider changes to  the  proposals  before voting  on April 3 to approve  a package of  2014  ERC  bills.  With the understanding  bill drafts may change between now and April 3,  legislative proposals presented last week included:

Stormwater.  The Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 (Session Law 2013-413) changed state  stormwater  standards to  treat gravel areas as “pervious” and exclude those areas from the calculation of built-upon area on a development site.  (A pervious surface allows  water to  percolate through  to the soil beneath; an impervious surface –such as a concrete driveway —  does not.) Since the amount of built-upon area determines the level of stormwater control required, developers had asked for exclusion of gravel from the calculation of built-upon area as a way to reduce stormwater requirements. The 2013 regulatory reform provision  also directed the ERC to study state stormwater programs “including how partially impervious surfaces are treated in the calculation of built-upon area under those programs”.

Having successfully lobbied for legislation treating “gravel” as a pervious surface and intending to  push for changes  in the way partially impervious surfaces are counted toward built-upon area, supporters of the 2013 legislation encountered a complication — there was no consensus on  the definition of  “gravel”.  As a result, the ERC stormwater working group  focused  on the  gravel  controversy instead of moving  on to the  issue of partially impervious surfaces.

The working group found that gravel areas may or may not be pervious depending on the size and type of the aggregate material used and the underlying substrate. The draft  bill presented to the ERC would actually undo the 2013 legislative decision to exclude all gravel surfaces from the calculation of built-upon area and  direct the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)  to contract with N.C. State University for a study of the pervious/impervious qualities of different types of aggregate materials.

Isolated Wetlands. After several bills proposing to repeal  state rules protecting isolated wetlands failed to win passage,  the  General Assembly asked the ERC to study isolated wetlands regulation.  (See an earlier post for more background on the isolated wetlands issue.) Senator Brent Jackson  presented a recommendation for  modification, but not repeal, of state standards for development in isolated wetlands. You can find a copy of the draft legislation here.

The bill would allow developers to disturb a somewhat larger area of isolated wetlands without a water quality permit review.   Current state rules  allow  isolated wetland impacts below specific thresholds to be “deemed permitted” under certain conditions. The proposed legislation would raise those thresholds. West of Interstate 95, the “deemed permitted” threshold would be increased  from 1/10th of an acre to 1/3 of an acre; east of Interstate 95,   the “deemed permitted” threshold would increase from 1/3 of an acre to 1 acre.  (Interstate 95 has long been used as the  dividing line between wetlands-rich eastern counties and piedmont/western counties that have fewer wetlands.)

The bill also proposes to reduce the mitigation required for isolated wetland impacts.  Wetland rules only require mitigation (in the form of wetland creation, wetland restoration or preservation) for impacts to one acre or more of wetlands; for projects requiring mitigation, the rules set  a  2:1 ratio of acres of wetlands mitigation to acres of wetlands impacted by  development.  The 2:1 mitigation ratio  allows for  loss of wetland function and  potential for mitigation failure.  Current  rules also use  a sliding scale of mitigation credits — giving less credit toward meeting the mitigation requirement for preservation of existing wetlands and more credit for creation or restoration of wetlands.  The ERC working group recommendation appears to propose a flat 1:1 mitigation ratio and makes no distinction based on the type of mitigation used.

Local Environmental Ordinances.  An earlier post described legislative efforts to restrain local government adoption of environmental ordinances,  resulting in a one-year moratorium on adoption of  new city and county  environmental ordinances and an ERC study. The ERC working group on local ordinances, led by Rep. Chuck McGrady and Sen. Andrew Brock, found little  actual conflict between state environmental regulations and local ordinances.  The existence of a specific state/local conflict  apparently became the practical guideline for the working group’s proposed  legislation.  The draft bill addresses the one area of conflict the members found — local ordinances on use and application of fertilizer already regulated by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The recommended legislation follows  the General Assembly’s  past practice  of preempting  local regulation only when necessary to meet  some overriding state interest. It is not clear how the narrowly drafted bill recommended by the  working group will be received by those pushing for stricter limits on local environmental ordinances.   In 2013, the N.C. Homebuilders Association  lobbied for the much broader restrictions on local authority in Senate Bill 112 (discussed in the earlier post).  Under the approach  proposed  in SB 112,   it would be very difficult for a local government  to adopt a  more stringent  ordinance on a subject already addressed (however narrowly) by state or federal environmental rules. For Senate Bill 112 supporters, the issue may be more about the benefits of  a single, statewide set of minimum development standards  than concern about conflict between state and local  regulation.

Reporting wastewater spills. In response to concerns about delayed public notice of the recent Haw River wastewater spill,  an  ERC working group   proposed to amend the existing notice law. You can find a copy of the draft legislation here.  The amendments would do two things —

1. Clearly require notice to DENR  of any spill of more than 1,000 gallons of untreated wastewater.   (Although notice to DENR can be implied from the existing law,  the statute only talks about published notice.)

2. Reduce the time allowed to provide notice (both to DENR and to the public) from 48 hours to 24 hours after untreated wastewater reaches surface waters.  Based on discussion at the March meeting, the ERC  may consider requiring more immediate notice to DENR.

Review of Engineering Work. North Carolina’s professional engineers (PEs)  have lobbied for several years to limit state review of plans prepared  by  PEs and  to limit the ability of regulators to require  changes to  engineering  plans. The most recent effort  led to language in the Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 (Session Law 2013-413)  requiring a study of state and local review of engineering plans. Section 58 of S.L. 2013-413   directed DENR, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health and Human Services and local governments to study:

“(iii) the standard scope of review within each permit program, including whether… staff are requiring revisions that exceed statutory or rulemaking requirements when evaluating such permits or plans; [and]

(iv) opportunities to eliminate unnecessary or superfluous revisions that may have resulted in the past from review processes that exceeded requirements under law, and opportunities to otherwise streamline and improve the review process for applications and plans submitted for approval.”

These issues have come up a number of times in recent years and seem to represent several different concerns on the part of private sector engineers: questions about the engineering credentials of state and local permit reviewers; concern about professional liability for changes in engineering design required by  state/local permitting staff; time added to the permitting process; and chaffing at second-guessing of  a PE’s judgment by regulatory staff.

The working group’s legislative proposal,  can be found here. It appears to take a moderate path toward managing the tension between private sector engineers and state/local permitting staff. (A sometimes necessary tension given their different responsibilities.) One interesting part of the proposal has to do with review of innovative systems and designs. The bill  would allow a permitting agency to charge the  applicant for a third-party engineering review of an innovative system if the agency does not have a staff engineer qualified to do the review.  That seems to be a wise approach given past controversies (and litigation) over approval of innovative systems.

Historical note: There have been a number of lawsuits against state and local  permitting agencies based on  approval of  engineered innovative systems that later failed.  One of the largest lawsuits resulted from the failure of a wastewater system serving  dozens of homes in an Orange County subdivision in the 1990s.   The homeowners sued the developer, the engineering firm that designed the system and the private utility managing the system — but also sued the state  based on claims of negligent permitting. The state ultimately settled the lawsuit, paying thousands of dollars in damages to the homeowners.

Coal Ash.  ERC co-chair Rep. Ruth Samuelson  noted the high level of  public interest in coal ash,  but  indicated the ERC would not discuss coal ash  at the March meeting.  Samuelson stressed the need  for deliberation and informed decision-making. The  ERC has only one more scheduled meeting before the General Assembly convenes in May.  At the  April 3 meeting, the ERC will  vote on recommended legislation for the legislation session and there has been no discussion of potential  coal ash legislation.

Understanding the Court’s Coal Ash Order

Note: This post was updated to link to a different site for a copy of the judge’s order after the original source site became unavailable.

On March 6, 2014,  a  Superior Court judge issued an order reversing part of a 2012 declaratory ruling  by the N.C.  Environmental Management Commission (EMC) concerning regulation of coal ash ponds under state groundwater rules. The declaratory ruling case began in October of 2012 — before the Clean Water Act citizen suits of 2013 and the recent Dan River spill — as a request for an interpretation of state groundwater rules as applied to the coal ash ponds. The declaratory ruling request (filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, Sierra Club, and Western N.C. Alliance) asked the EMC to  rule on three issues:

1. Operators of coal ash  ponds with Clean Water Act discharge permits first issued on or before December 30, 1983 must take corrective action (such as assessment and remediation) when their activity causes a groundwater standard violation — even if the violation occurs inside the compliance boundary around the ash pond;

2. Operators of coal ash  ponds with Clean Water Act discharge permits first issued on or before December 30, 1983 must take immediate action to remove sources of contamination causing a groundwater standard violation; and

3. These same requirements apply to owners of coal ash ponds that are closed and inactive.

Two background notes. State  rules recognize the possibility that waste disposal may cause groundwater contamination.  The rules generally only require corrective action at a permitted waste disposal site  if the waste disposal activity has caused a groundwater standard violation beyond a defined compliance boundary.  Corrective action can include assessment of the extent of contamination, steps to contain or reduce ongoing contamination and groundwater remediation. Landfills built to modern (post-1983) solid waste management standards have a  groundwater compliance boundary  of  250 feet around the perimeter of the waste disposal area or the property  line, whichever is closer.   Older facilities (like the coal ash ponds) generally have a  500-foot groundwater compliance boundary. See a previous post for  more on groundwater compliance boundaries.

December 30, 1983  becomes significant because state rules treat waste disposal sites that first received Clean Water Act permits on or before that date as unpermitted facilities.  (More about the logic of that assumption as applied to ash ponds later.) The rules require a different response to groundwater contamination found at an unpermitted waste disposal  site  as opposed to a permitted facility — presumably because newer facilities  have been built to more environmentally protective standards.

Judge Ridgeway’s Decision. On the first issue, Judge Ridgeway  agreed with the EMC, concluding that state rules only require corrective action if the waste disposal activity causes a violation of groundwater standards beyond the compliance boundary  around the disposal site.  Exceedence of a groundwater standard within the compliance boundary does not require corrective action except in extraordinary circumstances.  Although consistent with past EMC and DENR interpretations,  Judge Ridgeway’s decision leans heavily on new groundwater legislation adopted as part of the Regulatory Reform Act of 2013. (See the  earlier post for  more on the 2013 legislation.) According to the judge’s order, all of the parties to the declaratory ruling case  agreed that the 2013 legislation mooted the compliance boundary issue.

On the other hand, Judge Ridgeway decided the second issue (concerning immediate removal of the source of groundwater contamination) in favor of the petitioners. The  judge  relied on state rules  treating waste disposal  facilities first permitted under the Clean Water Act on or before December 30, 1983 differently from those permitted later.    The rules  classify  older facilities   as  unpermitted  and  a groundwater standard violation at an unpermitted waste disposal site triggers a requirement to immediately remove the source(s) of contamination.    All of the coal ash ponds in the state  first received a Clean Water Act discharge permit before December 30, 1983.

Treating the ash ponds as unpermitted waste disposal  facilities  is  key to the  judge’s ruling  that  the utility companies must immediately remove the contamination source at any ash pond that has caused a groundwater standard violation beyond the compliance boundary.   Removal of the source of groundwater contamination associated with  a coal ash pond clearly has huge implications, since the  primary  source of contamination is the coal ash itself. Under the rules, a groundwater standard violation at a permitted waste disposal facility  may require corrective action, but not  necessarily  removal of  waste causing the contamination.

Judge Ridgeway disposed of the third issue by briefly noting that the laws  and  rules don’t distinguish between active and inactive waste disposal facilities.

Potential confusion.  Judge Ridgeway’s order seems to treat  coal ash ponds as permitted waste disposal sites in deciding the first issue  and as unpermitted waste disposal sites in deciding the  second. The 2013 legislation the judge relies on  to decide  the first issue  clearly  applies to waste disposal systems that require an individual permit under either  water quality or waste management laws. The  new statute language  limiting the EMC’s power to require corrective action  inside the compliance boundary  begins with these words: “When operation of a disposal system permitted under this section results in an exceedance of the groundwater quality standards…”

It seems clear that the 2013 legislation can only benefit operators of waste disposal facilities holding individual  water quality or waste management permits.  Having given  coal ash ponds the benefit of the new law on the first issue, the judge does not explain why the  coal ash ponds are treated as unpermitted waste disposal  facilities in deciding the second.  The judge relies on  state rules that predate the 2013 legislation to identify the kind of corrective required at the ash ponds even though  the new law  also addresses  corrective action —  without making any distinction based on the permitting history of the facility:

“(k) Where operation of a disposal system permitted under this section results in exceedances  of the groundwater quality standards at or beyond the compliance boundary established under subsection (i) of this section, exceedances shall be remedied through cleanup, recovery, containment, or other response as directed by the Commission.”

It is possible that Judge Ridgeway saw no conflict between the new law on corrective action and existing groundwater rules  on corrective action at  older facilities, but the decision does not explain how he reconciled the  two.

Permitted or unpermitted and  does it matter? There may well be an appeal of Judge Ridgeway’s  decision.  By assuming the coal ash ponds have a different permitting status for purposes of the two major issues in the case, the decision awards each side a win and a loss. It is conceivable that at least one party to the case would prefer two wins.

The permitted/unpermitted conflict  just emphasizes again the peculiar regulatory status of coal ash ponds. EMC rules treating pre-December 30, 1983 waste disposal sites as “unpermitted” makes perfect sense  in the context of truly unauthorized waste disposal sites or  older landfills that closed rather than meet new standards for  solid and hazardous waste disposal that went into effect in 1983.  It makes less sense as applied to coal ash ponds that largely fell under the jurisdiction of the Utilities Commission until 2009 and never had an  obligation to comply with solid and hazardous waste regulations.   In fact, the coal ash ponds continued to operate for decades after 1983  — subject only to Clean Water Act permits for discharges from the ponds — with the acquiescence of both state and federal policy makers.  That only began to change in 2009 after the TVA ash spill drew more attention to the risks.  Then,  the state somewhat increased environmental oversight for the ponds — but  failed to  enact comprehensive coal ash disposal legislation  much less demand  immediate closure of the ash ponds.

Since coal ash ponds  operated  outside of  most  environmental regulatory programs for  years,  existing laws and rules don’t fit either operation or closure of the ash ponds very well. As badly as the state needs a solution to the problems surrounding coal  ash ponds, Judge Ridgeway’s order in itself is not likely to be the answer.  A solution will require standards for coal ash disposal;  a process for safe closure of coal ash ponds;  priorities for closure;  and  assessment of environmental damage and ongoing risk at existing facilities. It’s going to require legislation.

The Dan River Coal Ash Spill and Environmental Policy

March 3, 2014.  The February 2 coal ash spill at Duke Energy’s Dan River steam station (see an earlier post for more on the spill) puts some recent and still pending environmental policy decisions in a  new light.

Preventing state environmental programs from adopting standards “more stringent than” federal standards.  In 2011, the General Assembly prohibited environmental agencies  from adopting a rule  “that imposes a more restrictive standard, limitation, or requirement than those imposed by federal law or rule, if a federal law or rule pertaining to the same subject matter has been adopted”. You can find the statute (G.S. 150B-19.3)  here.   The increasing evidence of water quality problems associated with coal ash  ponds may test those limits on state regulation —

♦  The question is whether  new state rules on  coal ash disposal or closure of existing coal ash ponds would be considered  “more stringent” than existing  federal rules.  Federal rules exempt  coal ash from regulation as a hazardous waste, but include ash as a “solid waste” and set minimum standards for solid waste landfills. On the other hand, coal ash ponds aren’t considered solid waste landfills so the solid waste rules don’t apply.  Federal  Clean Water Act rules  regulating  stormwater and wastewater discharges apply to the ponds, but nothing in the existing  federal rules requires  a coal ash pond to meet  construction standards  to minimize groundwater impacts or obligates  the utility company to move coal ash from a pond to a disposal facility with less environmental risk. Given that landscape — federal rules  address some, but not all,  concerns about coal ash disposal — can state environmental programs fill the gaps by imposing additional requirements without specific statutory authority?

♦ The exceptions in G.S. 150B-19.3 are inadequate to get ahead of an environmental  problem that poses a long-term risk, but  not a   “sudden, unforeseen” threat.  Few of the problems associated with coal ash ponds would be considered sudden or unforeseen. Both federal and state regulators have long known that  unlined ash ponds pose  some  risk of groundwater contamination. The massive spill at  TVA’s Kingston plant in 2008  focused attention on the possibility of  structural failure of a coal ash  impoundment.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  has been working on federal  coal ash disposal regulations off and on for over ten years because of these and other concerns. As obvious as the problems surrounding coal ash disposal have now become, the exceptions in G.S. 150B-19.3 don’t seem to give environmental agencies a way to address those problems through rulemaking.

♦  If state agencies  need  additional  statutory authority   to adopt  state rules that go beyond current federal regulation of coal ash disposal,  rulemaking could not begin until after the 2014 legislative session that  begins in mid-May.  Rule adoption often takes two years. The other alternative would be  for the General Assembly itself to set standards for coal ash disposal through legislation. Legislation can move much more quickly than rulemaking, but the last effort to enact state legislation on coal ash  failed due to opposition from the utility companies. See  this  post for more information on  earlier state legislation and  a link to the 2009 coal ash disposal bill.

Efforts to limit state review of engineered plans and drawings.  North Carolina’s professional engineers (PEs)   have lobbied for several years to limit state review of plans prepared  by  PEs and to constrain the ability of regulatory staff to require  changes to  engineering  plans. The most recent effort  led to language in the Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 (Session Law 2013-413)  requiring a study of state and local review of engineering plans. Section 58 of S.L. 2013-413  requires DENR, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health and Human Services and local governments to study:

“(iii) the standard scope of review within each permit program, including whether… staff are requiring revisions that exceed statutory or rulemaking requirements when evaluating such permits or plans; [and]

(iv) opportunities to eliminate unnecessary or superfluous revisions that may have resulted in the past from review processes that exceeded requirements under law, and opportunities to otherwise streamline and improve the review process for applications and plans submitted for approval.”

The history and recent failure of the Dan River stormwater pipe reinforces the value of having a second, objective review of engineering plans and decisions.  The  early decision by utility company engineers (before state regulation) to expand the ash pond over a metal stormwater pipe and the apparent failure to plan for maintenance of the pipe likely contributed to the spill.   In the aftermath of the February spill, it became clear that current Duke Energy staff  did  not know how the stormwater pipe had been constructed — incorrectly  assuming that  the entire stormwater pipe was concrete.    Even in real time response to the Dan River spill, Duke Energy  and  DENR  engineering staff  sometimes reacted very differently to the same information. Duke Energy did a camera inspection of  a second, smaller stormwater pipe at the Dan River site to check its condition.  According to news reports,  Duke Energy staff  planned no immediate action based on the results of the camera inspection other than continued monitoring.  A state dam safety engineer who looked at the same video showing  leaks and pooling of water in the  pipe concluded that  the  second  pipe could also be discharging coal ash to the Dan River. Water quality testing  confirmed high levels of arsenic in discharges from the pipe and the dam safety program ordered Duke to close the second pipe within 10 days.  When an error carries potentially high risks or costs,  review of engineering plans and decisions can be critical — simply because  state and local environmental staff will look at the same situation through different eyes.

Note: The Study of Review of Engineering Work has been submitted to the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission and the General Assembly could consider legislation on state/local review of engineering plans in the upcoming legislative session.

Limiting DENR’s ability to order steps to contain groundwater contamination. The Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 also does two significant things to limit (or defer) steps to contain or cleanup groundwater contamination: 

♦ The law makes the property line  the presumed “compliance boundary” for groundwater contamination caused by a permitted waste disposal facility  (including  a  coal ash pond).  State rules allowed for some exceedence of groundwater standards near a waste disposal area, but generally put  the compliance boundary at 250 feet around the footprint of the facility or  at the property line whichever is closer.  Causing an exceedence of  groundwater standards beyond the compliance boundary violates the permit. The new law  presumes  groundwater contamination associated with a waste disposal facility  can be allowed to migrate to the property boundary — including any  adjoining  property in the same ownership. The law does not change existing compliance boundaries set by permit, but sends a strong message about future permit terms  and regulatory requirements. The change would potentially allow the owner of a waste disposal facility to contaminate a much greater area of groundwater without any obligation to remediate. Using the property line as the compliance boundary also leaves little safety margin to protect the groundwater rights of  nearby  property owners.

♦ The law  limits DENR’s ability to require the operator of a permitted waste disposal facility to take steps to remediate or contain groundwater contamination within the compliance boundary. The law ties DENR’s hands until the contamination has migrated beyond the compliance boundary unless DENR can show that:

(1)   The contamination has already caused a water quality violation in adjoining classified waters  or a violation “can be reasonably predicted to occur”;

(2)  The contamination poses an imminent threat to the environment, public health, or safety;

(3)  The contamination will cause a violation of any standard in groundwater occurring in the bedrock, including limestone aquifers, unless  the violation has no  potential to adversely affect a water supply well.

At the very least, DENR will have to meet a significant new burden before directing the owner of a waste disposal facility to take steps to prevent further migration of groundwater contamination.  It appears that clear evidence of groundwater contamination  moving  offsite — affecting another property owner’s groundwater  — will not be enough by itself to allow DENR to require steps to contain the contamination.  DENR  will have to  demonstrate that  groundwater standards will be violated. In the worst case, the horse will be well out of the barn before the state can act.

Coal Ash Problems Continued

February 9, 2014. An earlier post described  groundwater contamination and  potential surface water  pollution associated with coal ash impoundments in North Carolina.  Last week,  a Duke Energy  ash impoundment in Rockingham County released  an estimated  82,000 tons of  coal ash into the Dan River. The ash, in a slurry of  as much as 27 million gallons of water, leaked from a ruptured  stormwater pipe running under an ash impoundment at Duke’s now-closed Dan River Steam Station.  The spill  continued off and on for five  days  as Duke Energy worked to temporarily contain the spill and then permanently cap the  stormwater pipe.  Duke Energy workers finished installing and testing the permanent cap  yesterday.  Early reporting on the spill can be found in stories by  Charlotte Observer reporter Bruce Henderson here and here and by AP reporter Michael Biesecker here.

EPA staff  have been on site since early last week.  Although coal ash has not been classified as a hazardous waste, coal ash can contain a number of metals identified as hazardous substances in rules adopted by EPA under the Clean Water Act.  Under federal law, a  hazardous substance spill that exceeds thresholds set in federal rules must be reported immediately to EPA and to emergency response agencies.     (You can find the rule listing hazardous substances regulated under the Clean Water Act and the reporting threshold for each substance here.)  Although EPA must be notified immediately of a reportable spill, the person (or company) responsible can take up  to 24 hours to determine whether the spill  meets the reporting threshold.

Under state law (G.S. 143-215.85),  anyone responsible for a hazardous substance spill  must “immediately notify the Department, or any of its agents or employees, of the nature, location and time of the discharge and of the measures which are being taken or are proposed to be taken to contain and remove the discharge.”  Both state and federal law also require immediate action to contain the spill, remove the hazardous substance and restore damage caused by the spill.

It is not yet clear how the spill  will affect water quality  and life in the Dan River.  The nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance reported that water samples  taken by that organization  close  to the spill site  showed high levels of arsenic and other  metals. The Waterkeeper Alliance reported arsenic at levels capable of causing acute injury to fish and wildlife.  You can find the Waterkeeper Alliance test results here.  (Click on an individual sampling location in the box on the left-hand side of the page to pull up the test results for that sample.)  Note that results have been reported as milligrams/liter (mg/L) and have to be converted to micrograms/liter (ug/L) for direct comparison to DENR sampling results.

DENR posted its complete water quality test results late Friday;  you can find  the  DENR  lab report here.  Allowing for different sampling locations and units of measure,   DENR’s results are generally consistent with test results reported by the Waterkeeper Alliance.   A DENR water quality sample taken on  February 3, 2014 at Draper Landing  (about 2  miles downstream of the spill site) showed arsenic levels of 40 micrograms per liter —  four times the water quality standard of 10 micrograms/liter.  A sample taken on the same day further downstream (at the Virginia border) showed arsenic levels of 13 micrograms/liter.  DENR’s results  also show water quality standard violations in the Dan River for  copper, aluminum and iron.  By February 4, arsenic levels at Draper Landing had  dropped back below the water quality standard and levels at the Virginia border were at the water quality limit of 10 micrograms/liter.  Results for copper, aluminum and iron remained high.

Sampling immediately after a  spill only  provides a snapshot of water quality conditions and may  not reflect  long-term impacts to the river as metals  leach out of  coal ash settled on the river bottom.  A year after the TVA coal ash spill, Duke University scientists found extremely high levels of arsenic in pore water (the water in river-bottom sediment) in Tennessee’s Emory River. Although surface water testing showed arsenic levels in the Emory River dropped just  after the TVA spill,  the contaminated sediment became a source of ongoing arsenic loading to the river in low oxygen conditions.  (Source:  Bruce Henderson’s  report for the Charlotte Observer.)   It will also take more time to get an assessment of the damage caused to vegetation, fish and wildlife as a result of the physical presence of ash in the water and on the river bottom.

There have been  no reported  impacts to drinking water. The Danville, Virginia water system has an  intake in the river  downstream of the spill site, but  the  water treatment plant had been able to filter out the ash and  treated water continued to meet drinking water standards.

Some questions and concerns raised  by the spill:

Public notice of hazardous substance spills.   It doesn’t appear that either federal or state law requires the person (or company) responsible for a hazardous substance spill to notify the general public and that may be a gap  for the N.C. General Assembly  to fill.   After notifying state and federal officials, Duke Energy put out a press release about the Dan River spill just over 24 hours after detecting the release.  In the case of an immediate health and safety hazard, early notice would be better — although there  may  be  a trade-off  between early notice and the completeness and accuracy of information about the spill.

Conflicting water quality test results.  Conflicting  water quality test results  created a significant amount of confusion about the Dan River spill — and some degree of suspicion. Mid-week, Duke Energy  reported  that river water samples taken  downstream of the release  showed only trace amounts of  arsenic and other metals.  You can find the Duke Energy water quality testing plan and results here.   Note that Duke Energy reported  water quality test results  as  parts per billion (ppb)  — a unit that is essentially equivalent to the micrograms/liter (ug/L)  used  by  DENR.  (For purposes of comparing  results, assume 1 ppb =1 ug/L.) Duke Energy also provides  results for both unfiltered samples and filtered samples used to monitor treated drinking water quality.

Duke Energy’s instream results differ significantly from  results reported by the Waterkeeper Alliance and by DENR. In the end, the Waterkeeper Alliance results and the DENR results seem to be generally consistent with each other;  differences can most likely be attributed to  selection of sampling locations. The extreme divergence of Duke Energy’s water quality test results calls for some explanation.  Since state water quality  test results lagged behind by several days, the  Duke Energy  results became the basis for early public statements about  water quality impacts and that information proved to be unreliable. The inconsistent test results also suggest the public  would be better served  if  the person  responsible for a hazardous substance spill provided   water quality test results to the state’s water quality agency for confirmation  before releasing the information to the public.

Much of the water quality concern over the last week  focused on arsenic levels in the Dan River. Another metal found in coal ash, selenium, can damage fish populations and present a health risk to people who eat  the fish.  DENR’s February 7, 2014 lab results for the Dan River did not find excessive levels of selenium, reporting selenium at the lowest quantifiable level.    Preliminary lab results released by DENR on February 6, 2014 omitted the initial selenium results,  indicating those samples would be given additional analysis because of suspected “interference”.   The preliminary lab report did not explain the nature of  the interference  — which could mean another potential source of selenium in the Dan River or something related to the analytical process. Given conflicting data  and general confusion over  water quality test results from the Dan River spill, it would be helpful to have more explanation of the preliminary and final selenium results.

Delays in providing state water quality sampling results. DENR tested for  more potential contaminants than either Duke Energy or the Waterkeeper Alliance, but  that does not  completely explain why results only became available five full days following the spill.  Some analytical methods take longer than others, but it is important to  know  if inadequacies in the state water quality laboratory or other factors contributed to the delay. In this case, waiting five full business days for complete water quality test results probably didn’t cause  additional harm, but the next hazardous substance spill may be different.  The delay clearly did have one immediate result  — it left an information gap that was filled by what turned out to be inaccurate water quality information.

Lack of information about conditions in old coal ash impoundments.   Since  older coal ash ponds have been largely unregulated, state and federal environmental agencies have very limited information about the impoundments. The Dan River spill suggests that utility company managers don’t have all of the information needed to manage  environmental risk  at these facilities either. Duke Energy struggled to find and fix the cause of the spill in part because the company believed the leaking stormwater pipe had been constructed entirely of concrete.  Duke Energy employees could not find any damage to the end of the pipe and there was no obvious reason that a buried section of concrete pipe would have broken. It turned out that much of the buried pipe was actually constructed of metal rather than concrete, suggesting that corrosion caused the break.

The lack of accurate information on conditions at the Dan River Steam Station impoundment  suggests the need for a  joint Duke Energy/ DENR engineering review  of existing ash ponds –including  documentation of past construction, maintenance and expansion activities –to identify potentially high risk conditions.

The Links between Coal Ash Disposal and Water Pollution

January 23, 2014. Burning coal  generates ash; depending on the  type of  coal,  the ash may contain iron, chromium,  manganese, lead, arsenic, boron and selenium.   At high levels of exposure, some  of those elements  cause  health problems  such as increased cancer risk and neurological damage.  At many coal-fired power plants, large open impoundments (or “ponds”) store coal ash in water; the ponds may also receive stormwater and process wastewater from the electric generating plant. Dry ash may be disposed of in a landfill, but can  also be  used in manufacturing cement or as additional fill material on construction sites.  Concern about the environmental impacts of  coal ash disposal prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to  propose new federal rules  in 2000. EPA ultimately withdrew the proposed rules in the face of opposition from  electric generating companies, members of Congress and state governments. More than a decade later, regulation of coal ash disposal  remains at a stalemate — no new federal rules have been adopted and Congressional supporters of the electric generating companies have responded to a new EPA  rule proposal by attempting to remove EPA’s authority to regulate coal ash disposal altogether. In the meantime, data collected by EPA and events in North Carolina suggest real risks to surface water and groundwater supplies.

Coal ash in North Carolina.  Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress (related companies  resulting from the 2012 merger of Duke Energy and Progress Energy)  have a combined 33  wet coal ash ponds located at 14 electric generating stations  in North Carolina.  You can find a map showing the location of the N.C. ash ponds here.  The  ponds have been largely unregulated until very recently.  No state or federal standards applied to construction of the existing coal ash ponds. Unlike modern landfills, the ash ponds  are not lined to prevent contaminants from percolating into the groundwater below.   Although coal ash  can have some of the characteristics of hazardous waste,  EPA  has excluded  coal ash from federal hazardous waste regulations.

Before  2009, DENR’s water quality program exercised  very limited regulatory authority over coal ash ponds.  The Division of Water Quality (DWQ)  issued a federal Clean Water Act permit for any direct discharge from an ash pond to surface waters, but did not require stormwater controls or groundwater monitoring. State law exempted coal ash ponds and other utility impoundments from regulation under the  N.C. Dam Safety Act. The  state’s largely hands-off approach to coal ash ponds  began to change after a massive spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston plant in 2008.   On December 22, 2008,  an  ash impoundment at the  Kingston plant breached and spilled an estimated  5. 4  million cubic yards of ash slurry. The spill flooded 15 homes, covered 300 acres and deposited over 3 million cubic yards of ash in the nearby Emory River, making it one of the largest industrial spills in American history. The cleanup cost $1.1 billion and  took over four years to complete.

In response to the TVA disaster, North Carolina legislators introduced several bills in 2009 to strengthen state regulation of coal ash disposal.  House Bill 1354    may have been  the most comprehensive; the bill  set standards for coal ash disposal,   required groundwater monitoring around  existing ash ponds, and prohibited construction of new wet ponds.  The bill ran into opposition from the major electric generating companies and never got out of committee. The only piece of coal ash legislation enacted in 2009,   Session Law 2009-390 , repealed  the N.C. Dam Safety Act  exemption for coal ash ponds and other utility impoundments.

Although comprehensive state legislation on coal ash disposal failed,  DWQ increased efforts to use existing state laws to  reduce the water pollution risk and  began putting groundwater monitoring requirements in  Clean Water Act  permits for coal ash ponds in 2009-2010.  One of the factors  in  DWQ’s decision: troubling results from  voluntary groundwater monitoring carried out by Duke Energy and Progress Energy as part of an  industry-led program started in 2006.  DWQ also began  work on  stormwater requirements for  coal ash  disposal facilities.   In 2013,  several things happened  to shine a much brighter light on the coal ash ponds in North Carolina:

Clean Water Act citizens’ suits and  DENR enforcement action.  In early 2013,  the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) filed two  notices of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act  based on water pollution from coal ash ponds. (Under the Clean Water Act, a citizen  can sue to enforce the Act only  if the water quality permitting agency has failed to take effective enforcement action. The 60-day notice  gives the permitting agency  time to show that effective enforcement action has  been taken.)  One notice, filed on behalf of the N.C. Sierra Club, Western N.C. Alliance and the Waterkeeper Alliance,    concerned illegal discharges  into the French Broad River from ash impoundments at the Asheville Steam Electric Generating Plant operated by Duke Energy Progress.  The other notice, filed on behalf of the Catawba Waterkeeper Foundation, attributed contaminants in Mountain Island Lake  – a water supply for the City of Charlotte – to  seeps from coal ash ponds associated with the Riverbend Steam Station in Gaston County operated by Duke Energy Carolinas.

In response to the  two  SELC notices,  DENR filed enforcement actions against Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress  in the spring of 2013 and immediately  began work on a consent order to resolve  the Asheville and Riverbend  violations.   The state enforcement action described  illegal discharges in the form of seeps through the impoundment walls at both facilities and groundwater standard violations near  the Asheville impoundments.  After taking  public comment on a draft consent agreement, DENR filed a revised consent agreement with the court in October 2013.  You can find a copy of the proposed consent agreement  here. The consent agreement would require the companies to pay civil penalties, increase groundwater monitoring  and eliminate unpermitted discharges  to  rivers and lakes. The consent agreement has not yet been approved by the court;   meanwhile, the pending state enforcement action keeps the threatened citizens suits on hold.

Drinking water well  contamination near  the  Asheville  coal ash pond.  In 2012,  the state water quality program   found  high levels of iron and manganese in one of five private drinking water wells located near the Asheville  plant.   When DENR retested the well  in 2013,  the results showed a level of contamination that made the water unsafe for use without filtration and  DENR  ordered  Duke Energy Progress to provide the homeowner with an alternative water supply and increase off-site groundwater monitoring around the  ash pond.   The contaminated drinking water well added another groundwater impact to those  identified in the DENR enforcement action filed earlier in the year.

Duke Energy’s agreement with Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. Last fall, Reporter Bruce Henderson  wrote  an  article  for the Raleigh News and Observer about an  unusual agreement between  Duke Energy Progress and Cape Fear Public Utility Authority.   Cape Fear Public Utility Authority has  two public water supply wells located within 2,000 feet of an impoundment holding coal ash from Duke’s Sutton Electric Generating Plant; one of the two wells supplies water to the Flemington community.  Under the agreement, Duke Energy Progress will pay up to $1.8 million  to extend a water line  to carry treated  Cape Fear River water to Flemington and the Authority will close the water supply well. The agreement is significant for two reasons:

1.  In entering into the agreement, Duke has implicitly acknowledged that  groundwater contamination from  the  coal ash pond  may  move offsite and contaminate  the public water supply wells.

2. The agreement requires  Cape Fear Public Utility Authority to close four existing water supply wells in a 17-square mile area bounded by the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers. The Authority also agrees  not to install new  public water supply wells  in the area.  As a result,  groundwater in the entire 17-square mile area will be off-limits for  public water  supply for the foreseeable future because of the potential for contamination from the coal ash pond. (The agreement does  not affect private water supply wells in the area, but those wells would presumably face the same risk of contamination.)

Total cost of the project has been estimated at $2.25 million and costs above the first $1.8 million will be shared between Duke Energy and  Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. You can find a copy of the agreement (as presented  at the October 2013 meeting of the Cape Fear Public Utility  Authority Board)  here.

National data on environmental harm caused by  coal ash disposal.  A 2007 EPA report   assessed 85 instances of  suspected damage  caused by disposal of coal  ash in  landfills or  in ponds.  In 67 cases,  EPA confirmed  either  “proven”  damage (direct health impacts or documented harm to fish, wildlife, or water quality) or “potential” damage (contamination exceeding  drinking water standards either  beneath or near the waste disposal site).  The 67 cases broke down into 24 proven damage cases and 43 potential damage cases.   In the remaining 18 cases, EPA could not confirm a link between  coal ash disposal and environmental or health risks.

In 2009, EPA  surveyed  electric generating companies  to get  more information specifically on wet ash impoundments and  asked the  companies to report  any known  spills or discharges  that had occurred over the previous ten years (not including groundwater releases).  The 240  companies responding to the survey reported  29  spills, breaches and  discharges.  There was little overlap between the incidents reported in the survey and those assessed in EPA’s 2007 report.  Some of the spills reported in the 2009 survey had occurred since the 2007 assessment; others had never been reported to EPA.

North Carolina in the national data.  Two  of the “proven” damage cases described in the 2007 EPA report involved older incidents at North Carolina facilities.   Permitted releases of  water from a coal ash impoundment  at the Roxboro Steam Electric Generating Plant made  fish in Hyco Lake unsafe to eat for a number of years because of high levels of selenium.  In 1990,  Carolina Power & Light shifted to a dry ash system at the Roxboro plant to meet tighter selenium discharge limits and the fish consumption advisory was lifted in 1994.  In the second “proven” damage case from North Carolina, selenium in  discharges from an impoundment at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek plant entirely eliminated 16 of  20 fish species originally found in Belews Lake, including all of the major sport fish.  Under state orders to reduce the selenium discharge,   Duke Energy changed its method of fly ash disposal in 1985 and the state lifted the  fish consumption advisory for Belews Lake  in 2000.  (Descriptions of the environmental damage at Hyco Lake and Belews Lake come from the 2007 EPA  Coal Combustion Waste Damage Assessment Report; the link is provided  above.)  Duke Energy’s Allen Steam  Generating Plant appears in the EPA list of potential damage cases. The Asheville and Riverbend releases  cited in  DENR’s 2013 enforcement action do not appear in either the 2007 EPA report or in the 2009 survey  responses submitted on behalf of Duke Energy and Progress Energy.

State and federal regulatory action?   In June of 2010, EPA published  a new draft rule on disposal of coal combustion residuals. The rule proposed  two alternative approaches to regulating coal ash disposal –1.  treat the ash as a “special waste” under federal hazardous waste rules, establishing specific standards for disposal; or 2. adopt standards for disposal of coal ash as solid waste (the same broad category that covers other, non-hazardous waste). EPA has not yet decided on  which path to take and in the meantime there have been several efforts to shut down the EPA rulemaking entirely.   In July of 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 2218 (The Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act of 2013)  which would prohibit EPA from adopting enforceable national standards  for  coal ash disposal and leave regulation to the states.  See the Library of Congress bill summary for more on H.R. 2218.  The U.S. Senate has not acted on the bill.

In North Carolina, the Regulatory Reform  Act of 2013 ( Session Law 2013-413) included a provision limiting DENR’s  authority to require steps to contain groundwater contamination at a  permitted waste disposal facility  — including coal ash impoundments.  For more detail, see the  section on groundwater in an earlier post on 2013  water quality legislation.

So.   It seems clear that large, unlined coal ash impoundments present  some  risk to groundwater,  surface water  and  fish. Recent  events suggest that the risk may be greater than previously known. There was little or no groundwater monitoring around coal ash ponds  before 2006 and  no state oversight of  groundwater monitoring until 2009-2010.  It is simply a fact that groundwater contamination is much more likely to be found if someone is actually looking for it.  The same is true for discharges to rivers and lakes through the walls of coal ash impoundments. The  Riverbend and Asheville  enforcement cases  only happened after citizens documented  unpermitted discharges and gave notice of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act.  It is not clear that the state’s water quality program had found the illegal discharges identified in the consent order or has the resources to do adequate inspections of these large  impoundments.  (The Asheville impoundments alone total 91 acres.) So as new information suggests the need for  frequent, careful inspection of coal ash ponds and quick, effective response to groundwater contamination, state budget and environmental policies are moving in the direction of making both  more difficult.

Regulatory Reform and the Environment III: The Future

December 4, 2013. Two earlier posts  looked at  the history of regulatory reform in North Carolina and regulatory reform’s  focus on environmental rules.  The current General Assembly has continued  to work on regulatory reform in general and  limiting environmental rules in particular.  Regulatory reform legislation adopted by the N.C. General Assembly since 2011  reflects two basic  ideas: 1. Some number of agency rules are simply unnecessary and should be repealed;  and 2.  If  a federal  environmental standard exists, state and local environmental rules should not go beyond the federal requirement except in extraordinary circumstances. More about the  assumptions behind  recent regulatory reform efforts below.

Assumption: State agencies have unnecessary and overly burdensome rules that should be repealed. There will always be a need to review, update and in some cases repeal outdated rules, but it is not clear that rooting out “unnecessary” rules can  do much to turn down the political heat over regulations. It isn’t for lack of trying. In October 2010, Governor Beverly Perdue issued an executive order on regulatory reform.   Executive Order 70    invited citizens to identify overly burdensome and unnecessary rules and  directed state agencies to  do  an internal review to identify unnecessary and outdated rules.   In 2011, the General Assembly’s  Regulatory Reform Committee   invited the public to identify “outdated,  unnecessary, unduly burdensome, or vague rules…that are an impediment to private sector job creation”  in a series of public meetings. The  legislature also amended the state’s Administrative Procedures Act in 2011 to put the rules review process created under Executive Order 70 into  law.  G.S. 150B-19.2 

The earlier post on the history of regulatory reform describes the somewhat underwhelming results of both efforts to root out unnecessary and overly burdensome rules.  Although state agencies identified several hundred unnecessary rules  through the internal review required under Executive Order 70 , most of those rules related to programs that no longer existed or had been superceded by new standards.  Since the rules were no longer being enforced, repeal  did nothing to ease complaints about regulatory burden. On the other hand, rules identified by citizens as unnecessary or unduly burdensome often turned out to be required  by  state or federal law or the result of a significant  policy  debate and unlikely candidates for  a politically painless  repeal.

The  Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 (Session Law 2013-413 ) takes  a  new  approach,  requiring state agencies to review and readopt all existing rules every ten years.  If a rule is not reviewed   on the schedule set by the state’s Rules Review Commission, the rule automatically expires. (Rules needed to carry out a delegated federal program  will not automatically expire,  but  still have to be reviewed and readopted.)   Continuing its preoccupation with environmental rules, the General Assembly directed the  Rules Review Commission to schedule state water quality standards and wetland rules for the first round of review in 2014.  Ten-year review and readoption  may one day settle into a manageable  routine,  but several potential pitfalls  lie ahead:

— Given N.C.’s lengthy rulemaking process,  a 10-year  readoption  schedule could lead to constant churning and little certainty for either regulators or the public.  Nothing in Session Law 2013-413 shortens the process for readoption of an existing rule, so the agency would need to go through all of the usual rule adoption steps: public notice, fiscal analysis, review by the Rules Review Commission, and  possible legislative disapproval.  The Falls Lake nutrient rules took about five years from beginning to effective date and the rules include some requirements that phase-in even later.  Streamlining the process for readoption and starting the ten-year review period at full implementation of a rule (rather than adoption)  could reduce the churning.

— Review and readoption of rules will be even  more disruptive if it is used to constantly revisit policy decisions rather than simply identify outdated, unnecessary rules. The fact that the General Assembly targeted water quality and wetland rules for the first round of review and readoption suggests  a policy agenda.  Public statements by the director of  the state’s water quality programs,  Tom Reeder,   indicate that  the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has already put  stream buffer and  wetland rules  — repeatedly targeted by development interests — in the spotlight for the first round of water quality rule review.

— Complex sets of rules have to be reviewed together. Stream buffer rules, for example,  have  generally been adopted as part of  a larger plan to solve a specific water quality problem. Federal law requires the state to  reduce  pollution causing impaired water quality  (like the nutrient problems in Falls Lake and Jordan Lake), but federal rules do not dictate  the solution.    North Carolina ‘s longstanding  policy has been to create  a solution that shares the burden of pollution reduction among all of the major pollution sources (wastewater treatment plants, industrial dischargers, agricultural runoff and development activity).  In most cases, the final rules also represent a long negotiation process.  Using rule review  to respond to one  interest group could shift  more of the regulatory burden and cost  of pollution reduction to others.  A piecemeal approach to regulatory reform carries the risk of making complex environmental protection programs less effective and less equitable, but no less politically charged.

— The interrelationship of rules has practical implications.  According to Tom Reeder, the legislative  mandate  to review surface water standards and wetland rules in 2013 also  draws in two additional sets of rules.   Mr. Reeder expects the 2014 water quality rule review  to  involve  395 rules.

— Rule review comes without any additional staff resources. The massive water quality rule review will create a new workload for a water quality staff still shrinking under budget cuts and reorganization decisions. Mr. Reeder has already suggested that  rule review may further delay  revisions to state water quality standards  needed to  comply with federal  Clean Water Act requirements.

Assumption: State and local environmental standards should not go beyond federal standards except in extraordinary circumstances.

The Regulatory Reform Act of 2011     ( Session Law 2011-398 )  prohibited  state environmental  agencies — and only environmental agencies — from adopting  a more restrictive standard than a corresponding federal rule.   The  law has exceptions  for  rules to address a “serious and unforeseen threat to public health, safety or welfare” and rules required by state law, federal law, state budget policy or a court order. The same legislation directed all state agencies to provide the General Assembly’s Joint Select Regulatory Reform Committee  with a list of existing rules and indicate for each rule whether the rule was mandated by federal law and whether the  rule was more stringent than an analogous federal regulation. (The session law defined analogous to mean that a federal rule regulated the same conduct or activity.)

An earlier post (originally written about a 2013  Senate  bill)  provides examples of state environmental rules that go beyond  the  corresponding  federal rule.  (The examples come from the 2011 DENR report to the Select Regulatory Reform Committee.)  The post also notes some of the  difficulties in  limiting state environmental rules to  federal standards.  At the most basic level, it turns out to be harder than legislators may think to even figure out whether a state rule is “more stringent” than a corresponding federal rule. It is rarely as easy as comparing two numerical standards; in many cases, federal rules set a framework and goals in the expectation that the state will fill in the detail.  Another  problem is that  federal environmental  statutes and rules set a floor rather than a ceiling on environmental protection — a floor based on national priorities  rather than state needs.   Finally, federal rules rarely   include all of the administrative pieces needed for  a complete environmental protection program. Since the states actually carry out most of these programs, Congress and EPA  left the states a good bit of  flexibility  in setting up permitting and enforcement programs.

Having put limits on new  state environmental rules in 2011, the 2013 General Assembly took on local environmental ordinances.  Session Law 2013-413 puts a one year moratorium on adoption of new local environmental ordinances regulating issues addressed by state or federal environmental rules. An earlier post goes into more detail about the temporary  limit on local environmental ordinances. The one-year moratorium actually represents a compromise to allow time for the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission to look at the appropriate scope of local government authority to adopt environmental standards. The N.C. Senate had proposed to permanently restrict adoption of local environmental ordinances.

Even the one-year moratorium may be a problem for local government.  A number of cities and counties operate environmental infrastructure (like water and wastewater treatment systems) under state-issued permits that require the local government to put  environmental protection measures in place by ordinance.

Behind all of this lies a genuine concern about the layering of federal, state and local requirements. Citizen comments  clearly indicate confusion about where environmental standards come from and how different requirements  fit together.  In spite of everyone’s best efforts, the overlay of federal  rules, state rules  and local ordinances don’t always fit together perfectly.  Conflicts  get  resolved, but the property owner caught up in an unintended consequence of overlapping standards will be understandably frustrated in the meantime.

Which is all to say that there are good reasons to look at the intersection of federal, state and local environmental standards. It is just not as easy as waiving away everything other than the standard adopted by the highest level of government.

Regulatory Reform and the Environment II: Targeting Environmental Rules

November 21, 2013.   In North Carolina,  “regulatory reform” has had a strong focus on environmental rules for  nearly twenty years. An earlier post sketched a very broad history of regulatory reform in N.C. starting with the creation of the Rules Review Commission in 1986. But from 1977 into the early 1980s,  the General Assembly  actually had an Administrative Rules Review Committee made up of legislators. The committee tracked the number of rules adopted by state agencies and reviewed rules for statutory authority. I was able to find committee reports from 1979-1983. (After that, the online  trail went cold.)  The reports list all of the rules the committee objected to for lack of statutory authority and how those objections were resolved. Environmental rules didn’t  receive  much   attention from the committee; some of the most common objections concerned rules assessing fees not authorized by law; state agencies creating criminal penalties by rule;  and professional licensing  boards overstepping their authority.

Environmental rules may have had a lower profile simply because of  the times. Congress  had just adopted the major federal environmental protection laws  in the early to mid-1970s —  the Clean Air Act  in 1970, the Clean Water Act  in 1972, the  Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (regulating hazardous waste)  in 1976.  In the 1970s and early 1980s,  state environmental agencies were  adopting rules  needed to run delegated permitting programs under those federal laws: water quality  and air quality standards; drinking water regulations;  hazardous waste permitting rules;  and regulations for petroleum underground storage tanks. Environmental rulemaking may not have been without controversy, but  there was also significant support for environmental programs and for the most part  the General Assembly seemed to let the  regulatory agencies  handle the controversies.

That started to change as water quality rules in particular began to have a greater impact on development activity. The first generation of  environmental permitting rules largely affected local government and  industry.  In the water quality program, local government wastewater treatment plants  and industries directly discharging wastewater to a stream  needed a Clean Water Act permit.    A developer only needed an environmental permit if the project involved filling wetlands or a segment of stream.  As  the state  began to grapple with the impact of development activity on  coastal resources and water quality in the late 1980s, environmental  permitting came to have a much greater effect on developers and private property owners.

By 1984, the state’s Coastal Resources Commission had adopted the first standards for development on the state’s ocean and inlet beaches. Those rules included oceanfront setbacks and restrictions on use of seawalls and jetties to protect oceanfront structures from erosion.  In the late 1980s, the state’s water quality program  began  work on  rules to address high bacteria levels in coastal shellfish waters.  Those  rules included the first state stormwater management requirements for new development projects.  Since then, a  series of water quality initiatives have used stormwater  standards, density limits and  riparian buffers to reduce the impact of polluted runoff from developed areas. A combination of density limits, buffers and stormwater controls became part of the basic water supply watershed program designed to prevent pollution of drinking water supplies. Those same tools became part of the comprehensive water quality strategies to reduce nutrient over-enrichment in the Tar-Pamlico River, Neuse River,  Falls Lake and Jordan Lake.  In the nutrient  strategies,  development standards represented one part of a much larger set of pollution reduction measures  that also  included  tighter controls on wastewater discharges and  best management practices to limit agricultural runoff.

Legislative  Disapproval of  Environmental Rules.  Legislative action on regulatory issues can  take other forms, but tracking disapproval bills gives a fair indication of where legislative attention has been  focused. For the first few years after the General Assembly amended the Administrative Procedure Act to allow for legislative disapproval of rules, virtually all of the disapproval bills concerned environmental rules.  The first disapproval bills introduced in the General Assembly (in 1998) targeted the Neuse River stream buffer rules and the Tar-Pamlico nutrient  rules (which also included buffer and stormwater requirements).   Based on a  search of the General Assembly bill database, legislators introduced bills to disapprove at least 41 state agency rules between 1998 and 2012.   Sixteen of the disapproval  bills  targeted environmental protection rules;  in some cases, a single bill  covered multiple rules. Another four bills proposed to disapprove Wildlife Resource Commission regulations. All of the other regulatory programs in state government (public health, worker safety, building code, occupational licensing boards, food safety, insurance regulation, etc.)  accounted for just another 16 disapproval bills during the same period. (See Legislative Disapproval Bills for a complete  list of the disapproval bills that I  found.)

Of the 16  bills to disapprove environmental  rules, ten concerned water quality rules.  The list  includes the Neuse River  buffer rules, the Tar-Pamlico River nutrient rules, coastal stormwater rules, rules classifying streams as trout waters or Outstanding Resource Waters,  water quality standards for municipal storm sewer systems,  and the Falls Lake and Jordan Lake nutrient management strategies. That list of water quality rules includes  the most debated (and negotiated) environmental rules adopted in the last 15 years, addressing some of the state’s most complicated water quality  problems. One common thread  is that all of those regulations  use development standards as one tool to address a water quality problem. The other common (and related) factor is that all encountered opposition from realtors,  developers, and owners of waterfront property.

Amending the APA to make environmental rulemaking more difficult. There has also been an effort to make environmental rulemaking more difficult by putting limits or requirements on environmental rules that don’t apply to other kinds of regulations. In 2005, the General Assembly  amended G.S. 150B-21.4 ( fiscal notes on rules) to require a special fiscal analysis of environmental rules — and only environmental rules — affecting state highway projects. The change responded in part to expansion of   stormwater  requirements,  which affected state highway projects as well as conventional building projects.

In 2009, several House and Senate bills proposed to put a moratorium on  rulemaking by the state’s Environmental Management Commission (the citizen commission  that adopts air quality and water quality rules).  House Bill 1335 actually passed the House and received a favorable report from a Senate committee before being pulled off the Senate floor without a vote.  But the 2011 Regulatory Reform Act, Session Law 2011-398, picked up the effort to restrain environmental rulemaking  and put new  limits on environmental rules that do not apply to other state rules.   G.S. 150B-19.3 prevents a state environmental agency from adopting a rule that is more stringent than a corresponding  federal environmental rule except in very limited circumstances.  As a practical matter,  the new law  will  be much more difficult to apply than legislators may have expected. Many federal environmental rules  provide  a framework for regulation rather than comprehensive standards and permitting procedures, making the “more stringent than” comparison difficult to impossible — although it should provide fertile ground for argument.  More about the policy implications of handcuffing state environmental regulations to federal rules in  a future  post.

The focus on environmental regulations continued in the  2013 Regulatory Reform Act, Session Law 2013-413.  The  most recent  legislation requires review of existing rules every ten years causes rules to automatically expire if the review does not occur. Although the review requirement  applies  to all state regulatory programs, the legislation specifically directs the  Rules Review Commission to schedule existing state water quality and wetland rules for the first round of review in 2014. The legislation also puts a one-year moratorium  on adoption of local government ordinances that address environmental issues  covered  by state and federal environmental rules. During that year,  the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission will study local government authority to adopt environmental ordinances. Like the 2011 limitation on state environmental rules, the moratorium on local ordinances almost certainly has some unintended consequences. More about that in a future  post as well.

Why has regulatory reform come to focus so heavily on water quality rules?   In one way, water quality rules seem  to be an odd focus for so much regulatory reform activity since federal requirements drive so many of the rules.  But while  federal law requires the state to  reduce  pollution causing impaired water quality  (like the nutrient problems in the Tar Pamlico River, Neuse River, Falls Lake and Jordan Lake), federal rules do not dictate the remedy.  The legislative disapproval bills have targeted the remedy —  a comprehensive strategy that reduces direct discharges of the pollutant (from wastewater treatment plants and industrial dischargers) and indirect runoff from agriculture and developed areas.

In these instances, things happening under the banner of “regulatory reform” are not so much about eliminating unnecessary and burdensome regulations. It is really about how the state will  solve complicated environmental problems and whether  the burden of pollution reduction will be shared by all of the sources contributing to the problem.  Since  2013  legislation also delayed further implementation of the Jordan Lake rules to  convene a  legislative study committee on Jordan Lake water quality (see Session Law 2013-395), the current General Assembly will have  a chance to  struggle with  those questions.

The Direction of the State’s Water Quality Program

September 19, 2013.  Earlier posts talked about two unusual recent  decisions by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Section 401 water quality certifications  under the Clean Water Act — one concerning  Cleveland County’s proposal to build a new dam on the First Broad River to create a reservoir and the other for federal relicensing of Alcoa’s existing hydroelectric power dams on the Yadkin River.  You can find the Cleveland County  post here and the Alcoa post here.  The question is what those two decisions  say about the current direction of the water quality program.

The  decision to waive the water quality certification for the proposed Cleveland County reservoir — the first deliberate waiver in the history of the N.C. water quality program — cited  a state rule requiring  a decision on a 401 application within 60 days. But  the Cleveland County application was not complete and DENR made no effort to go through the review process (which would have  required an environmental impact statement and a public notice).  As reported in the Charlotte Observer, Division of Water Resources Director Tom Reeder gave a different explanation of the waiver: “The state of North Carolina looked at all of this and said there’s really no value added to us getting involved in this whole thing. Cleveland County would have had to spend more money that would not go to any good purpose.”  The implication was that a state water quality review would add more time and cost when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (as the federal permitting agency) opposed the project — even though the state water quality review and the federal permit review usually go hand in hand and rely on the same environmental studies.

Where the Cleveland County project  proposed construction of a new dam;  Alcoa applied for a state water quality certification to cover continued operation of four existing dams on the Yadkin River that were built between 50 and 100 years ago to generate power for the now-closed Alcoa aluminum smelting plant. After nearly a year of review and a public hearing, DENR suddenly denied the Alcoa 401 Certification. The denial letter cited a state rule requiring the  applicant to have title to the project site, the permission of the property owner or the  ability to acquire the property by condemnation.  DENR relied on a lawsuit (filed the same day) claiming state public trust ownership of  the bed of the Yadkin River under the Alcoa dams to conclude that Alcoa  could not show title to the land  under the dams. According to the letter, the lack of either title or permission from the state would make it difficult to assure that Alcoa could meet water quality conditions on operation of the dams.

The earlier posts talked about a number of questions raised by the two decisions. There are also a few things to take away:

DENR has waived a 401 Certification without clearly explaining the reason for the waiver or how waiver decisions will be made in the future.   The decision letter suggests the waiver resulted from DENR’s inability to make a decision within 60 days, but the record shows no attempt to get the additional information needed to make the application complete, provide a public notice of the application or do a complete review.  The  Division of Water Resources director later suggested that  state review would have served no purpose given the Corps of Engineers’ objections to the project. Either reason could also easily apply to other 401 applications.

As to the first explanation,  DENR denied the Alcoa 401 application one month later  after nearly a year of review  with no suggestion that water quality rules required a waiver.  The second reason offered for the waiver (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opposition) also applies to other projects. The Corps of Engineers often presses federal permit  applicants to look at other alternatives with fewer environmental impacts.   The Corps expressed similar skepticism about the City of Raleigh’s  proposal to build a reservoir on the Little River, but in that case DENR has continued to work with  Raleigh and the Corps of Engineers to look at alternatives and  address the Corps’ concerns.  The same has been true for other large commercial development projects.

DENR treated the Cleveland County reservoir project differently, but has not provided a consistent explanation of the decision or criteria for future 401 Certification waivers.

Denial of  a 401 Certification based on an unresolved claim of public trust ownership of the river bed under the project has implications well beyond Alcoa.   If there is a case to be made for public trust ownership of the upper reaches of the Yadkin River,  the same will be true for  many of the state’s inland rivers. The decision may have implications for  dam  sites proposed by Cleveland County and the City of Raleigh (on the First Broad River and the Little River respectively).

Title to the bed of the Yadkin River under the Alcoa dams  has not yet been determined by the courts, but DENR issues both Individual and general 401 Certifications for a wide range of projects  known to be on state-owned  public trust lands — including mining activities, utility and energy infrastructure, marinas, aquaculture operations, shoreline stabilization projects, water intakes, and dams.  The justification for denial of the Alcoa 401 Certification — that lack of ownership or permission from the state to apply  calls into question the applicant’s ability to comply with water quality conditions — would apply equally to those projects.

DENR has not explained what evidence of title will be required of applicants proposing to construct a project in navigable waters.    A deed to submerged lands may or may not be valid. See the earlier post on public trust doctrine for more explanation of public trust ownership and the way title to state-owned public trust lands can be transferred.   But the existence — or absence — of a state lawsuit claiming title under the public trust doctrine cannot be the deciding factor either.  Public trust ownership does not arise because of a state lawsuit; it is not negated by the absence of one.  Having made public trust ownership a factor in the issuance of 401 Certifications, DENR needs a clear and consistent approach to resolving questions of title to lands under coastal waters and navigable rivers; otherwise the outcomes will be arbitrary and subject to political influence.

The Alcoa denial letter suggests that Alcoa needs specific state permission to apply for a 401 Certification to continue operating the Yadkin hydropower dams, but does not indicate what form that permission must take. Some  activities on state-owned public trust lands have individual submerged lands leases from the State Property Office, but many do not. The state has often relied on environmental permits as the permission to develop on state-owned submerged lands.  It isn’t even clear whether a previous  lease to construct on state-owned public trust lands would be sufficient, since the state’s lawsuit claiming ownership of the Yadkin river admits that Alcoa had permission to build the four dams.

The precedent set by the Alcoa denial could apply to a number of  ongoing commercial activities in coastal waters and state rivers.  One of the (several) interesting things about the Alcoa decision is that it dealt with renewal of an operating license for dams built decades ago with state permission. The DENR denial letter suggests that the state must give express permission for the renewal of licenses and permits for ongoing operations on state-owned public trust lands — activities that could include aquaculture, marina operations, sand mining and other commercial activities. The criteria for granting or denying permission will be another question.

The troubling thing about the Cleveland County and Alcoa decisions is the reliance on rule interpretations that not only break with past practice, but are inconsistent with each other.  With respect to the waiver of a 401 Certification under the 60-day rule, DENR needs to reconcile the Cleveland County and Alcoa decisions. If opposition by the Corps of Engineers was the real reason for the Cleveland County waiver, DENR should explain the criteria for waiver in situation where the Corps has pressed an applicant for alternatives. DENR also needs to  provide  guidance to applicants proposing projects in coastal waters and inland rivers.  Otherwise,  applicants will have little assurance of a clear, consistent and predictable water quality review.

More on the Public Trust Doctrine

Several people responded to the  post about  denial of Alcoa’s 401 Certification  with questions or comments about public trust law and ownership of the bed of the Yadkin River.  Based on the comments, some additional explanation  of public trust law (and clarification of the earlier post)  may be helpful. Note: I did not intend to address the merits of the State’s claim to the bed of the Yadkin River under the Alcoa dams in the earlier post  and will not do that here — I don’t have all of the facts available to Alcoa and the state’s lawyers.

Both state and federal court decisions have recognized state ownership of lands under waters that are navigable for trade and commerce. The American colonies inherited English common law recognizing  the King’s ownership of lands under waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tides. After independence,  state courts quickly recognized that using the tides to identify navigable waters did not work well  in American where large, navigable rivers extended far inland. In Wilson v. Forbes, 13 N.C. 30  (1828),  North Carolina became one of the first states to recognize  public trust ownership of  lands under all commercially navigable rivers.  The case marked the beginning of North Carolina’s use of the “sea vessel” test for state public trust ownership.

By the late 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court  joined  state courts  in recognizing public trust ownership of lands under  rivers that were not tidal but were “navigable in fact”.  The U.S. Supreme Court has said that waters are navigable in fact if they are  “used, or are susceptible of being used, in their ordinary condition, as highways for commerce, over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in the customary modes of trade and travel on water.” (From an 1871 U.S.  Supreme Court decision in The Daniel Ball.)   Under both state  and federal court decisions,  lands under other rivers and streams can be privately owned but  there may be a public right of navigation.

A 2012 U.S. Supreme Court (PPL Montana, LLC v. Montana)  highlighted two limitations on finding  state ownership of a river bed under the “navigable in fact” test:

1. For the state to own the bed of a river, the river had to be navigable for commerce at the time of statehood.  Later improvements that make a river segment navigable do not  give   the state title to the river bed. (So admiralty jurisdiction may be broader than state public trust ownership.)

2. The navigability test  must be applied to each discrete  segment  of the river.  The state does not have public trust ownership of the river bed  in  river segments that were not navigable for commerce at the time of statehood  — even if most of the river would be considered “navigable in fact”.  So the need to portage for a significant distance around a natural feature, such as a fall,   may cause a segment of river to fail the test for state ownership of the river bed.

You can find the full U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Montana case  here. The case resulted from the State of Montana’s   claim of ownership to the bed of several rivers where a company, PPL Montana,  had operated hydroelectric power generation facilities for decades. The Montana Supreme Court ruled in the state’s favor, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the state court decision.  The U.S. Supreme Court directed the Montana court to reconsider the case  based on the two limitations mentioned above – for  purposes of state ownership, the river had to be navigable for commercial purposes  when Montana became a state  and  navigability  must  be determined for each discrete  stretch of river.

A few other points about public trust law:

For the most part,  public trust law has been developed by the states.  A number of the original 13 states extended public trust ownership to non-tidal commercially navigable rivers well before the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the issue.  Since then, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court has largely been to define the property interest in navigable waters that states joining the Union  after independence acquired at statehood.  Once public trust  ownership of  a river bed has been established under the “navigable in fact” standard,  state law takes over. The individual states  identify the uses allowed and protected on public trust lands. State law also governs the sale of  public trust lands.

Federal regulatory definitions of “navigable waters” do not determine state public trust ownership. The term  “navigable waters”   has also been used to describe federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act and  the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, but the regulatory definition of “navigable waters”  does not determine state ownership of the river bed. Many water bodies considered navigable waters under the Clean Water Act  do not meet the “navigable in fact”  test for public trust ownership. Public trust decisions  recognize two categories of navigable waters — 1.  those that were navigable for purposes of commerce at the time of independence (or statehood);  and 2. those that  were not.  Waters that were not commercially navigable at statehood, may be  commercially navigable now  because of later improvements. Or those waters may be navigable for more limited purposes (i.e., floatable by a canoe, but not by  larger vessels or navigable for only short distances because of obstructions).

The states own the beds of rivers that fall into the first category. The beds of rivers (or river segments) that fall into the second category can be privately owned. But Clean Water Act regulatory jurisdiction applies  to navigable waters in both categories and there may be waters in both categories that also fall  under admiralty jurisdiction. The simple rule to remember — public trust doctrine only gave the state ownership of lands under water bodies that were navigable for commerce in their natural condition at statehood.  (Simple to state, but open to some interpretation — and then there is the problem of applying the simple rule to the specific history and condition of each river.)

Having a deed to land under coastal waters or under a river does not necessarily  establish private ownership.  If  N.C. acquired  public trust ownership at independence (and that will be a question to be decided based on the “navigable in fact” test), only a colonial grant or  express authorization by the General Assembly   could   transfer title of those lands to a private property owner.

More than you ever wanted to know about the public trust doctrine…

The Uses of a Water Quality Certification: Alcoa

September 9, 2013.   On August 2, 2013, DENR’s Division of Water Resources denied a Section 401 water quality certification for the relicensing of Alcoa’s four hydroelectric dams on the Yadkin River.   (See an  earlier post  for background on  401 Certifications.) The denial letter did not cite any water quality basis for denying the 401 Certification. Instead, the letter  referred to a lawsuit filed the same day by the N.C. Department of Administration  that: 1.  claimed title to the bed of the Yadkin River under the Alcoa dams as public trust land;  and 2. asked the court to   recognized State ownership of the Alcoa dams  based on public trust ownership of the riverbed under the dams.  The significance of the Alcoa 401 Certification denial is that  many projects requiring 401 Certifications are located  in waters that may be covered by the public trust doctrine. The Alcoa  denial raises  some interesting questions about   issuance of  401 Certifications for  activities in rivers and streams in particular.   First, some history on Alcoa’s dams and  the public trust doctrine.

History.  Alcoa operates four dams on the Yadkin River to generate electricity.  Alcoa bought an  unfinished aluminum smelting plant in the town of Badin from a French company in 1915, completed the plant and began operation in 1917 powered by the newly constructed Narrows Dam on the Yadkin River.  As power demand increased, Alcoa  built three more hydroelectric dams on the Yadkin  —  at the Falls (1919),  High Rock (1927)  and Tuckertown (1962).   After Congress strengthened the federal role in permitting hydroelectric power projects,  Alcoa received  a 50-year federal  license to operate the dams (together  known as the “Yadkin Project”) in 1958.  In 2002, Alcoa  began the process of renewing the federal license.

For two years, a group  of North Carolina local governments, state agencies (including DENR), federal  agencies, lakefront homeowners associations, and environmental organizations met  to develop recommended license conditions for the Yadkin Project.  The   group  reached agreement on measures to protect water quality and habitat; provide public access; maintain lake levels and adequate  downstream flows; and create a drought management system for the area affected by the Yadkin Project.  The group submitted the proposed conditions to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2007.  You can find a description of the 2007  relicensing settlement agreement  here.

Shortly after the settlement agreement had been signed,  Alcoa stopped all production at the Badin aluminum works and eliminated the last 30 jobs at the plant.  At its height, the Badin aluminum works employed about 1,000 people, but production had declined over a ten-year period.  As the demand for power at the Badin works lessened, Alcoa  started selling electricity from the Yadkin Project on the wholesale market.  Complete shutdown of the Badin plant set off a backlash. Stanly County, which  did  not sign the relicensing settlement agreement, demanded that Alcoa compensate the county for jobs lost  in the  shut down of the  Badin works and raised concerns about industrial contamination in the area of Alcoa’s Badin plant.  Stanly County  and others opposed to  renewal of Alcoa’s  FERC license  persuaded Gov. Beverly Perdue to intervene in the FERC relicensing and  request transfer of the  Alcoa  license to the State of North Carolina. FERC’s decision on relicensing of the Yadkin Project has now been on hold for several years waiting for the state to make a decision on issuance of a  401 Certification for operation of the dams.

In 2009, DENR   issued a  401 Certification for the Yadkin Project. The certification required   Alcoa to upgrade the hydroelectric generation facilities and make operational changes to improve downstream water quality and  restore flow to streams affected by operation of the dams.  DWQ revoked that  401 Certification in late 2010 after discovering that  information submitted by  Alcoa during the application review  may have been misleading.  After resolving DWQ’s  concerns, Alcoa reapplied for a 401 Certification last  year.   DWQ was  moving toward issuing a new 401 Certification  for the Alcoa dams — there was  a public hearing on a draft 401 Certification  in  May  — when DENR suddenly reversed direction and denied the 401 Certification on August 2, 2013 citing the McCrory administration lawsuit filed the same day. You can find documents related to Alcoa’s recent 401 application (including the denial letter and the complaint in the McCrory administration lawsuit) here.

Public Trust Doctrine. Under ancient law brought to the American colonies from England,  lands under navigable waters are owned by the sovereign and held in trust for the public.  The “public trust doctrine” protects the right of  the public to use the  waters for navigation, fishing, and recreation.  After independence, the states acquired title to public trust lands previously held by the King. Since the state holds lands under navigable waters in trust for the use of the public,  the state rarely transfers ownership of  those lands  outright.  On the other hand, the state  allows many private activities on  state-owned public trust lands — both commercial and non-commercial. Most of the docks, piers, marinas, and fish houses in  coastal waters have been built on state-owned public trust lands.   You will  find  other commercial activities in  coastal waters, rivers and streams including  aquaculture operations,  mining,  commercial recreation facilities,  and  dams (used for various purposes).

The  McCrory administration lawsuit admits  that  Alcoa had state permission to build hydroelectric dams on the Yadkin River. In the late 18th and early 20th century,  the General Assembly allowed a number of companies to build hydroelectric dams and mill dams on state rivers by  special legislation.  It is not clear that the state claimed ownership of the bed of the Yadkin River at the time.  Some early laws authorizing construction of dams on the Yadkin  refer to construction on “non-navigable” sections of the  Yadkin River  and a number of  state court decisions  recognized private ownership  of the bed of the Yadkin River  at  specific locations.   In Rose v. Franklin, 216 N.C. 289, 4 S.E.2d 876 (N.C., 1939), the N.C. Supreme Court noted that the parties to a title dispute admitted that the Yadkin River was a non-navigable stream as it passed through the town of Elkin and found that the plaintiff owned to the center of the river.

Until the 1990s,  court decisions recognized state ownership of lands under: 1. tidal waters (like the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the coastal bays and sounds); and 2.   other waters that were navigable by sea-going vessels. The second category covered rivers that were below the fall line and deep enough to  be navigated  by large boats.    The public trust cases  appeared to allow private ownership of  the beds of  other rivers and streams,  but recognized a public trust easement on those that could be navigated by  shallow-draft boats or used to float logs downstream.   Decisions like Rose v. Franklin  fit this understanding of the law.

A  1995 N.C. Supreme Court decision, Gwathmey v. State, 464 S.E.2d 674, 342 N.C. 287,   abandoned the use of tidal influence as a factor and stated a simple rule: the public trust doctrine applies to any water body that, in its natural condition, can be navigated by “useful vessels, including small craft used for pleasure”.   It isn’t clear whether  Gwathmey completely abandons the old distinction between waters navigable by sea-going vessels and those  floatable by canoe for purposes of state ownership of the bed. One  problem with the Gwathmey case is that it  involved tidal  waters and marsh where public trust ownership had historically been recognized. The court just substituted one grounds for public trust ownership (navigability) for another (tidal influence).  The decision never  addressed the  impact of the  new rule  on  inland rivers where state courts had  recognized  private ownership of the river bed.  The McCrory administration lawsuit claiming title to the Alcoa dams may require the court to explain how the Gwathmey decision  applies to  interior rivers and streams.

The 401 Certification Decision.  The letter denying the Alcoa 401 Certification offers only one grounds for the denial — the state’s claim of ownership of the Yadkin River bed and the Alcoa dams built there. Citing a water quality rule, 15A NCAC 02H.0502 (f),  the letter says that “signature on the [401] application ‘certifies that the applicant has title to the property, has been authorized by the owner to apply for certification or is a public entity and has the power of eminent domain’. The required ownership certification ensures that the applicant owns the project’s dams and powerhouses and is fully capable of implementing all protections of water quality that may be imposed as conditions in a 401 Certification.”

The  rule applies to  all 401 applicants, raising the question of what will  now be required of applicants proposing development in public trust waters or in rivers and streams where public trust ownership may be in question.   It  is not a standard that seems to have been applied before to projects  on rivers and streams– even in the very recent past.  Just one month earlier, DENR waived a 401 Certification for the proposed Cleveland County dam without requiring the county to  show ownership of the bed of the First Broad River or obtain state permission to apply for a federal Clean Water Act permit  to build a dam.  Beyond dam construction,   a  401 Certification may be required for other commercial activities like in-stream mining; aquaculture;  construction of recreation facilities;  and  water intake structures for industry or agriculture.  Having invoked the requirement for Alcoa’s hydroelectric dams, DENR will need to  explain how the requirement applies to other applicants and permit holders:

— Does the standard set in the Alcoa denial letter apply to all  projects  in navigable  waters that require a 401 Certification?  This is not a trick question;  the letter indicates that  ownership  or  some form of state permission  will be necessary to satisfy DENR that  the applicant  has  sufficient control over  a project  on public trust lands  to  meet water quality conditions on a 401 Certification.

— What  will an applicant have to do to show  private ownership of land under a river or stream? Deciding whether a river or stream is navigable can require a boat trip — literally.  Answering the question of public trust ownership  will be  further complicated by uncertainty about how  the Gwathmey decision  applies to  rivers (or parts of rivers)  that  had  never been considered navigable by sea-going vessels.  In the past, many of those riverbeds had been recognized as  private property subject to a public trust easement for  navigation.

— Without proof of private ownership of the river or stream bed, what  kind of  state permission will be needed?  In the 19th and early 20th century, the General Assembly  often authorized activities in rivers and streams by special legislation  — as it did for  construction of  hydroelectric dams on the Yadkin River.  The state issues leases and easements in public trust lands for some purposes, but  those   programs developed fairly late in the 20th century and have been used for the most part in coastal waters.  The easement criteria in G.S. 146-12  lend themselves more readily to piers and docks  than to more intensive uses such as mining or dam construction.

In something of a reverse of the Alcoa 401 denial,  the state has   often relied on environmental permits as the vehicle for approving  activities in public trust waters.  Under G.S. 146-12, issuance of a  Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) permit for development in  coastal waters  also  gives  the applicant a state  easement.  (The State Property Office  has an opportunity to review those CAMA applications.)   Outside the coastal counties, it is hard to find consistent application of the easement requirement.  For projects that don’t require a CAMA permit,  there will likely be more uncertainty about  public trust ownership and a less well-trod  path to state approval if the state does own the submerged lands.

— What standards will be applied in granting or denying state permission for activities on public trust lands?  The McCrory administration lawsuit suggests an intent to tie Alcoa’s operation of the Yadkin dams to generate electricity for sale on the wholesale market to compensation for use of the public trust resources.  Outside of leases to mine on  submerged lands, state law has not generally taxed  revenue from commercial  use of public trust resources.

— What happens when Congress has given a federal agency authority  to permit an  activity in navigable waters?  Under the Federal Power Act, FERC  has the authority to license hydroelectric projects in navigable waters of the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has authority to permit other types of structures in navigable waters under the  Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and  issues Clean Water Act permits to fill navigable waters.  The Section 401 Certification has generally served as the state approval for  federally permitted projects in navigable waters. I don’t know that  the state has previously required a separate easement or lease. I also don’t know whether the federal  agencies believe any other state approval is needed given  Congressional authority  to permit these activities in navigable waters.

Many questions. The answers will be interesting.