Clean Water in the News

Neither the environmentalists nor the development community got everything they wanted.

But it appears that three years after the state began the process of strengthening coastal stormwater rules, a compromise has been hashed out in Raleigh.

"I wouldn't say either side is happy," said Tom Reeder, the state official who helped formulate and promote the regulations. "But I think they agree that it's a compromise they can live with."

The push for new rules resulted from the state's admission that rules adopted in the mid-1980s to failed to keep polluted stormwater from fouling the state's tidal creeks and estuaries.

But updating the regulations while balancing the coast's environmental needs with private property rights has proven difficult.

The compromise language, which still has to be approved by the General Assembly before it ends the current short session, would water down some of the major provisions affecting how wetlands are calculated in determining how much of a parcel can be built on and what size projects would require a stormwater permit.

It also would tweak rules covering buffers, setback requirements and how much rainwater flowing off roofs, lawns and driveways has to be treated on-site.

But Reeder said they didn't compromise the goal of the regulations.

"I can say with confidence that they think these rules as proposed will help protect North Carolina's coastal water quality," he said.

Jim Stephenson, coastal policy analyst for the N.C. Coastal Federation, said the state gave ground on a lot of its language over the last few months.

"But at end of the day, the rules are essentially the phase-two stormwater standards applied to all 20 coastal counties with several enhancements that are meaningful," he said. "And they are substantially better than the existing program, and that's what important."

Donna Girardot, executive officer with the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association, said that while the rules aren't perfect, the development community could work with them.

"It's better than what was originally proposed in balancing the economic and environmental needs of the coast, and I think that's what we were all really going for," she said.

The new language is also expected to push the implementation date of the rules back from Aug. 1 to Oct. 1.

The original rules proposed by the N.C. Division of Water Quality to control stormwater runoff within a half-mile of shellfishing waters were roundly criticized by the development community and many local officials as being too restrictive. They questioned the science behind the regulations and wondered aloud whether the real reason for the rules was to limit new coastal construction, not protect water quality.

But environmentalists, backed by state regulators, said ratcheting up the requirements on how much runoff had to be treated on site was necessary to protect falling water quality and the state's imperiled shellfishing stocks.