Don’t trust North Carolina politicians responding to the coal ash spill – Duke Energy owns them too

http://greenpeaceblogs.org/2014/02/08/dont-trust-north-carolina-politicians-responding-to-the-coal-ash-spill-duke-energy-owns-them-too/

Earlier this week Greenpeace reported how Duke Energy lobbyists thwarted the federal EPA from regulating toxic coal ash in a way that could have prevented Duke’s Dan River spill. As that crisis continues unfolding, North Carolina state politicians and regulators will have a big role in determining what happened, how to clean up the mess, who will pay for it, and how Duke should be punished. Given all that, we wanted to shine a light on how Duke Energy has owned and controlled those very regulators and politicians for years as well.

If you were among the thousands of people who wrote to protest a very recent settlement between North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) with Duke Energy, you know this story well. If not, that settlement is a useful place to start. While a host of independent organizations had been working for years to hold Duke accountable in court for coal ash contamination of lakes and rivers around the state, DENR filed its own lawsuit against Duke – it seemed for a hopeful instant that the state’s environmental regulators were finally beginning to take seriously their charter to protect the environment.

DENR had no such intention; soon it became clear that the state’s suit proved to be political theater. Instead of holding Duke accountable, DENR settled with the energy giant for a measly $99,000. Duke’s market capitalization is $50 billion – fifty thousand times that. DENR may as well have fined them a buck fifty. Financial penalties aside, DENR could have at least pushed for a settlement that required Duke to clean up its ash dumps like the ones at Dan River – instead it only asked for Duke to conduct some studies.

It was an egregious sleight of hand by DENR, but anybody who was surprised by the move—and few Tarheels were—hadn’t really been paying attention. Ever since Pat McCrory became governor, DENR has made economic growth its primary mission, taking frequent opportunities to thumb its nose at the EPA and even the basic concept of environmental regulation. Just last month, DENR sided with polluters and sued the EPA over new regulations that would limit air pollution from coal-fired power plants. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots back to Duke on that one either.

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