The Fracking Bill Fast Track.

A Look At Public Concerns Of This Week’s Vote In The NC Senate.

Senate Bill 76 which gives hydraulic fracturing the fast track in North Carolina starting in 2015 reads almost as if the oil and natural gas industry wrote it. Who knows since ALEC (the corporate special interest bill mill) is very much alive in North Carolina? Here follows some major points:


Lifts N.C.’s fracking moratorium in 2015 (quite early).

Studies a single permit for operations involving shale gas exploration (no need for any red tape regarding the environment and public safety I suppose).

Repeals the state’s Landman Registry (shadowy people love the dark). I suppose there is no need for disclosures for N.C. Landowners. What could affect them?

Allows operators to inject frack waste and flowback fluids (which includes Barium, Lead, Arsenic, Chromium, Benzene, and Technology Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials such as uranium-238, radium-226, radon-222, and 4-NQO) deep into the wells. Waste disposal problems for the fracking industry solved! Oooops, what a minute. Isn’t North Carolina’s water table and aquifers down there (your drinking water included)? Didn’t geologists from the NC DEHR say North Carolina’s geology was not conducive to injecting flowback fluids into the ground (due to the shallowness of shale deposits and the water table)? Problem solved in the next move in Senate Bill 76.

Eliminates two seats including the state geologist from the N.C. Mining & Energy Commission (there it is!).

Encourages the Governor to join South Carolina and Virginia in developing strategies for offshore drilling (drill baby drill).

Requires royalties to the state from offshore oil exploration to go into a fund to clean up the potential spills where our tourism and fishing industries flourish on the coast here in hurricane alley.

Creates an Energy Jobs Council in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the energy companies (who knew that was what they were for?).

Changes North Carolina’s electrical rules so that state-licensed hospitals can use emergency generators that run on natural gas and liquid fuel. Afterall, business is business. Hospital patient safety is secondary.

Prohibits local governments from taxing energy exploration and drilling (those local governments can be pesky). Who needs local elections anyway when corporations can write the rules?

The changes and the timing dovetails nicely with the move to end all state rules concerning health and human services along with environmental rules. Senate Bill 32 introduced by Sen. Fletcher Hartsell (R-Cabarrus) allows the state’s administrative code Title 10A concerning health and human services to end in 2016 and the rules of title 15A governing environmental rules to end the following year. Why imagine that!


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