Opinion: State leaders are letting Duke Energy off too easily

N orth Carolinians are probably exhausted by the barrage of bad decisions emanating from the state’s capital.

Too bad.

Last Thursday, the N.C. House of Representatives approved a version of a coal ash bill from the N.C. Senate. The bill would create a new commission to oversee hazard rankings and closures of the 33 North Carolina ash ponds controlled by Duke Energy, the business that runs a monopoly on most of North Carolina’s energy.

The Senate version of the bill received justified criticism from environmentalists for going too easy on Duke Energy, according to the (Raleigh) News & Observer.

The bill allows Duke Energy to update its permits so it can continue to discharge seepage — seepage that is currently illegal — without consequence.

The bill could also potentially allow the energy company to pass on all of the expenses from the coal ash cleanups to its customers, protecting Duke’s profits.  The cleanup has an estimated cost of $10 billion.

And then the House version of the bill was released last Thursday. It was, somehow, even worse.

The House version of the bill would invalidate a ruling by Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway that would force Duke Energy to immediately begin cleaning up the sources of contamination.

According to the News & Observer, the bill’s sponsors defended this part of the House version by saying the judge’s order could be applied too broadly to public waste facilities in addition to ash ponds.

But if legislators were really concerned about the effects the ruling would have on public waste facilities like landfills, they could have specifically written the law so that those facilities would be excluded from the judge’s ruling. Instead, they chose language that would protect Duke Energy from responsibility for cleaning up the sources of the company’s contamination.

The House version of the bill would also permit extensions beyond the 2029 deadline for Duke Energy — proposed by the Senate version of the bill — after company officials complained that 15 years was not enough.

Now, the bill’s two versions will need to be reconciled before the bill is presented to Gov. Pat McCrory. McCrory has complained that the bill’s proposed coal ash commission would be largely appointed by the legislature instead of his office.

McCrory said he was concerned that separation of powers issues would arise if the General Assembly were allowed to appoint six of the nine members of the commission. McCrory would like to appoint all the members of the commission.

This raises questions about McCrory’s ethical judgment. If McCrory, a former employee of Duke Energy, gets his way, he would have an undue amount of power in selecting the body that would be tasked with regulating the company that employed McCrory for 28 years.

The failings of the House, Senate and governor’s office show, once again, that political leaders are more concerned with pleasing business friends than looking out for the welfare of North Carolinians.