At DENR, an NC watchdog loses its bite
Published March 16, 2014
by Ned Barnett, News and Observer, March 15, 2014.
At the heart of what has gone wrong at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is this: Amy Adams doesn’t work there anymore.
It’s not that Adams, a former DENR regional office supervisor, was an indispensable employee before she quit last year. It’s that she was an ideal employee, the kind of informed, articulate and dedicated person you want to have protecting the environment and watching out for pollution.
Unfortunately, these qualities rendered her unfit for a management role at DENR under the new direction it’s taking under Gov. Pat McCrory and the man he appointed as DENR secretary, John Skvarla. Upon taking over, Skvarla asserted that DENR would stress the governor’s theme of “customer service” and that a priority would be put on expediting permit applications so business operations and development could happen faster and spur the state’s economy.
Adams originally welcomed the call for efficiency. Like most bureaucracies, DENR needed streamlining and focus. But she balked and quit once it became clear that the real change at DENR would be less, not smarter, enforcement. DENR’s new role would be to guide permit applicants through what Skvarla calls “the maze” of regulations.
As Adams puts it, the message from DENR’s leadership, stripped of its customer service code words, was: “Stop investigating, stop enforcing and just be someone out there holding a hand.”
Adams, 38, resigned from her post as DENR’s supervisor in the Surface Water Protection Section last year. She explained her reasons in an op-ed in The News & Observer. She now works as the North Carolina Campaign Coordinator for the Boone-based Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit environmental group.
Adams visited The New & Observer last week with two retired DENR employees, George Matthis and John Dorney, to discuss the recent spill of up to 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River and general issues concerning water quality and changes in the mission of their former agency.
They agreed that the spill from a coal ash pond at a Duke Energy plant likely would have occurred no matter who was running DENR. But they also agreed that DENR’s approach to environmental regulation has taken a turn for the worse.
Dorney, 61, served at DENR for decades in a role that required integrating updated science into regulatory programs. He said that the agency always had “customer service” as part of its mission but that customers included the general public and environmental groups. “Now it seems to be that the applicant is the customer, not a customer,” he said.
Matthis, 60, served at DENR for 33 years in various technical and managerial positions and served as executive director for the Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation before co-founding the River Guardian Foundation. He said there have always been cases of political pressure when someone well-connected didn’t like an enforcement action, but now the pressure is coming from DENR managers as well as outsiders.
“People who were hired to protect us aren’t able to do their jobs,” he said.
Skvarla has said that most DENR employees endorse his emphasis on customer service and that those who don’t are malcontents. “I’ve got 4,000 employees. Do you think everybody’s going to be happy?”
But that is not the message delivered by Adams and her two former colleagues. They said the Dan River coal ash spill, while dramatic, is far from the worst environmental problem. There is toxic water seeping from coal ash ponds into groundwater, illegal dumps and more pollutants going into rivers even as a growing state draws more water from rivers. Rising sea levels are impairing water treatment on the coast, and the state’s long-neglected infrastructure has a proliferation of pipe leaks and breaks.
Meanwhile, the state’s environmental watchdog is cutting staff, driving away dedicated and principled employees, expediting permit reviews, reviewing and preparing to toss out many environmental regulations and giving priority to accelerating economic growth over protecting the environment.
Adams said only a vigilant regulator can provide confidence in drinking water. As she puts it: “No one should have to turn on the tap and and wonder: Is this going to kill me in 30 years?”
She added, “The watchdog that’s supposed to be in charge of that basically is a lap dog. They’re not going after the folks they need to be going after in order to protect the health of North Carolinians.”
After the Dan River spill and with a federal investigation into the relationship between DENR and Duke Energy underway, Adams hopes McCrory and Skvarla will change course.
“Those two gentlemen have the ability to change this story,” she said. “They are in a position to strengthen the department, to make it strong, to make it where it puts citizen protections and protections of our natural resources first and foremost above polluters. I hope that they change that story, but right now, with what we’ve seen recently, I don’t see that story changing.”
March 16, 2014 at 11:41 am
Norm Kelly says:
Skvarla is right when he calls government regulations 'a maze'. Should it be the responsibility of government agencies such as DENR to stand in the way of businesses by using the permitting process or should DENR and other regulatory agencies be in the business of helping businesses understand regulation, conform to regulation, and guide permits through the process. It sounds to me like this editorialist, and many on the left, expect, desire, demand that government agencies take an adversarial role in dealing with private businesses. It sounds like lefties are saying that instead of helping businesses to actually understand and properly implement regulation, the government agencies are instead supposed to stand in the way of business, hide the regulations as much as possible, make it difficult for businesses to conform to the regulation and even understand the regulation. Isn't it more efficient for both business and government enforcement agencies to work together to get permitting completed properly, insuring that all the I's are dotted, all the T's are crossed? Shouldn't the regulators be in the business of making sure that businesses conform to the existing regulations rather than preventing businesses from doing business by making it difficult to complete the permitting process, making it difficult to understand the regulations, preventing businesses from being able to complete the process? When government stands in the way of private business, then it's normal, to be expected, that private business will find a way to work around the obstructionists in the government. Which is better? Work with business to properly regulate or act as a prevention to business doing business?
Three former DENR employees showed up at the friendly, like-minded, N&D to discuss the coal ash spill. One of the facts they reveal is that even under the heavy-handed prior administrations the spill probably would have happened anyway. These whistle blowers, pro-Dem ex-employees, are saying that years before Pat took over as governor, DENR was not properly doing it's job. So the lack of oversight existed before Pat. And they also admit that while they wanted a more adversarial role between government and private business, they still didn't properly regulate and control the private businesses they were responsible for regulating. So where's the blame on Republicans and Pat? Are libs looking through their rose colored glasses still? Did the 'reporter' at the N&D ask any of these 3 why they chose to ignore the problems when they were employed by the state and only chose to speak out now?
'Adams hopes McCrory and Skvarla will change course'. And have the agency do business as it did under Demon rule? Like having the agency ignore Duke's coal ash ponds the way they did when Adams was in charge? For years, while Adams and these other people, were not only employed by DENR, but in some level of authority, these 3 are admitting that they failed to do their job. Now they want me to believe that there's a problem at DENR? What about the problems that existed when they were in charge? How about the new attitude is that regulations need to be enforced, like they weren't under Adams? How about the role of the regulators is to make sure the rules are followed, but that their role ALSO is to help private business understand and conform to said regulations? It sounds like Adams not only didn't do her job when Demons were in charge, but that she also enjoyed an adversarial role when dealing with private business. Is it just possible that Adams preferred keeping business in the dark when trying to do something under the regulations, then when the regulation was violated, her role and desire was to be able to fine, sue, punish the private business? Having a pro-business governor, a pro-business environment across the state is NOT necessarily a bad thing. Having an adversarial attitude toward business DEFINITELY IS a bad thing. Having government regulators AT EVERY LEVEL deal with business in a professional, helping way to make sure regulations are understood and followed is a GOOD thing. This way, businesses are actually encouraged to seek out assistance from the regulators as opposed to trying to find a way around the regulations. Sometimes, when the government attitude is wrong, it's easier and less expensive for business to ignore the regulations, ignore the regulators, ignore the permitting process and simply do what they want, when they want, and pay the fine if/when they are caught or cause a problem. And if the regulators in place to protect the citizens allow Duke to pass the cost of cleanup on to us rate payers, then the state fails us again. Duke should pay any/all cleanup costs out of profits, and make the investors, stock holders, and top management pay the tab. When Duke comes to the regulators asking for another rate hike, the answer should be NO until Duke can show, with facts, that rate payers didn't pay a dime for cleanup of this or any other environmental issue.
It's time regulators do their job and protect us, both as citizens requiring clean drinking water as well as rate payers trapped by a single service provider in our area. Will the lib rag N&D follow up on how regulators handle forcing Duke to pay for the cleanup? So long as Republicans maintain control of Raleigh, I believe it's safe to say the N&D will be on it.
