Fracking bill passes NC Senate and House

The fracking bill, SB-820, has now passed the NC Senate and then the NC House. It still must be sent back to the Senate for that chamber’s concurrence with the House changes, which is expected. The bill will then be sent to the governor for her approval or possible veto.

The Senate passed the bill on June 6; it then was taken up by the House. There was one committee meeting which lasted 1 1/2 hours. Despite the fact that several members of the public (representatives of organizations) had signed up to speak in favor and against the bill, there was no time for public input. The House environment committee then approved the bill on June 13. With several hours of debate and attempts to amend the bill, the full House approved the bill on June 14.

Because the House made changes, the bill must go back to the Senate, which will vote to either concur or not concur with the House changes. The Senate is expected to vote on Tuesday, June 19. If they vote to concur (as expected) the bill will be sent to Gov. Bev Perdue for her approval. If they do not vote to concur, the bill will then go to a conference committee to compromise between the Senate and House positions.

Supporters of the bill point out that it will defer any fracking permits until the General Assembly takes legislative action in the future. The bill requires that regulations be adopted by October 1, 2014.

The environmental community has a number of objections to the bill.

One serious problem is that the chemicals used may be kept secret as trade secrets. People in the area could be exposed to chemicals, which may be dangerous, but the law will keep the identities of these chemicals from them.

Another problem is the loss of the rural nature of the land. Small, little used country roads will have to be upgraded to handle massive amounts of truck traffic. People who are in the area but are not receiving royalty payments will be exposed to bright lights and noise during the night.

The expense to the state taxpayers for a limited amount of natural gas amounts to a subsidy to the gas industry.

According to the most recent estimates, NC has less natural gas than the state uses in five years. We don’t know how much of this is actually recoverable. Yet, the expense to the state to develop the regulations will be great. In addition, money will have to be spent to upgrade country roads to accommodate the trucks needed to carry water and chemicals to and from the well sites. This amounts to a large subsidy for an energy source that will soon be depleted.

At the House Environment committee meeting on June 13, Robin Smith, Assistant Secretary for the Environment in DENR said that seven new government positions would be needed to comply with the bill, but that there was no funding allocated for those positions. She also said the two-year timeframe was an "extremely aggressive" schedule and recommended a three-to-four year development time for rules and regulations.