Document Actions
Friday: Missing Moratorium
posted at 2007-07-27 13:24 | Last modified 2007-11-14 10:38
I was planning a story for this afternoon on the dueling House and Senate landfill bills. But the house version - S716, though the new proposal isn't online - hit a serious snag this morning in House Environment, thanks to an eleventh-hour amendment by Mecklenburg Republican Ruth Samuelson.
Her amendment sought to remove the main point of the bill - a one year extension of the current moratorium on new landfills, which expires Aug. 1st. You could hear the room issue a collective gasp when It passed, 11-9, with the support of three Dems (Gibson, Owens, and Tarleton) and most of the Rs in attendance. Dems immediately moved to adjourn before Chair Lucy Allen called the vote on the amended bill.
The bill still includes a proposal for a $2/ton tipping fee, to be used for recycling and cleaning up old orphaned landfills. But the moratorium extension was the big issue. Lawmakers, environmentalists, and DENR officials had said they needed the extra time to to work on a comprehensive overhaul of the state's outdated solid waste regulations.
House supporters are currently scrambling to find a way to reinsert the moratorium language. If not, they'll have to turn to other proposals. There are just two on the horizon at the moment. One is Duplin Senator Charlie Albertson's S1492, which does *not* extend the moratorium, but which contains a whole slate of new regulations, fees, and programs that a wide array of business interests don't like.
The other is an updated version of H1233 from Pryor Gibson, which goes a long way toward explaining why he sandbagged 716. Gibson describes his new proposal as a "moratorium with decorations." I haven't seen it yet, and isn't online yet either, so I can't comment on what those decorations look like, but I'm guessing we'll find out tomorrow when the committee meets again.
More on the rest of the day later - stay tuned.
& Newsletters
