RALEIGH — A report that was mandated by the N.C. General Assembly on merging the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries and Wildlife Resources Commission  recommends that legislator take more time to study the idea, citing the complexity of the task, the agencies’ different missions and a lack of public consensus.

Merging the fisheries and wildlife agencies and moving seafood inspections and oversight to the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was a hot topic in the legislature during this year’s session. It’s one of several agency reorganizations that the legislature is considering – ostensibly to save money — before convening in January.

Legislators passed a bill last session that required the three agencies to study merging and report back by Oct. 1. The 28-page report noted that the fisheries and wildlife agencies serve users who often have conflicting interests.

Louis Daniel

Sen. Don East

“It was determined that while the mechanics of legislating reorganization could be fairly simple, the impacts of reorganization would be both complex and uncertain,” the report says. “In light of these factors, any reorganization should be studied in more detail with sufficient time to conduct alternatives analyses and incorporate extensive stakeholder input.”

The three public meetings that the agencies held to elicit comments and those submitted online or by email offered no real direction, the report notes. Of the 150 or so comments, about 30 percent favored merging fisheries and wildlife resources and 28 percent did not. The rest favored doing nothing or taking other steps, such as looking for more opportunities for partnerships among the agencies, merging all three agencies or studying the idea further.

The report contained no estimates as to how much the merger would cost or how much it might save, though Louis Daniel, the director of the fisheries division, doesn’t think there would be a great deal of savings.

“What really are the savings you would achieve?” he asked. “There is very little overlap between us and wildlife and very little overlap between us and Agriculture. We really couldn’t point to any position and say that these people have the same job.”

That doesn’t mean money couldn’t be saved by more interagency cooperation, Daniel said. The three agencies, the report says, will work together to seek greater efficiencies and collaboration in areas like habitat protection, fishery management and data collection, marine patrols and aquaculture and seafood marketing.

“I strongly believe that we have three very different missions,” Daniel said, “and we can best succeed in those missions by being separate agencies.”

Although the idea has met with opposition from the state’s commercial fishing industry, merging fisheries with wildlife resources has the strong backing of Sen. Don East, R-Alleghany, co-chair of Senate’s Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee and a key budget-writer. He wanted to push the move through this year as a cost-cutting measure, but settled for a study instead. An early version of the legislation mandating the study set July 1, 2013, as the target date for the potential merger.

Agency Shuffles

Over the past two years legislators have not been shy about moving around departments and divisions within agencies, including the move of the N.C. Division of Forestry and its roughly 500 employees from the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources to the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, one of the largest personnel shifts in state history and part of a trend to pare the environmental department down to mostly a regulatory agency.

The study of merging fisheries and wildlife resources isn’t the only one that could create ripples along the coast. Legislators also mandated a look for potential savings by partnering with non-profits to run the state zoo and aquariums. The study, due in December, followed a move by legislators to rein in spending at the aquariums, including a provision preventing construction of any new aquarium facilities off-site from existing ones.

The studies are a reminder that behind the backdrop of this year’s election, policy making chugs along in Raleigh. While the part-time occupants of most of the legislative office are on the campaign trail, the Legislative Building is not altogether quiet. Other studies due by year’s end are looking at new approaches to energy, environmental regulation and wetland mitigation. The results will probably play out in next year’s session.

Here’s a rundown.

Policy Reviews

A new Wetlands and Stream Mitigation study commission, authorized by a bill passed in 2011, meets for the first time on Oct. 23. It is expected to focus on a review of state’s Ecosystem Enhancement Program, which came under fire after a series of articles in the Raleigh News & Observer in 2011 that highlighted cost overruns and the overall efficacy of the program.

Also on the new commission’s agenda is a look at possible state assumption of so-called 404 permits — named for the provision in the federal Clean Water Act — which regulates disposal of materials from dredging and fill operations.

Now, the Army Corps of Engineers grants 404 permits for environmentally sensitive areas known as Section 10 waters, which includes tidal areas and nearby wetlands. A U.S. House Transportation subcommittee began holding hearings in September on ways to encourage states to take over management of 404 permits, including expanding states’ authority to the Section 10 waters.

Also this month, the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission meets for the first time since April with a look at the state’s water supply plan, agricultural water use, plastics recycling and a review of DENR’s sediment program on the agenda.

Devils in the Details

Derb Carter

While new laws and legislative policy shifts get the headlines, they don’t change matters overnight. Exactly how a change is to be implemented requires a lengthy process, including public review, revisions and further review.

In the case of regulatory reform, which proved a top priority for the 2011-2012 session right out of the gate, changing the way the state makes rules and regulations and grants permits to be more “business friendly” has been a difficult goal in part because of the relationship between state and federal regulators.

Early on in the legislature’s push for reform, a proposed change in how the state handles permit challenges in the omnibus Regulatory Reform Act of 2011 drew concern from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which viewed the new procedure as a substantial alteration to the way the state would enforce the federal Clean Water and Clean Air acts. The change moved the final call in legal challenges of environmental permits from the Environmental Management Commission to the Office of Administrative Hearings.

When she vetoed the bill, Gov. Beverly Perdue cited similar concerns as the EPA and noted previous declarations by the state Attorney General that having an administrative law judge decide matters delegated to the executive branch is unconstitutional.

Perdue’s veto was narrowly overridden, but EPA’s concern set off a back and forth that led the legislature to postpone the scheduled Jan. 1, 2012 implementation of the new appeals procedure until Oct. 1. In mid-August EPA agreed to the new procedure and in September officials with the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment officials announced that permit challenges filed after Oct. 1 would go through the new procedure.

Derb Carter, director of the Carolinas office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the issue might not be as settled as it sounds. The EPA’s letter, Carter said, spells out that since under the new procedure law judges send permits back to DENR to be revised EPA still considers DENR as having final say in how the permits are enforced.

The proposed U.S. 70 Bypass around Havelock would  effect portions of the Croatan National Forest.

That puts the EPA at odds with the legislature, Carter said. “The legislature appeared to intend for OAH (Office of Administrative Hearings) to decide what is in a permit,” he said. “Now it may or may not be DENR depending on how you interpret the law.”

Transportation Policy

Carter said SELC sees some opportunity in the new approaches by the legislature, especially in transportation policy, which has had a focus on building four-lane highways since legislation passed in the mid-1980s calling for a massive road-building program. The goal was to put 90 percent of North Carolina’s residents within 10 miles of a four-lane highway. It was a program that worked to get new critical roads built, but was also loaded with unnecessary projects, Carter said.

Now the legislature is taking a hard look at some of the projects remaining on the state’s to-do list. Carter said SELC wants transportation planners to take a second look at some of the more environmentally damaging projects including a four-lane bypass around Havelock through part of the Croatan National Forest and the proposed expansion of U.S. 64 through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

“The program started out being about good roads, but to get it passed everyone wanted their piece of the pie,” Carter said. “And every Senate district and every House district got its piece of the pie whether it makes sense or not.”

RALEIGH — Republicans didn’t hide their desire when they took over the N.C. General Assembly last year to reshape the state’s environmental regulations and, along with it, its top regulatory agency, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Using the recession as its backdrop and rules cost jobs as its mantra, the GOP-controlled legislature slashed the agency’s budget, trimmed it of several divisions, made fashioning new environmental regulations more difficult and passed a number of bills that earned Republicans record low scores for protecting the environment. One bill in particular drew ridicule and scorn from around the world.

Rep. Joe Hackney

Sen. Harry Brown

Critics, like Rep. Joe Hackney, charge that the legislature’s actions in just one and a half sessions have set environmental protection in North Carolina back decades. “They want to take us back to ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Hackney, a Democrat from Orange County and one the legislature’s staunchest environmental defenders.

Republican leaders counter that the actions were needed to reform out-of-control regulations that are hurting the state’s economy. “The rules have happened so fast. (the coast) is a difficult place to live, to run a business and afford a home,” Sen. Harry Brown, a Republican from Onslow County and the N.C. Senate’s majority leader, said at a recent committee meeting. “It’s just a constant attack on citizens on the coast.”

The Budget and DENR

In a time of lean state budgets, North Carolina’s main environmental agency, known as DENR, saw its budget cut in 2010, and Gov. Beverly Perdue’s proposed more cuts in her proposed budget the following year. But GOP leaders, in charge of the legislature by then, took more off the table, slashing the department’s budget by 30 percent in last year’s budget. They cut it again, though not as drastically, this year.

A comparison of pre- and post-recession funding levels by the N.C. Budget and Tax Center found that funding for natural and economic resources from the legislature fell more than 49 percent since the recession began in 2007, with the bulk of the drop in programs and agencies under DENR.

DENR not only lost funding for scores of positions, but almost half of its employees when the Division of Forest Resources was moved to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, an agency controlled by a Republican secretary. Other parts of DENR went elsewhere while others were simply zeroed out.

This year’s adjustment to the state budget spared DENR another round of deep cuts after its seven regional offices passed a legislature-mandated review and had their funding restored. But the budget continues the parceling out of agencies within DENR to other departments. It shifts the Geodetic Survey Section, which serves as the official state mapping agency, to the Division of Crime Control and Public Safety. Also on the horizon is the possible merger of state’s Wildlife Resources Commission and DENR’s Division of Marine Fisheries. A study bill looks at combining the two and restructuring oversight of the new agency by July 2013.

Dan Conrad, legislative counsel for the N.C. Conservation Network, said while the cuts aren’t as deep this year, DENR continues to be a target.

“It’s the same kind of piling on we’ve been seeing,” he said of this year’s budget.

But aside from hydraulic fracking, which was the headline last week, the legislature has concentrated on changes to rules and regulations that Conrad says are intended to strip away DENR’s ability to regulate. “This session has been death by a thousand cuts,” he said.

While cutting its budget, the legislature has added to DENR’s workload with an accelerated effort to create rules for fracking, a controversial method to drill for natural gas and oil. Banned in North Carolina because of its potential environmental effects, the legislature passed a law last week to allow it.

The legislature took another step toward allowing natural gas fracking wells like this one on Montana. Photo: EPA

The law requires that rules to safeguard the environment and public heath be fashioned in two years, and it charges DENR with doing much of that legwork. Several times during this week’s grueling two-day debate on fracking the focus was on DENR’s ability to handle this added responsibility and its normal duties without more money and help.

At a Wednesday hearing of the House Environment Committee, Robin Smith, one of the department’s assistant secretaries, said DENR would have to pull in staff from other areas to work on fracking. She said to do the amount of work to develop fracking rules within the mandated time would take an additional seven specialists. Pressed by Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Henderson, Smith said without more money the department would have a difficult time meeting its obligations to enforce state and federal environmental laws.

On Thursday Rep. Mitch Gillespie, R-McDowell, the House appropriations committee chair  who managed the floor debate on the fracking bill, fought back several amendments that underlined DENR’s lack of resources.

“There is plenty of time to get the funding if we need it,” Gillespie said, adding that if the department is having trouble making the deadlines, the legislature can step up funding next January. Gillespie said the department has more than 100 unfilled positions.

Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, countered that he has no doubt DENR is having trouble recruiting new staff given the “lack of security and stability of the agency that we’ve laid waste to.”

The Bills

The N.C. League of Conservation Voters has been scoring legislators on environmental issues since 1999. The league’s tabulators, though, had never seen the likes of the new crowd in Raleigh.

The average score in the N.C. House for the 2011 session was 43 percent, down from 67 percent for the 2009-2010 average; the Senate average was a mere 27 percent, compared to 69 percent in 2009-2010.

Of particular interest were the average scores of the incoming freshman legislators as compared to the lifetime scores of those they replaced. In the House, the average score for the 27 new representatives was 35 percent, drastically down from the outgoing legislators’ lifetime average of 73 percent. The Senate scores were even more shocking with the 15 new senators averaging just 18 percent as compared to their predecessors at 70 percent.

Dan Crawford

“Legislators in the 2011 long session made poor choices when it comes to protecting our natural resources and quality of life,” Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations for league, said on the group’s web site. “With North Carolina consistently ranking at the top of lists for best places to live and do business in the country, the legislators failed to realize the impact their decisions will have on our quality of life for the long-term.”

Here is a rundown of some of the major bills that the legislature passed or is considering that weaken environmental protection :

• Rules: A bill to “reform” rulemaking makes it much more difficult to pass environmental rules and prohibits any new rule that adds “additional costs of $500,000 on the aggregate of persons subject to the rule” unless “required to respond” to some new legislation, federal rule, court order, or “serious and unforeseen threat.” It also prevents new rules from being more stringent than equivalent federal standards.
• Terminal Groins: The bill creates a large hole in the state’s longstanding ban on groins, jetties, seawalls and other types of hard structures along the oceanfront by allowing up to four small jetties at inlets.
• Funding for Clean Water: The budget bill last year sliced funding to the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust to about $11 million, the lowest appropriation in the fund’s 16-year history. The budget that the N.C. House passed this year keeps funding at that level and no longer guarantees any funding in the future. By statute, the fund is supposed to get $100 million. The fund has spent almost a billion dollars all over the state on innovate measures to control water pollution and buying environmentally sensitive land.
• Fracking: The bill allows this controversial method of drilling for natural gas and oil. It creates a new commission to regulate the activity on which seven of the 11 voting members will have ties to the oil and gas industries. It also prevents local governments from passing ordinances that prevent or restrict fracking
• Offshore Drilling: The bill encourages the drilling for oil and natural gas off the N.C. coast and requires the state to enter into compacts with neighboring states to encourage drilling. Perdue vetoed the bill, and it’s awaiting a possible vote to override her veto.
• Toxic Air: The bill severely weakens the state’s law to control toxic air emissions by exempting the largest polluters, which have to meet similar but not as stringent federal requirements.
• Boards and Commissions: A proposed bill revamps the state’s two major regulatory commissions, the Environmental Management Commission and the Coastal Resources Commission, by cutting membership that will give industry more votes.
• Sea–Level Rise: The bill prevents the state from using modern scientific methods to calculate the future rate of sea-level rise because of global warming. It has been the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles and editorials, TV broadcasts and blog posts. It has been roundly ridiculed for ignoring science. The bill passed the Senate and is awaiting action in the House.

Hackney, who is retiring after 16 terms in the House, said that during his tenure strengthening environmental protections has never been easy.  “It’s always been an uphill battle,” he said. But the going has gotten tougher, he said, as GOP leaders made the effort to reshape DENR and the state’s approach to regulation a key part of their legislative agenda. Finding GOP allies to protect the environment, Hackney said, has become much more difficult.

Other Matters

Boards and Commissions Bill Stalls: A bill to revamp the state’s numerous boards and commissions has stalled. The bill, which includes the elimination of at-large and public health appointments to the state’s Environmental Management Commission and reduces the size of the Coastal Resources Advisory Council, has yet to move out of the Senate’s Finance Committee after changes to the bill were approved last week.

Key House members are said to be wary of the sweeping legislation, which gets rid of 50 boards and commissions and adjusts the size and scope of membership to dozens of others.

Omnibus Environmental Bill Moving: A major revision to environmental laws ranging from protections for Venus fly traps to stormwater rules for airports is on the calendar today for consideration by the state House.

On Thursday, opponents managed to delay a final vote on the bill, S229 which was not heard by a House committee.

Hackney, the House minority leader, said the 25 page bill contained a number of items most legislators had not seen before. “We’ve managed to slow it down and make some improvements,” he said.

From a distance, Jones Island seems remote and wild, like a set from one of those reality TV shows.

SWANSBORO — As you approach Jones Island in a skiff, it’s easy to imagine you’re in the South Pacific, speeding toward a grand adventure much like the ones that unfolded for six seasons on “Lost.” The island seems very much like a remote, partially abandoned patch of land far removed from civilization where nature is, or should, be queen.

It is not, however, anywhere near the South Pacific nor is it very far removed from civilization. In fact, Jones Island is located in the mouth of the White Oak River with a clear view of Swansboro and parts of Cedar Point. But it is under threat from predators just as menacing as any smoke monster or a settlement of mysterious “Others.”

The biggest threat to Jones Island is erosion caused by the ripple effects of human development, recreational boating and the rising tides of climate change. To protect the island, the N.C. Coastal Federation, working in conjunction with Hammock Beach State Park, has an educational program in place aimed at replenishing two key island defenses – marsh grasses and oyster beds.

Since the inception of the Jones Island Environmental Education and Restoration Center five years ago, the federation has planted more than 60,000 marsh plants along the island’s shoreline; it’s erected more than 1,200 feet of low-lying oyster walls, or sills; and it’s created five stand-alone patches of oyster shell habitat, all with the help of more than 2,500 volunteers.

The students are members of the school’s environmental club, and once a year they take a field trip to Jones Island to see first-hand what they’ve learned from Sarah Phillips, a federation education coordinator who visits the school three to four times a year to talk to students about water quality and habitat restoration.Many of the volunteers are students much like the group of 22 students from Beaufort Middle School who showed up in mid-April to plant marsh grass and learn about the sea creatures that thrive in and around the oyster beds.

As the kids disembarked from the state park ferry and walked ashore, each one was promptly handed a dibbler, a shovel-like tool that’s used to part the sand deep enough and long enough to insert a marsh plant and its small bundle of tangled roots.

Within an hour, they had added roughly 1,500 plants to the Jones Island shoreline. By summer’s end, Phillips said she hoped the total number of new plants would exceed 10,000, all of them planted in similar bit-sized chunks by small groups of volunteers – both young and old.

“I like knowing that I’m making a difference,” said eighth-grader Spencer Valentine. “I didn’t know how much planting grass like this would help.”

Several of the students had planted marsh grass the previous spring, and they could see just how much it had thrived in a year’s time. This was particularly true of the grass that was planted close together, a lesson learned inadvertently from a former student volunteer. To keep him focused, Phillips said she challenged him to plant as much grass as possible in a small space. A year later, that patch was the one that had done the best.

Marsh grass plantings are one of several activities planned for the island from now until the end of August. Others include the restoration of oyster reefs, scientific monitoring of restored areas, trash clean-ups, summer camps for kids, kayaking and yoga retreats for adults, and marsh cruises that wind their way through Bogue Sound and the mouth of the White Oak River.  Check the federation’s Events Calendar for specific dates and times.

The education program began in 2007, two years after part of the island was rezoned for commercial development, a move that prompted the federation to fight for its preservation. With a grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund, the federation bought seven acres. At the time, the Audubon Society owned another 10.

The two groups donated their parcels to Hammock Beach State Park, and the federation has been working in tandem with the park ever since. Roughly a third of the island is still in private hands, and, to date, all of it is still undeveloped.

As seventh-grader Jonathon Deaton wisely noted, “Just getting to come out here is a privilege.”

A volunteer measures the growth of newly planted marsh grasses.

“Look at it,” he said, gesturing toward the pristine nature of the island’s evergreen forest, its live oaks, and its yaupon and wax myrtle shrubs. Just beyond the tree line and the shrubs, lies the shoreline, where, later in the day, the students waded into the water, cast their nets along oyster sills and scooped up a menagerie of small sea creatures, including crabs, clams, scallops, fish and a lot of baby shrimp.

The bounty of shrimp was particularly pleasing to Wayne Guthrie, owner of Beaufort-based Outerbanks Seafood Co. and the father of twin seventh-graders at Beaufort Middle School. “Hello full moon in June,” he said, referring to the time when shrimp leave their protective estuarine hiding places and head for deep water.

In addition to Guthrie, three other adult volunteers were also part of the mid-April excursion. Two were a husband and wife team that owns property on Clubfoot Creek, a tributary of the Neuse River.

Worried about erosion, Ida and Clarence Arrington were all set to install a seawall until they learned about the dibbler and the power of marsh grasses. “We didn’t know you could plant it like this,” Ida Arrington said.

“We just called the contractor,” she said, adding that they’d decided to put the seawall on hold.

The fourth adult was Bree Kerwin, an environmental scientist, who summed up the oysters in our midst this way: “They look really ugly, but they’re such an interesting organism.”

A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, a feat that rivals the best of what Brita has to offer. In addition, oyster beds serve as a natural habitat for roughly 300 underwater species that find both nutrients and refuge among the shells’ ragged edges; and the beds, or reefs, protect landmasses, like Jones Island, from erosion by slowing down wave energy as it approaches the shore.

Historically one of the biggest threats to the oyster population has been human consumption. Whether they’re raw, steamed, served up with butter and salt or lime juice and hot sauce, they are beloved worldwide. Americans eat roughly 28 million pounds of oysters each year, according to estimates done at Louisiana State University.

Day camps on Jones Island offer children a chance to experience the natural wonders of our coastal rivers.

Baby oysters, however, prefer shells of other oysters to attach to. A single oyster discharges millions of fertilized eggs into the water. The larvae float about for a two to three weeks, but then they need a place to settle, and the place that works best is another oyster shell.

Until it became illegal a few years ago, odds were that discarded oyster shells ended up in a landfill, where the reproductive cycle came to a screeching halt. Since the late 1800s, overfishing, depleted habitats and pollutants from stormwater runoff have reduced North Carolina’s oyster population by an estimated 50 percent, and the yearly harvests are 10 percent of what they were a hundred years ago.

As one leaves Jones Island with these thoughts in mind, one realizes that as “Lost”-like as the island may seem, there are, indeed, much greater threats than smoke monsters and mysterious “Others.”