Hunt's Budget Continues Fight for Clean Water
RALEIGH -- Gov. Jim Hunt’s environmental budget includes critical funding for safer swimming areas, stronger enforcement programs and keeping waterways clean by reducing runoff pollution.
“Restoring and protecting our state’s water quality is my number one environmental priority,” Hunt said in announcing the budget. “North Carolina has made great strides in the last few years to clean up our waters, but we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that our children will grow up in communities with clean, safe water.”
Hunt’s $14.4 million environmental budget includes a clean water package to restore and protect wetlands, strengthen marine fisheries and coastal resource protection, reduce sediments reaching waterways and eliminate straight-piping (sending untreated wastewater from a home directly into a stream), which is a major water pollution problem in the mountains. It would also expand recreational water testing inland to protect swimmers.
The $12.1 million clean water plan would also drastically improve information technology throughout the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) by making environmental data more useful to the state’s scientists as well as accessible and understandable to the general public.
“Governor Hunt’s budget clearly illustrates his commitment to a cleaner environment in North Carolina,” DENR Secretary Wayne McDevitt said. “It targets the state’s highest environmental priorities and will give us the additional tools we need to protect and preserve our natural trust.”
Hunt’s budget also addresses other pressing environmental and natural resources needs.
“We must work to preserve and protect our state’s magnificent natural resources for our future,” Hunt said. “Educating our citizens about the importance of preserving those special resources and our natural heritage is the key to accomplishing that goal.”
To support that effort, Hunt’s budget includes funding for environmental education efforts in classrooms, state parks and the North Carolina Zoological Park and for completing natural heritage inventories, monitoring environmental threats to state parks and improving forest fire fighting capabilities.
The budget calls for:
$2.8 million to improve information technology, database management and Geographic Information System capabilities for better policy decisions and easier public access and use;
$1.5 million to improve compliance with the state water quality laws through additional inspectors, and increased pollution prevention guidance and technical assistance to governments and industries;
$1.4 million to increase water quality and quantity monitoring in North Carolina’s rivers and streams;
$1.6 million for fisheries management and habitat protection plans, equipment maintenance and administrative and operational support for the Marine Fisheries Commission.
$1.2 million for additional inspectors for construction sites to reduce sedimentation, the largest pollutant by volume in North Carolina’s waterways;
$1.4 for wetland and buffer restoration and protection;
$1.3 million for regulatory reform and customer service, including $215,774 to support the state’s Brownfields initiative to allow the safe redevelopment of properties abandoned because of environmental contamination;
$569,877 to provide environmental education materials in classrooms across the state, increase educational opportunities school children through the Zoological Park and enhance education and safety efforts in state parks; and
$358,701 to provide financial and technical support to coastal local governments for implementing Coastal Resources Commission rules to reduce run-off.
As Governor, Hunt has pushed to protect and restore North Carolina’s waterways. Last year, he signed the Clean Water Bond Bill and pushed for its passage. In November, North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approved the $800 million clean water bond referendum. The clean water bonds provide grants and loans to help local governments repair and improve water supply systems and wastewater collection and treatment, and to undertake water conservation and reuse projects.
In May 1998, Hunt announced an aggressive clean water budget plan to continue the state's fight against pfiesteria and water pollution and to strengthen marine fisheries protection. The plan, included in the $77.7 million environmental budget passed by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Hunt, focuses on three key components -- prevention, detection and response -- to combat water pollution. The budget included critical funding to reduce nutrients and sediments in North Carolina waterways, support the state's river basin planning program, provide more aggressive responses to fish kills and boost the state's compliance and enforcement efforts.
Hunt has fought for fisheries reform, environmental education efforts, improved animal and municipal waste operations, safer drinking water and stepped up enforcement for those who violate water quality regulations. At Hunt's direction, the state's Environmental Management Commission approved a plan to reduce the amount of harmful nutrients being released into the troubled Neuse River by 30 percent. The commission is working on a similar plan for the Tar-Pamlico River Basin.
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Date released: 02/16/99
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