BY MATT STARR, UPPER NEUSE RIVERKEEPER
Riverkeepers take it as their mission to call out state officials who misrepresent their actions to the public. In September of 2016, Upper Neuse Riverkeeper, Matt Starr, took to the pages of the Raleigh News & Observer to do just that. Below is his letter to the editor:
“The Aug. 30 letter ‘Protecting North Carolina’s environment’ from Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Secretary Donald van der Vaart left me more than a little perplexed.
“The secretary’s piece conflated wishful thinking with facts – so much so that his summary of the department’s record on clean water is basically a work of fiction.
“Van der Vaart’s first attempt to rewrite history was his claim that ‘even after record rainfall last spring and fall, waterways remained protected with no major incidents or unauthorized discharges.’ Just last February there was a discharge of more than 15,000 gallons of hog urine and poop into a tributary of the Cape Fear River.
“Van der Vaart congratulated himself and the McCrory administration for being a ‘national leader’ on coal ash, and the ‘first state to enact a comprehensive law that requires every coal ash pond to be closed.’ But the truth is that it took legal action from citizen groups against the coalash polluter Duke Energy, plus a massive environmental disaster on the Dan River, to make the state step in. When they did, it was largely to play defense for the [former] Governor’s former employer.
“Instead of excavating our leaking coal-ash pits like South Carolina has done, van der Vaart is poised to allow many of them to pollute in place, contaminating our water for the rest of time. That isn’t leadership.
“Finally, van der Vaart argued that, because of a change to the gasoline standard, we now have a regulatory system that better protects our water. Like they say on ESPN, ‘C’mon, man!’
“Under van der Vaart’s leadership, political appointees at DEQ have systematically removed every regulatory vertebrae from the agency, leaving the department intended to protect the environment and public health completely spineless.
“Give van der Vaart credit for getting one thing right, though. He said, ‘Over the last three years, we have taken steps that benefit consumers and businesses by eliminating outdated or overly burdensome regulations.’ DEQ made it very clear who the customer is in this administration’s ‘customer service’ approach to regulation: Big corporations, like Duke Energy and Smithfield Foods, not fishermen, swimmers or well owners, are who the state agency sees as its customers.”