Maybe voters will care about the environment next year

When I arrived in Waynesville for a newspaper job in 1977, I didn’t find the pristine mountain environment I expected.

The Champion International paper mill in the neighboring Haywood County town of Canton was a massive polluter of the air and water.

You could always tell if you were downwind of Canton from the odor. Worse, the foul-smelling emissions often mixed with fog to form a thick, stinking smog. Once I had to cover a horrendous traffic accident on Interstate 40, where visibility was practically nothing, thanks to the soupy brew. A tractor-trailer truck rear-ended a bus, pushing it onto a car with a family inside. Two or three died.

Yet, if you complained to a native, you were likely to hear, “That’s the smell of money.” Yes, the unionized plant employed a lot of workers and paid good wages. Residents had gotten used to the odor and the economic benefits.

At the same time, the plant poisoned the Pigeon River, which flows into Tennessee. People across the state line didn’t see the money. Instead, they saw lost tourism as a result of the putrid river that no one wanted to fish in or paddle on. They complained like hell, but no one on the North Carolina side of the border seemed to care.

The paper mill is still operating under different ownership, and it still employs more than 1,000 workers and carries a reported payroll of $90 million. It’s also still a polluter, although it has done much to reduce emissions into the river and air — largely because of action by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

I was prompted to recall all this by the Associated Press article, “Environment could play bigger role in state elections.”

That’s speculative. In North Carolina, the environment generally plays no role in state elections.

Yet, something is going on. As our editorial today points out, several counties are mustering efforts to delay or even regulate natural gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing. The Republican-led legislature might oppose their efforts, but the potential conflicts — even in Republican counties — highlight grass-roots concerns about the possible environmental impact of fracking.

Similarly, many of North Carolina’s coastal communities are alarmed about possible offshore oil drilling. Some have passed resolutions against drilling, citing fears about damage to the environment, the fishing industry and tourism.

Then there are lingering concerns about coal ash safety following last year’s Dan River spill.

Meanwhile, the legislature has embarked on an aggressive program of regulatory “reform” that could allow development closer to waterways, reduce air monitoring and reverse progress on renewable energy.

Now a dispute has broken out between Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper and Republican Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Donald van der Vaart over a proposed federal Clean Power Plan.

Cooper says North Carolina should comply; van der Vaart says it should resist. “North Carolina has a much better record of success than the federal government in balancing the protection of our environment with the potential cost to taxpayers,” van der Vaart wrote in The News Observer of Raleigh last month.

Indeed, North Carolina’s Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002 has been marvelously successful in clearing our air. Yet, it’s debatable whether the McCrory administration, let alone the current legislature, is committed to continuing such progress.

Amy Adams, a former regional supervisor for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, asserts that the agency now is more likely to promote the interests of the oil and gas industry.

The state also opposes new federal water regulations.

David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship in Tennessee, referred to his state’s late Republican senator, Howard Baker, who helped pass the original Clean Water Act, in defending the new rules.

“Baker’s effective advocacy for a broad-scope Clean Water Act was key in the EPA having the legal authority to ultimately reduce the oppressive pollution entering the Pigeon River from a paper mill in Canton, North Carolina,” Jenkins wrote in the Knoxville News Sentinel in July.

Critics of the EPA have a point that unreasonable regulations can kill jobs without providing sufficient benefits in return.

On the other hand, defending pollution as “the smell of money” is dangerous and short-sighted.

So let’s debate environmental issues in next year’s elections.