With Veto Overrides, General Assembly Creates Shoreline Fund and Stormwater/Redevelopment Relief

Governor Roy Cooper vetoed S16 in August and in September announced his veto of H56. In recent sessions, large omnibus bills like H56 and S16 have been the principal legislative vehicles—functioning by combining a number of smaller issues into a larger bill. Unfortunately, if the entire bill is vetoed, this means all the individual provisions are at risk. Fortunately for our region, when the General Assembly reconvened in October, it voted to override these vetoes–thereby making the provisions law.

H56 features a number of different provisions, but twoof the most important for our region are:

  • Creation of a Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund
  • Funding for CFPUA and UNCW to continue to research GenX

Having fought long and hard to get the Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation fund established—so that North Carolina can be in a position to facilitate future investment in our shorelines–it is excellent news that this provision survived the veto. We will now work to ensure dedicated funding for this critical infrastructure program.

S16, the Business Regulatory Reform Act of 2017, contains a number of “regulatory reform” provisions, but the key one for our region is a provision facilitating redevelopment with regard to stormwater regulations. The full text can be found below–with the new language underlined:

CLARIFY STORMWATER LAWS SECTION 8. G.S. 143-214.7(b3) reads as rewritten: “(b3) Stormwater runoff rules and programs shall not require private property owners to install new or increased stormwater controls for (i) preexisting development or (ii) redevelopment activities that do not remove or decrease existing stormwater controls. When a preexisting development is redeveloped, either in whole or in part, increased stormwater controls shall only be required for the amount of impervious surface being created that exceeds the amount of impervious surface that existed before the redevelopment.”

 

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