environmental enforcement

Strong environmental policies do little to protect our environment without strong enforcement. Unfortunately, such enforcement is lacking in North Carolina. North Carolina has long underfunded the compliance and enforcement divisions of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), allowing repeat violators to go unnoticed and unpunished

Repeat violators are polluters who have violated either their water, air or sedimentation permits two or more times within a five year period. Under the current system, there are no adverse consequences for those permit holders who continuously violate the terms of their permit. CCNC has worked with DENR to compile enforcement records and present the public with information on repeat violators. This website provides the public with detailed information on repeat violators and their offenses. In addition, this information is categorized by legislative district, so citizens can identify which politicians are supporting repeat violators, and which are supporting the environment.

We are also working with the Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation on the Muddy Water Watch Campaign. This program is training an army of citizen volunteers to help watchdog one of the biggest sources of pollution in North Carolina's rivers, sedimentation. Conservation Council is working to collect data from these volunteers, assess local and state sedimentation control programs, and ultimately will make recommendations on how we can better protect our waters from sedimentation.

Contact Robin Smith, our Enforcement Coordinator enforcement [at] conservationcouncilnc [dot] org