“RALEIGH — A new version of a bill to address North Carolina’s GenX pollution issue passed a Senate committee Wednesday night, clearing the way for a vote soon.
The bill already passed the state House of Representatives – unanimously – but Senate leader Phil Berger wouldn’t let it come up for a vote in the Senate last month. And this new version of the bill makes several changes to the House version.
Sen. Michael Lee, a Wilmington Republican, led Wednesday’s heated discussion. Eventually the committee approved it along party lines, with Republicans in support and Democrats opposed…
Democrats questioned why Lee’s version of the bill removed a key part of the House bill, which would have given the NC Department of Environmental Quality money to buy a piece of equipment called a mass spectrometer. Berger has questioned the claims of DEQ officials who say they need one to figure out what all is in the water here, other than GenX…
Instead of giving DEQ money to buy the new equipment and hire scientists to run it, the new bill would direct DEQ to work with the Environmental Protection Agency or the state’s university system to borrow the use of a mass spectrometer…
This new proposal would also give $2.4 million to DEQ this year to conduct several studies.
In the next fiscal year, however, that money would go away and DEQ’s budget would be cut by another $1 million.”
Read the full article by Will Doran.