U.S. Water News Online
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Only state officials can go to court to force polluters to clean up public property, not environmentalists who demanded that the $1.7 billion hog industry pay for a massive river cleaning, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled.
In another case, the court rejected arguments by business interests that the state overstepped its authority with tough wetlands rules imposed after thousands of marshy acres were drained.
Foundations seeking to protect the Neuse, Cape Fear and New rivers and the Water Keeper Alliance had gone to court to try forcing hog companies to pay for the full clean up of the waterways. The groups also sought to end the use of holding lagoons and crop sprayfields, the most common techniques for handling the waste created by the state's nearly 10 million head of hogs and pigs.
A Wake County Superior Court last year dismissed their claims against Carroll's Foods Inc., Brown's of Carolina Inc., Murphy Farms Inc. and Smithfield Foods Inc., their corporate parent.
The appeals court concurred, ruling that the groups could not sue the companies to achieve the public good of clean rivers.
``The state is the sole party able to seek non-individualized, or public, remedies for alleged harm to public waters,'' Judge Albert Thomas wrote for the court. Judges James Wynn and Linda McGee concurred.
The environmentalists failed to show they had suffered damages different from and in addition to those suffered by the general public, the court found.
``There is no North Carolina authority supporting the contention that injury to aesthetic or recreational interests alone, regardless of degree, confers standing on an environmental plaintiff'', Thomas wrote.
Environmentalists did win a case challenging tough rules adopted by the Environmental Management Commission banning any activity altering the amount of water or type of vegetation in wetlands.
The appeals court backed a Wake County Superior Court decision last year rejecting a lawsuit by a coalition of home builders, farmers, miners and other property owners that contended the rules went beyond water quality protection and mirrored land-use regulations.
Regulators took effect after developers drained about 20,000 acres of wetlands in southeastern North Carolina in 1998.
``This decision clearly affirms the state's authority to protect wetlands as a critical part of maintaining and restoring the water quality of our rivers and sounds,'' said Derb Carter, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which joined the state in defending the rules.
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