Decade Old Protections for Tar-Pamlico Streams Under Attack
Buffers of trees, shrubs and grass along waterways are the ideal way to slow runoff and filter out contaminants. Streamside buffers are essential to protect water quality, and they contribute numerous other ecological benefits. Buffers provide habitat for a variety of plants, animals and natural communities both in the water and on the land, and they reduce downstream flooding, stream bank collapse and erosion. Conserving streamside buffers is socially valuable, economically viable and ecologically necessary. The state recognized these benefits more than a decade ago and implemented a good and fair policy that protects our riparian buffers.
Loss of riparian buffer acreage is growing, especially in the coastal counties. Most of this lost can be attributed to the increase in hardened shorelines, much by way of vertical bulkheads along residential lots. The Division of Water Quality (DWQ) has recognized the difficulty in enforcement and for years the state has been unable to fully enforce the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse Buffer Rules. But instead of working to correct those enforcement issues, DWQ appears to be working only to slowly weaken the rules themselves, seeking to instead eliminate work-load and
substantially weaken what once was a good buffer policy and our arguably easiest and most cost-effective tool we have to combat poor water quality.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has recently produce an awe-inspiring amount of double-talk, stating the great importance of buffers and the need to strengthen and protect rules that preserve our buffers while at the same time seeking to establish regulatory changes that will severely weakened buffer protections. As an example, a current regulatory change seeks to basically eliminate buffer protections for a large area of coastal North Carolina. It seems as though the political agenda of the current administration and DENR officials is to continually weaken the buffer rules to the point of irrelevance.
The buffer rules enacted in the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse River basins over a decade ago are the standard for the rest of the state. This attack on our buffer rules and the spineless reaction by the current administration casts a shadow for all of North Carolina’s Rivers and our efforts to protect our water resources. DENR appears to have lost sight of its mission and is failing to protect the public’s resources we all rely on placing private gain ahead of community well-being.
For those that recognize the short and long-term benefits of healthy Rivers, please talk to your elected officials; make them aware of your support for clean rivers and support for our simplest method of protecting our drinking water, favorite fishing spots and swimming holes – riparian buffers.
