A rain garden, wetlands and a bioretention area are among projects installed at Bradley Creek Elementary School to help improve water quality by addressing stormwater runoff.

"Stormwater runoff is the largest pollutant in the county," Dru Harrison, interim director for the New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District, said Monday, April 18. "You’ve got fertilizers, pesticides, pet waste, sediment … anything that ends up on the ground ends up being washed into our local waterways within the first inch-and-a-half of rain."

"You can’t harvest shellfish in a lot of our local creeks and waterways because of the stormwater runoff," Harrison added.

Project funding included more than $50,000 from the Community Conservation Assistance Program, which is among several programs offered by the North Carolina Division of Soil and Water Conservation. The division—part of the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources—allocates CCAP funding.

But the New Hanover district’s board of supervisors is concerned with what will happen to CCAP under a Senate Bill 229 proposed transfer of Soil and Water to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Harrison said.

CCAP is for nonagricultural lands. Soil and Water offers several programs that provide technical and financial help for installing best management practices to improve water quality, such as the Agriculture Cost Share Program for farmlands. CCAP is similar, but it helps houses, subdivisions, commercial development and county government complexes, Harrison said.

Most of North Carolina’s 96 Soil and Water Conservation districts are agriculture-based, but several also deal with urban or nonagricultural issues, including New Hanover County, Harrison said.

"We’ve been told as it stands right now that all programs would stay intact and stay the same," Harrison said. "But there is much more need than there is funding across the state.

"If it were to move then would this program die because it would never grow?"

Development is a huge industry in North Carolina, Harrison added.

"We’re going through a recession, but there are still areas where farmland is being lost in development," Harrison said. "What position does that put all districts in if they no longer can help in an area that’s continuing to grow and they only help in an area that’s continuing to diminish?"

Soil and Water has a good relationship with Agriculture, which is trying new and innovative things, Harrison said, but she added that finagling programs such as CCAP to fit into Agriculture might be a challenge.

Senate Bill 229 was still in committee. Meanwhile, officials from DENR, Soil and Water and the Division of Marine Fisheries were still trying to work out the potential effects from proposed budget cuts released earlier this month.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Natural and Economic Resources’ 2011-2013 proposed budget summary would include a 25 percent drop from a nearly $480 million total continuation budget in 2011-2012 for Agriculture, Labor, DENR, Commerce and other agencies. There would be a nearly 34 percent drop in 2012-2013.

About 26 percent of best management practices money for the Agriculture Cost Share program would be cut, Harrison said, adding that CCAP did not seem to be affected at this time.

Marine Fisheries was hoping for clarification that a proposed $250,000 cut would not take place until July 1, 2012—the earliest federal funding would be available through a Joint Enforcement Agreement, said Patricia Smith, public information officer for the division.

The cut would start this July under the proposed budget.

"There would be a year’s difference," Smith said Monday, April 18. "It may just be an oversight. We’re working to get that clarified."

Proposed cuts to DENR include about 240 regional office positions through the closure of its Mooresville office and reductions at the offices in Asheville, Fayetteville and Raleigh.

"The brunt of the cuts are falling on basically the people that enforce our environmental health and natural resource laws," former DENR Secretary Bill Holman, director of state policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, said Wednesday,
April 13. "When you cut inspectors it means you are reducing enforcement of state environmental laws."

A budget of zero was proposed for the Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Its continuation budget was $100 million, with the governor’s budget recommending $50 million.

A special provision appropriated $10 million for the trust fund, DENR Assistant Secretary for Natural Resources David Knight said last week, but it cannot be used for land acquisition, such as expanding a state park or game land.

Money for two other trust funds–Parks and Recreation and Natural Heritage–was being diverted to other purposes, Knight added.

"Land acquisition is going to come to a halt," Knight said.