Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Wind power ban dropped from wind power legislation

June 26, 2019 — A freeze on new wind turbines the Senate approved for wide swaths of the state is gone from a new proposal on regulating wind turbines.

House and Senate negotiators removed the moratorium the Senate approved in Senate bill 377 and added an addition to the state permitting process by requiring the state to ask for more information from military commanders.

Companies that want to erect wind turbines must already seek local, state and federal approval.

The bill approved by a House committee Tuesday was described as a compromise between the House and Senate. It is a drastic change from the ban on wind turbines Sen. Harry Brown, a Jacksonville Republican, first proposed. Brown has said wind farms pose a threat to military bases because they can interfere with flight training. Wind farms could weaken future campaigns to keep bases in the state when federal committees evaluate military installations for closure or consolidation, he argued.

Read the full story at The Charlotte Observer

North Carolina bill wants to ban wind power near the coast. ‘You do need to make choices.’

March 29, 2019 — North Carolina could permanently ban big wind-power projects from the most energy intensive parts of the state’s Atlantic coast, but a state senator said Wednesday the move is necessary to prevent hindering military training flights.

Legislation introduced by Republican Sen. Harry Brown would prohibit building, expanding or operating sky-scraping wind turbines within about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the coast. The bill would apply to the area that stretches from the Virginia border to south of the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base.

“It would have a major impact to the areas of North Carolina with potential for wind energy development,” said Brent Summerville, who teaches about wind energy in Appalachian State University’s sustainable technology program.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The News & Observer

Bill to make North Carolina ‘Napa Valley’ of US oyster industry also good for Cooke

June 25, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Undercurrent News: 

Many North Carolina fishermen are petitioning in support of the Support Shellfish Industry Act. One group, Citizens for a Level Playing Field, have created a petition in support of the Act.

A vote by the North Carolina General Assembly — potentially as early as Monday — could make it easier for Cooke Seafood USA and others to harvest more oysters in the US coastal state. But it’s coming down to the wire, as the state’s legislature is expected to end its session either this week or next.

The Support Shellfish Industry Act (HB 361) would raise the cap for oyster permits in the Pamlico Sound – the US’ second largest estuary, covering over 3,000 square miles of open water behind North Carolina’s touristy Outer Banks — from a combined 50 acres to 200 acres, allowing for larger scale operations. It’s a change being sought by the Wanchese Fish Company, a Suffolk, Virginia-based harvester and processor acquired by the Canadian Cooke family in 2015, among others.

The measure, which was originally introduced in late May as Senate Bill 738 by Republican state senators Bill Cook, Harry Brown and Norman Sanderson, passed the North Carolina upper chamber on June 15 by a 28-9 vote, but still requires approval by the state’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

“With our acres of pristine waters, and a large and growing interest in cultivated oysters, the potential for the industry in the state is huge,” the three lawmakers said in a press release when introducing the original bill. “Our goal is for North Carolina to become the ‘Napa Valley’ of oysters and to become a $100 million dollar industry in 10 years.”

The North Carolina lawmakers might have picked a different area to represent dominance in the US wine industry. Despite its reputation, Napa Valley produces just 4% of the grapes used in California.

Regardless, Jay Styron, president and owner of the Carolina Mariculture Company, an oyster grower in Cedar Island, North Carolina, would settle right now for his state just getting on a playing field that’s level with the oyster industries in Virginia and Maryland, two states on the Chesapeake Bay (the US’s largest estuary), with lease caps that allow operations of up to 2,000 total acres.

Other states, like Louisiana and Washington, allow similarly high oyster growing caps, he said in a letter to the editor published Friday by Undercurrent News.

Styron told Undercurrent he isn’t interested in expanding beyond the 6.5-acre floating-cage oyster and clam farm he owns in the adjacent Core Sound, but is arguing for the change on behalf of other oyster growers in his role as the president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Bill’s changes would allow industrial-scale oyster farming in N.C.

June 6, 2018 — Should oyster farming in North Carolina be a cottage industry or marine industrial operations owned by nonresident corporations?

That is the question facing legislators working on changes to the state’s oyster aquaculture statutes enacted in 2017.

Senate Bill 738, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cook, R-Beaufort, Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow and Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, drew strong opinions when it was discussed on May 30 at a meeting of the Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee co-chaired by Cook and Sanderson.

The meeting was announced late the afternoon before and caught many by surprise because the bill is still assigned to the Rules Committee.

Proposed changes include removing the residency requirement and allowing individuals or companies to own up to a total of 300 acres in water column/bottom leases. Now, individual leases can range from .5 acre to 10 acres.

Oyster aquaculture consists of suspending bags or cages of oysters in the water column while they grow to an acceptable size. Traditional oyster leases involve leasing the bottom and planting oyster shells to attract spat — baby oysters.

In a rare instance of unity, the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) and commercial fishermen attended the meeting to voice objections to lifting the residency requirement and the increase in total leases from 50 to 300 acres.

Read the full story at The Outer Banks Voice