Ocean Isle hoping for erosion help
Groin bill's chances looking up
By Steve Jonessjones@thesunnews.com
Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith hopes this is the year a bill to allow for terminal groins along North Carolina's coast makes it out of a state House committee, and Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick, and Sen. R.C. Soles, D-Columbus, think she could get her wish.
"I believe there is a good chance," Iler said in a statement echoed by Soles.
The General Assembly convenes today for its short session, and Iler and Soles say that legislators' main business will be to balance the budget. The short session is really the second of a two-year process in which a biennial budget is written in the first year, or long session, and tweaked the next year. The session's rules don't allow discussion of controversial local legislation, but the terminal groin bill avoids that hurdle because it is a statewide bill.
It was passed last year by the Senate and shunted to the House Environment Committee. House Speaker Joe Hackney of Orange County, an environmentally-friendly legislator, refused to let it out of the committee last year. But a report earlier this year by the Coastal Resources Commission that recognized the groins' value in holding sand at island ends experiencing severe erosion - such as the east end of Ocean Isle Beach - could nudge Hackney to let the bill go to the floor for debate and a vote.
If passed, Ocean Isle Beach and other barrier island communities that feel the need for the protection could apply to the CRC for permission to build a groin.
An earlier bill that would have allowed for the construction of one coastal groin so the state could study its up and downsides died after passage by the Senate and a terminal wait in a House committee.
If it gets out of committee and passes the House this session, Smith said the town is prepared to move on it.
"We're ready to see how we're going to pay for it and begin work," Smith said Tuesday.
The session marks the last for Soles, who with more than 40 years in Raleigh is the state's longest-serving legislator ever. He announced amid personal legal problems earlier this year that he would not seek re-election, and he said his emotions have been like a roller coaster ride over his sunset trip. Some days, he said, he's OK with it. Other days, he realizes he will miss constituents calling him for help.
On the other hand, Soles said, "It's going to be good not to be on the firing line."
Iler said he plans to introduce local bills to allow Boiling Spring Lakes to refund assessments it collected from residents when it was planning to set up its own sewer system. Now that the town had decided to join the county system, it needs legislative approval to make the refunds, Iler said.
The other local bill will create a sewer service district for the town of Caswell Beach, Iler said.
He also said he'll be a co-sponsor of a bill that would relieve North Carolinians from having to participate in the federal healthcare reform requirement to buy health insurance and to make N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper join a lawsuit against the reform's constitutionality.
Smith feels that it's only right that the terminal groin bill be allowed to the House floor, where she and others believe it will have a good chance of passage.
"Isn't that due process?" she asked.
From the county's legislative delegation, she wants to see evidence they are lobbying Hackney to bring the groin bill to the floor.