There's a lot of very weird stuff going on in the newly insane state of North Carolina. The state has a problem with coal ash, and with its groundwater, and with the reluctance of Duke Energy to clean up, among other things, the 39,000 fking pounds of the gunk that it spilled into the Dan River in February. The state's Environmental Management Commission decided that Duke Energy needed a "reasonable amount of time" to correct the groundwater violations. (As should be obvious, you could sail a coal barge through that adjective there.) A Superior Court judge said to hell with that noise and reversed the commission's findings, demanding that the clean-up begin immediately.

And you will never guess what the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission did.

No, really, you will never guess.

Give up?

They appealed the judge's ruling.

Told you that you wouldn't believe it.

D.J. Gerken, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the state is giving away its authority to force Duke to act by appealing Ridgeway's ruling. "If the state is serious about enforcing the law, why in the world would the state ask the (N.C.) Court of Appeals to limit that authority?" he said.

In other words, the state's environmental management board is going to court essentially on behalf of Duke Energy. I wonder how that possibly could have happened.

North Carolina's base appropriations budget, ratified Thursday, fires all current members of the state's environmental rule-making board effective next Wednesday. The move gives Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-led legislature, which has targeted environmental regulation as a drag on business, a clean slate to remake the powerful Environmental Management Commission. The commission is charged with adopting rules protecting air and water resources.

Meanwhile, the whole state is tying itself up in knots over this coal ash business. There's tons of it laying around in ponds and in obsolete energy facilities. The latest plan seems to be to bury it near the airport in Charlotte -- which is said to be better than storing it in unlined ponds.

"The reality is, it's much better than the way they store it at the power plant," said Hartwell Carson, the French Broad riverkeeper. He and other environmental groups have been monitoring the project to take millions of tons of coal ash from a Duke Energy power plant and use it as a "structural fill" material to grade land in preparation for construction. "I don't have a lot of concerns about it in the short term," Carson said. "Fifty, 100 years from now? I'd say all bets are off."

Your great-grandchildren send their regards.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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