The condition of North Carolina’s environment got uneven grades Friday in a new state report. It says the air is safer to breathe than it was 20 years ago and that less raw sewage is being dumped into waterways, but also that population growth is causing other pollution problems and putting a strain on drinking water supplies.

The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources produced the “State of the Environment” to show legislators, public agencies and the public how well the state is protecting its water, air and land. DENR is supposed to issue the report every two years, though this is the first one since 2008.

Among environmental groups, the report itself got mixed reviews.

Todd Miller, executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, said he didn’t think the report was specific enough for legislators to use to decide what programs and issues need more money.

DENR has lost about 40 percent of its funding since 2009, and Miller said the report would have been a good chance for the department to show lawmakers where scarce dollars could now do the most good.

“I was looking for a more compelling case as to why these various programs need to be better funded by the General Assembly,” Miller said. “The report sort of attempts, in a general way, to talk about where resources are being used well. But it should lay out the challenges and where more resources are desperately needed.”

In particular, Miller said, the state needs to invest more in its programs to reduce the runoff of chemicals and sediments from storms, blamed for much of the pollution in streams and estuaries.

Diana Kees, spokeswoman for DENR, said the department sends reams of reports to the legislature each year with more detail on programs and needs.

This report, available on DENR’s website, is intended to give a broader view of what the department does to safeguard air and water and conserve land.

“This is the one place that the general public can go and see: These are the issues going on in the environment. This is what the state is trying to do to protect these environmental resources, and here are some of the things we see coming down the pike that we need to deal with,” Kees said.

The report is more detailed than some of its predecessors.

For instance, it talks about the rise and fall of different indicators of water quality over time, saying that the majority of the state’s lakes, streams and rivers are in good shape.

However, the report says, the quality of about 40 percent of the state’s waters is impaired, with mercury from coal-fired power plants, bacteria and sediment being the worst problems.

The report says air quality has improved across the state since the 1980s, as indicated by ozone and particulate measurements.

It attributes much of the air-quality improvement to the use of cleaner gas and diesel fuels, more efficient cars, and a lawsuit the state filed in 2006 to force the Tennessee Valley Authority to reduce power-plant emissions that were drifting into North Carolina.

While the report highlights the benefits of programs throughout DENR, it also notes that some of them have been limited by budget cuts. Land conservation, which had accelerated for about a decade, dropped off when the recession hit, the report says.

DENR also doesn’t have near enough money for environmental cleanup such as the restoration of contaminated drinking water wells and the hundreds of new cases each year of leaking underground storage tanks.

Dan Crawford, lobbyist for the N.C. League of Conservation Voters, said he could see why DENR might not use the report to complain about funding cuts.

“If it were me,” Crawford said, “I would definitely feel like I was under the gun with the General Assembly, and I would be cautious with my words. I think this report reflects that.”

DENR has much work to do going forward, the report says, including a study to lay out for legislators the potential costs and benefits of hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas.

That report is due in May.

Even with the stall in the economy, North Carolina has remained one of the fastest-growing states in the country, and the report says DENR wants to encourage healthy growth.

That includes making sure that more people – and more industry and more cars – don’t result in more pollution and that there are green spaces to which people can retreat.

Quillin:             919-829-8989

November 11, 2011 5:43 PM

LabCorp is at the center of a Senate investigation to determine whether the Burlington-based laboratory testing company is one of several that might have cheated Medicare and Medicaid out of billions of dollars by rigging deals with insurance companies and doctors.

The allegations came this week as Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., requested LabCorp, three major health insurance companies and one other lab company turn over copies of lab service agreements, contracts and other related documents.

In a news release, the senators expressed suspicion that LabCorp, Alamance County’s largest employer, and other medical companies are involved in “pull-through” schemes that guarantee insurance companies discounted lab rates in exchange for referrals. The inquiry questions whether federal health care programs Medicare and Medicaid were also overbilled by lab testing companies.

“A Medicaid fraud case in California that recently settled for $241 million involved allegations that a medical laboratory had overcharged the state’s insurance program as part of paying kickbacks to doctors and hospitals that referred patients to its labs,” the Senate Finance Committee’s release said.

Members of LabCorp’s media relations office didn’t return calls about the inquiry by press time Friday.

LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics Inc., Cigna, Aetna Inc. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. were asked to turn over company documents, including detailed financial and lab records.

A copy of the letter sent from Grassley and Baucus to LabCorp CEO David King requests pricing schedules comparing the price per test for LabCorp’s 10 most common lab tests, with the price per test charged to each of the largest managed care organizations (insurance companies) and the Medicare payment per test.

The letter also requests copies of any documents submitted in response to subpoenas by the Attorney General of the State of California in response to “pull-through” practices and LabCorp’s revenue totals — including Medicare revenue as a share of total revenue, Medicaid revenue as a share of total revenue, commercial payor revenue as a share of total revenue and “all other” revenue as a share of total revenue.

The Senate request also references a lawsuit filed in New York, which alleges that LabCorp violated the federal Anti-Kickback law and overcharged Medicare and Medicaid.

The Anti-Kickback law forbids health care companies from directly or indirectly remunerating other parties to encourage them to order any service or item federal health care programs might pay for. Businesses violating the law can’t participate in the Medicare program.

The lawsuit — filed in August by Andrew Baker of NPT Associates, a lab company, on behalf of the federal government — accuses LabCorp of making a deal with UnitedHealth Group to provide cut-rate testing in exchange for becoming its exclusive in-network lab partner. The suit claims LabCorp charged UnitedHealth Group “one-third to one-half of the prices paid by Medicare for the same services” and as little as one-sixth of prices paid by private payors.

“These commercially unreasonable prices constituted remuneration paid to UnitedHealthcare in order to induce UnitedHealthcare to arrange for or recommend that their in-network physicians send their Medicare-reimbursable tests to (LabCorp),” the suit says.

The suit claims a 2007 contract between LabCorp and UnitedHealth Group stipulated that LabCorp would pay the insurance company up to $200 million during the first three years of the 10-year contract to cover any extra costs incurred by the insurer under the deal.

“LabCorp believed that the contract with UnitedHealthcare, including the expected ‘pull-through’ would generate additional revenues of $3 billion and that without the pull-through the contract would result in substantial losses,” the suit claims.

The suit also claims that Medicare reimbursement made up about $1 billion of its $5 billion annual intake in 2010.

The suit requests a jury trial to determine whether LabCorp was involved in Medicare fraud and asks for an injunction against LabCorp filing any more false claims with the government. The suit also requests that LabCorp repay the United States government damages equal to three times the amount the government sustained as well as substantial civil penalties.

LabCorp must respond to the suit by Nov. 17.

 

Tags: news | opinion – editorial | point of view

The scenic Blue Ridge Parkway … our award-winning state parks (which drew record numbers of visitors in 2009 and 2010) … large stretches of gamelands along the Alligator River … family farms that are a way of life for tens of thousands – these are just a few of the signature green spaces that make North Carolina special. They provide us with clean drinking water, draw us into the outdoors and sustain a $17 billion tourism industry that last year employed 185,000 North Carolinians.

We have the wisdom of past state leaders to thank for protecting many of these lands. Beginning in 1986 the General Assembly created four conservation trust funds and charged them with protecting farmlands, creating and maintaining new parks, sheltering wildlife and cleaning our rivers and lakes. These natural resources trust funds have protected hundreds of thousands of acres of green spaces since their inception, leveraging $4 in clean water, flood control, clean air and other natural benefits for every $1 expended.

There’s plenty more work to do to safeguard our state’s natural beauty. Two-thirds of the forests and farms that surround the Blue Ridge Parkway are vulnerable to development, logging or other harms. Key natural areas, from those adjacent to Roan Mountain to the Green Swamp to the Alligator River, are also at risk.

These are lands that local governments and nonprofit land trusts are seeking to protect through applications to the state’s natural resource trust funds. Unfortunately, none are likely to gain protection under the General Assembly’s proposed budget.

The legislature has voted for a virtual end to land conservation, slashing funding for it by nearly 85 percent. It has cut the state’s largest conservation program, the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, by almost 90 percent. It has raided another $16.5 million from the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and the Natural Heritage Trust Fund.

What’s more, lawmakers want to prohibit the uses of the funds that remain in the Clean Water Fund, disallowing all conservation projects except for a very small number around military bases. Without doubt, in the next two years some of the green spaces that don’t meet this narrow criterion – from lands that abut the Parkway to portions of the Green Swamp – will be lost forever.

Why not let the state’s largest water and land protection program do its job, even with drastically reduced funds? Why not allow grants for the purchase of land from those wanting to sell it, protecting rivers and lakes and putting one of North Carolina’s greatest assets in the public trust?

We can’t think of any good reason. And neither, apparently, could a single member of the 24-member Senate budget committee. The special provision handcuffing the Clean Water Fund was temporarily removed two weeks ago by a unanimous vote. Yet when the budget deal between the House and Senate unfolded late last week, the handcuffs were back.

On Gov. Beverly Perdue’s desk, then, sits a spending plan that smears our state’s proud legacy of land protection – first by delivering debilitating cuts to our conservation trust funds and second by explicitly preventing the largest of them from fulfilling its mission with what little is left.

Perdue should veto the budget and continue her insistence for more funds to protect our land and our water. And legislative leaders should take the handcuffs off and let the Clean Water Fund continue its work in preserving the natural resources that are one of the many reasons North Carolina is such a special place to be.

Elizabeth Ouzts is state director of Environment North Carolina. Reid Wilson is executive director of the Conservation Trust for N.C. Both are on the steering committee for the Land for Tomorrow Coalition.

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Sewage-filled tanker trucks have dumped 153 million gallons of human waste and restaurant grease at a Pelion disposal site that lies in one of the most vulnerable areas for groundwater pollution in South Carolina.

The discharge amount, revealed recently by state regulators, shows for the first time the extent of dumping that has occurred at the C.E. Taylor disposal ground since it received a state permit to open in 1989. At 287 acres, the site rivals the largest septic tank dumps in the Carolinas.

The company’s disposal practices have contaminated groundwater beneath the site, state regulators say, and have come under increasing scrutiny since a toxin was found in three nearby private wells last year. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control finds itself trying to explain why the sewage dump was permitted in the first place, given the site’s geology — and deciding whether the site should close.

Experts say groundwater pollution at the Taylor site should not be a surprise.

Pelion’s sandy, permeable soil — and the amount of sewage spread on the Taylor property — make the area a prime candidate for nitrates to contaminate the shallow water table, experts say. In some places near the sewage dump, groundwater is less than 50 feet below the surface.

Sewage trucked by septic tank haulers to Taylor’s dump dwarfs the amount of septic waste hauled to some of South Carolina’s largest wastewater treatment plants.

All told, the 153 million gallons disposed of in Pelion would be enough to fill about 230 Olympic-sized swimming pools with sewage and grease.

“That much wastewater on sandy soil with (shallow) groundwater is the kind of situation that can result in groundwater contamination for sure,’’ said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a former state regulator in New Mexico who follows groundwater and waste disposal issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s not a lot of capacity in sandy soils for nitrogen (nitrates). It’s just going to pass right on through.”

SAND AND POLLUTION

The rural Pelion community, in southern Lexington County, is in the middle of a sand belt that extends from Aiken near the Georgia border to Cheraw and Dillon near the North Carolina line.

In contrast to South Carolina’s Piedmont, the sand belt contains fewer clay-based soils to slow down the flow of water – or polluted liquids – from the surface.

Frank Chapelle, a groundwater expert with the U.S. Geological Survey in Columbia, said sandy soils like those in Pelion also do not contain much organic carbon, which consumes nitrates. And that is a recipe for nitrates to reach groundwater, he said.

“Nitrate is going to be transported relatively rapidly,” Chapelle said.

People in rural areas such as Pelion often are more vulnerable to drinking water pollution because, unlike city and suburban residents, they depend on wells fed by groundwater.

For people like Judy Bennett, the amount of sewage discharged at the Taylor dump is another reason the site should close. Many folks in the area say the 22-year-old dump never should have been allowed to open in the first place.

“I think that place has run its course,” said Bennett, who lives with her family about a half-mile from the sewage dump.

The Bennetts’ well is polluted with unsafe nitrate levels; DHEC officials have not yet determined the source of the pollution. But state regulators have installed a filter on her kitchen sink to draw out the contaminants. At the same time, the air around her home is sometimes fouled with the stench of fecal matter, she said.

While she’s happy with DHEC’s efforts to install water filters at her home, she’s frustrated with the agency’s failure to make a decision on the site’s future. “I’m tired of them dragging their feet,” she said.

Nitrates found in groundwater beneath the Taylor site are associated with human and animal waste and can be dangerous, particularly to babies. Infants who drink nitrate-contaminated water can die if exposed to sufficient levels. Adults with stomach disorders also can suffer if exposed to nitrates at elevated levels.

The 153 million gallons of waste spread across the Taylor site since 1989 is an estimate, based on 10 years of dumping records.

DHEC spokesman Adam Myrick said the agency does not have discharge records generated before 2000. Since 2000, Taylor has reported discharging 78 million gallons, Myrick said. The dumping was highest in 2001, at 13 million gallons, according to discharge monitoring records provided to The State newspaper under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.

BIG DUMP SITE

Taylor’s disposal site north of the Pelion town limits is one of nine private dumps in South Carolina that spread septic tank waste, restaurant grease or portable toilet waste on the ground as a means of disposal, according to DHEC.

Like Taylor’s site, at least one of those nine, in Jasper County, sits atop nitrate-contaminated groundwater, DHEC records show.

The Taylor site only disposes of septic tank waste hauled by C.E. Taylor’s collection company. Until recently, it also took waste from other companies.

Midlands-area companies that clean out septic tanks, portable toilets and restaurant grease traps hauled the waste to Taylor’s dump for decades. Taylor charged them to discharge the waste. Company operator Frank Taylor says the site has been needed because wastewater treatment plants, which discharge treated sewage into waterways, often will not accept the material.

While major wastewater treatment plants typically dump billions of gallons of treated sewage into rivers each year, the amount of septic tank waste they process is small when compared to the amount spread on the ground at Pelion. Wastewater treatment plants in Columbia and Charleston typically accept and treat less than 1 million gallons of septic tank waste each year, officials in both cities said last week. Each year since 2000, the Pelion site has disposed of about 7 million gallons of sewage and, to a lesser degree, grease, DHEC records show.

Waste at South Carolina’s sewage dumps receives basic treatment before being spread on the ground. Taylor applies lime to help kill bacteria.

Compared to North Carolina, South Carolina has far fewer sewage dumps. But of the 135 sites in North Carolina, only a handful would be as large as Taylor’s 287-acre site.

And in North Carolina sites tend to be smaller. On average, the sites are about 18 acres in North Carolina, said Michael Scott, an environmental supervisor with the N.C. Division of Waste Management. A few sites are larger, and some have permits to discharge more than 50,000 gallons per acre, per year. For a decade, Taylor’s South Carolina permit allowed him to discharge that amount on his 287 acres, although that has been cut sharply in the past year because of rising concerns about contamination.

DHEC officials were not made available for an interview last week to discuss septic tank sewage dumps in South Carolina. But the Taylor disposal site is about five times larger than the widely used Jasper County site. The Jasper site is about 50 acres, operator Charles Degler said.

Nationally, septic tank disposal sites are found in most states, said Rotkin-Ellman, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. But regulations on how those sites are managed vary, she said.

The 153 million gallons discharged at the Taylor sewage dump is an estimate provided by DHEC. Frank Taylor did not dispute the amount when asked by The State newspaper, but insisted his site follows DHEC’s rules and has not polluted groundwater. Taylor has never been fined by DHEC.

“It’s all legal, that’s for sure,” he said.

Taylor maintains that farms in the area are the more likely source of the site’s groundwater contamination. Both animal waste and human sewage produce nitrates.

He also has blamed DHEC for providing poor advice on how to manage what he planted at his site, saying the agency at one point told him to plow under the plants. Vegetation planted at sewage dump sites is one of the best ways to offset the danger of nitrates, because plants absorb nitrates.

In addition to sewage dump sites, some businesses, farms and industries discharge waterwater onto fields rather than sending it into rivers. They, too, depend on vegetation to soak up pollutants.

TOO MUCH SEWAGE?

Several internal DHEC memos, however, question whether the amount dumped at the Taylor site simply overwhelmed the vegetation planted there.

Tom Knight, who manages DHEC’s groundwater quality section, said in a Sept. 17, 2007, e-mail that land disposal practices at the dump “are out of hand.’’

“We need a thorough evaluation of their land application practices,” his e-mail to a handful of DHEC staff members said. “I suspect some combination of too much waste at too fast an application rate for the soil type, and lack of cover crop management” contributed to nitrate problems.

Another memo also raises questions.

The agency’s David Ebinger said in a 2009 memo that Taylor’s permit allowed the company to spread 50,000 gallons of waste per year, per acre. A safer amount might have been 10,000 gallons for some wastes, said Ebinger, who works with the groundwater management division of DHEC.

“Conditions at this site favor rapid infiltration and percolation of water,” Ebinger said in the Feb. 12, 2009, memo. “This does not afford substantial opportunity for nitrate uptake by the cover crop.”

Taylor’s permit expired in 2009. The next step for DHEC is to decide whether the site should get a new permit and how much waste should be allowed there if it does get one. A new permit could allow Taylor to operate up to 10 years.

To help DHEC officials decide on the new permit, the agency has brought in a Clemson University soil scientist to determine if the property is still suitable for continued sewage disposal. The department is also pushing to install additional monitoring wells to get a more complete picture of the contamination.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/02/20/2078499/153-million-gallons-of-sewage.html#disqus_thread#ixzz1EcMfGez4

Great comment:

Good question veteran76. But the SC mess reported is almost minor. In NC, DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) has ignored the spreading of sewage sludge in protected watersheds, permitted the direct discharge of reclaimed water into groundwater, and is working to permit disposing of reclaimed water by injecting it into aquifers.

A number of years ago, DENR allowed a manufacturer to dispose of toxic waste, waste so toxic the manufacturer didn’t want to pay to clean it up for surface disposal, by injecting it into an aquifer (with suitable monitoring) and discovered that the waste didn’t stay to be monitored. The permit was eventually rescinded but the damage was done.

A law was passed saying it is illegal to dispose of waste by placing it in a well, but the sewer system permitted for Cannonsgate is designed to get rid of wastewater (somewhat treated, to be sure, but water that couldn’t be disposed of in protected federal waters) by discharging it directly into a well disguised as a pond with pumps to pull the water out of the pond and spray it where it can run into protected federal waters. Of course, since the water is being pumped out of the ground now, we’re supposed to pretend it is groundwater.

By the way, treating wastewater with UV does kill bacteria, but those that survive are more likely to be antibiotic resistant. If you’re wondering why the sudden increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria, it might have something to do with unsanitary sewage disposal practices.

One other thing, more sludge is spread in Union County than in any other county in the state. Farmers are told it is good free fertilizer. The people who designed that lie know that the “free fertilizer” can destroy the land and that has been sadly proven, but that’s a closely guarded secret, as is the fact the EPA permits the disposal of toxic waste in the domestic sewage system so you never really know what is in the sludge being spread.