H1087 - Water/Wastewater Public Enterprise Reform. (SL 2020-79)

Overview: S.L. 2020-79 does all the following:

• Establishes a process for identifying distressed public water systems and wastewater systems.
• Establishes the Viable Utility Fund, within the Department of Environmental Quality, to be used for assisting public water and wastewater systems to become self-sustaining.
• Establishes a process for a water or wastewater system created under Chapter 162 of the General Statutes to request merger or dissolution of that system.
• Encourages interlocal cooperation between public water and wastewater systems.
• Makes a one-time transfer of $9,000,000 from the One NC Fund to the Viable Utility Fund and appropriate those funds for the purposes of the Viable Utility Fund.
• Appropriates $9 million to the Southern Regional Area Health Education Center in Fayetteville, reallocate $2 million of unused funds appropriated in a prior budget bill to the PFAS Recovery Fund for a variety of local water quality and PFAS response activities., and allocate $310,000 from the Wastewater Reserve to repair a damaged sewer line in Rockingham County.
• Appropriates funds received by the State from the environmental mitigation trust established in settlement of the Volkswagen Clean Diesel Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability litigation in accordance with Phase 1 of the Department of Environmental Quality's Mitigation Plan.
• Makes one-time transfers from the Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund and the Film and Entertainment Grant Fund and appropriate those funds for various water resources development projects, and adds flood storage capacity restoration to the purposes and permissible uses of the Ecosystem Restoration Fund administered by the Department of Environmental Quality's Division of Mitigation Services.

This act became effective July 1, 2020, except for the reallocation of previous appropriations to the PFAS Recovery Fund\ and certain Viable Utility Fund conforming changes to previously enacted bills, which became effective June 30, 2020.