Despite endorsing proposals to beef up coastal protection in 1994, the Hunt administration has failed to follow-up its rhetoric with pressure on the legislature or the Coastal Resource Commission to adopt those proposals. There's no protection of the coast going on. Money from coastal real-estate interests plays a role. When leading Bald Head donors pushed for an exemption from the state's ban on shoreline jetties, they got help from Hunt and Easley's office.
Old rules get bent and the new rules experts say are needed get bogged down.
Republicans, who took charge of the state House in 1995, aren't helping. One of the worst anti-environmental laws they passed undercuts a N.C. Court of Appeals ruling that waterways belong to all the people, not just those owning shorefront land. But coastal developers and marina owners did not want to pay fair-market value. To help them, Clark Wright, a former assistant attorney general, figured out how to do an end run around the court ruling. Wright says he represented marina owners who liked the old way of doing business.