By Laura DeVivo
NC Sierra Club Lobbyist
The N.C. General Assembly's 2024 "short session" was anything but. It lasted from April to mid December – appropriately, wrapping up on Friday the 13th amid heated protests over power-grab legislation that made major changes to the structure of state government.
"The honorables" kept the N.C. Sierra Club and our allies hopping to respond to potential threats to our air, land, water and communities. We're working together now on setting priorities for action and advocacy in the 2025 session, and we hope you'll be involved!

State lawmakers – incumbent and newly elected – stopped briefly in Raleigh at the beginning of this month to be sworn in for the new term and to elect leadership, then adjourned until Wednesday, Jan. 29. We expect more housekeeping, such as committee appointments, before the session begins in earnest. We'll resume sending our weekly "Letter from Jones Street" as the work gets under way.
During the protracted 2024 session, only five laws with substantial impact on environmental issues were enacted:
- S166, Building Code Reform, was a lately recurring bag of horrors that weakened executive branch influence over building code enforcement, among other items;
- S508, Budget Corrections; S355, NC Farm Act of 2024; and S607, Regulatory Reform, which served as voluminous, perennial catch-all bills; and
- S802: C-PACE Program, which helps support clean energy and water conservation in commercial development.
S166, Building Code Reform, was enacted after six House Democrats broke ranks to help override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper. The new law loosens development regulations, amends contractor and design regulations, and eases some environmental health regulations. It reorganizes the Building Code Council, cutting it from 17 to 13 members and removing some requirements for subject-matter expertise. It reduces the governor's appointments to seven, which must be approved by the General Assembly, and gives the legislature control over the other six. Cooper's veto message highlighted the council's loss of "knowledge and practical experience," and noted that the bill backtracks on some state efforts to move toward energy efficiency with buildings and electric car fleets.
For the first time in recent memory, the more-or-less perennial NC Farm Act passed each chamber unanimously. It included a popular provision designating the third Saturday of each September as the North Carolina Great Trails State Day, and removed agricultural land from stormwater fees.
S508, the Budget Corrections bill, was enacted with broad bipartisan support. We were able to improve many worrisome provisions through teamwork lobbying with our environmental allies and negotiation by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). These included a firm timeline for issuance or denial of a Title V Air Permit, and a new definition of “auxiliary container” that removes many food transport containers from the definition of solid waste benefitting the plastics industry. The legislation also expands the uses of the Aquatic Weed Program Fund, allowing it to support clearing channel and dock access.
S802, which modified the C-PACE program (Commercial Property Assessed Capital Expenditure), was enacted with broad bipartisan support. The program, which exists in many other states, gives commercial property owners access to low-cost, long-term financing for qualifying energy efficiency, water conservation, renewable energy, and resiliency improvements to their properties. The bill passed this fall repeals a provision enacted in 2023 that required DEQ to permit highly treated discharges to low-flow or no-flow receiving bodies of water, and instead requires the agency to work the Environmental Management Commission and UNC’s Collaboratory to convene a working group for further modernizations to that discharge permitting program.
S607, the Regulatory Reform Act, contained many sections impacting the environment with only some of substance: expanding the conditions of issuance for DEQ’s 401 permitting program at existing or future electricity generating facilities, requiring amendment to the Coastal Area Management Act to loosen the rules for replacement of “small” walkways and docks destroyed by a natural event, loosening regulations around hardened structure on the coast, and combining or modifying reports and reporting deadlines.
The year wrapped tumultuously with a fight over S382, a bill that purported to offer additional relief to areas of western North Carolina that were devastated by Hurricane Helene in late September, but focused on a blatant power grab by GOP leadership.
As the bill was passed (with three GOP House members from western districts initially voting against it), vetoed by Governor Cooper, then enacted with party-line override votes, attention focused on the elements that strip executive branch powers. But the measure also will change environmental permitting and regulatory structures, and further jeopardize neighbors of factory farms, entrench the use of pollution-causing fossil fuels, and delay adoption of clean, climate change-fighting new energy sources.
In the new year, we'll hope to undo some of the damages from the 2023-24 General Assembly, thanks to an election that broke the House supermajority and put our endorsed candidates into the state's top offices.
You can help our legislative advocacy by signing up for the "Letter from Jones Street", emailed weekly while the N.C. General Assembly is in active session and occasionally during other times of the year. It includes the latest news and important calls to action.