Contributors

Richard Whisnant

Richard Whisnant joined the School of Government (then the Institute of Government) in 1998. Prior to that, he was general counsel with the NC Department of Environment, Health & Natural Resources. He had previously practiced environmental law with Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a clerk for the Hon. Sam J. Ervin III on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Whisnant earned a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MPP and JD from Harvard University.

Latest Posts by Richard

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  Soil and water

  In every even numbered year, North Carolina has elections for county officials. In every other one of these even numbered years, like 2016, there is a simultaneous election at the top of the ballot for President of the United States. … Read more

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  State versus local government power to regulate environmental problems in NC

  In late March 2016, North Carolina took front stage in national political news. The legislature convened  for a one-day special session to pass a bill preventing local governments from enacting anti-discrimination ordinances. Some of the news coverage, national and state, … Read more

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  Rules of Rulemaking: the Canard of Consistency

  In earlier posts, I have discussed two canards about rulemaking in North Carolina I will finish this series on some core beliefs about rulemaking with an environmentally-centered, critical look at this final canard: Frankly, no one who practices or follows … Read more

• Defenestration of DEHNR: John Morris comments on DWR and the agency in general

  One of my hopes for this blog was that it might evolve into a discussion, even debate, over the history of environmental law and policy in North Carolina. Some of the people who were principally involved in shaping that history … Read more

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  Rulemaking authority in N.C. — are rules legally as powerful as statutes?

  What is the power of an agency rule? The longstanding canard is that a rule has the force of law, just like a statute. So, for example, rules can alter the common law: Where an agency has the authority to … Read more

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  Rulemaking authority in N.C. – how specific does it have to be?

  It’s impossible to grasp modern American environmental law without some understanding of administrative law–the law that limits and empowers governmental agencies (like U.S. EPA and N.C.’s Department of Environmental Quality). One of the primary ways that executive branch agencies carry … Read more

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  N.C. Environmental Legislation, 2015: Deregulating and obscuring the consequences

  2015 was another big year in changes, almost entirely deregulatory changes, in North Carolina’s environmental laws. The General Assembly’s first ratified bill of the session, S.L. 2015-1 (“Amend Environmental Laws”), was an assortment of changes to such diverse programs as … Read more

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  The Defenestration of DEHNR

  In 2011, a story appeared that seemed to capture the essence of the N.C. legislative leadership’s feelings about DENR, the State environmental and natural resource regulatory agency. The story, first attributed to Speaker of the House Tom Tillis, said that … Read more

• Five common misconceptions about water rights in N.C.

• Who Owns the Water? Part 3, (Diffuse) Surface Water, aka Stormwater

  (Above: Change in extreme precipitation events in southeastern U.S., from National Climate Assessment 2014). Whatever your take on projections of sea level rise and global temperature increases (I’m extremely worried: these things are happening and we are responding much like … Read more