Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 1 #16-20

I was doing some digging this weekend on the NC general assembly webpage to see what the state government in North Carolina was doing as far as environmental policy, I looked through every bill introduced and still in committee, etc. for the 2007-2008 session. What I have put together is what I feel are the top 20 most important bills in that category. They are in somewhat of order of importance, and I hopefully caught all the good ones, but it was a VERY long list, so I apologize if I may have missed any (and if I have please let me know and I can post them up as well). The basic goal of this was to show what our representatives are looking at, and what we can bring to their attention to help push through. I personally feel like much much more can be done, but I will save that for later, right now I just want to look at what IS there so we can all start bugging our representatives on a regular basis to keep tabs on how these things are progressing. It is actually somewhat hard to tell what the current status of some of these are, but I am sure it won’t hurt to bring them up to the folks in power. I will break this up into a few parts to kind of shorten these posts a bit, so check back over the next few days to get them all.

OK so here goes #’s 16-20;

20. Senate Bill 843 - Establish the Biofuels Center of North Carolina
The bill says the Biofuel center would be created as a non-profit organization with an annual budget of $5,000,000 for both and would be responsible for the implementation of “North Carolina’s Strategic Plan for Biofuels Leadership.”

19. Senate Bill 1222 - Funds for NC Solar Center
Appropriation of funds for North Carolina Solar Center at NCState University.

18. Senate Bill 948 - Small Dairy Sustainability
This bill would allow for consumers to contract with local farmers to become partial or complete owners of dairy animals. The original edition of this one was just to allow for people to contract with local farmers to buy fresh milk, but it turned into the current bill that would allow consumers to buy into a local farm to get fresh milk, it now would also require a health warning of the dangers of raw milk, but the nature remains the same. It would allow for small dairy farmers to stay afloat, and for people to support and take part in local agriculture and give themselves a local food source.

17. House Bill 618/Senate Bill 671 - Eat Smart...Move More Initiative
This would provide a budget of $3,000,000 for the next two years for to promote community environments that would support physical activity, healthy lifestyles and personal well-being.

16. House Bill 2003 - Biofuel Incentives
This would supply incentives for distributors of Biofuel in the form of a tax discount.