Bill advances on hemp, hogs, shooting and biogas

Senate Bill 315 is wide ranging, with sections pitched as a boost to pork industry efforts to collect more biogas from hog waste lagoons. Environmental groups continue to question some of that language, fearing an end-around is afoot from an industry that's subject to an expansion moratorium in the state.

The bill's hemp sections still contain a ban on smokable hemp, but it's delayed till December 2020 to give law enforcement time to work with the growing industry. The State Bureau of Investigation and others have said that, by leaving smokable hemp flowers legal in the bill, the legislature runs the risk of making marijuana laws impossible to enforce because the flowers look just like marijuana.

Farmers who see the flowers, and the CBD oil in them, as a profit generator within a wider hemp industry have begged the legislature not to crack down on distribution of this part of the plant, which doesn't contain enough THC to produce marijuana's characteristic high.

The 2020 delay is to give the two sides time to talk things out, and the bill requires quarterly meetings. One key may be the emergence of an inexpensive field test to tell the difference between marijuana and hemp. Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, the farm bill sponsor, showed reporters Wednesday a small test kit he was given, but he said he doesn't yet know much about it.

The bill got a handful of amendments Wednesday before clearing the Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources committee. It has three more committees to get through before it goes to the Senate floor, and then to the House, but Jackson said he sees clear sailing now for the bill, at least on the Senate side.

One amendment Wednesday would give county commissioners more say in whether local farmers can establish shooting ranges, including skeet shooting, on their farms. A number of farm neighbors spoke against this bill last week, worried that it cast aside local zoning rules by adding shooting sports to the state's definition of "agritourism," limiting county government's ability to block those sorts of businesses.

The amendment gives commissioners a vote, saying they don't have to approve the shooting operations if they don't meet safety and other requirements set out by the state's Wildlife Resources Commission.

Jackson said county commissioners would have "final authority," but he acknowledged that, if a shooting range meets the Wildlife Resources Commission's requirements and local commissions try to block it, a lawsuit is likely.

The bill also got an amendment to a section that exempts soil and water records from the state's public records act, but environmentalists who had pushed back against earlier language weren't placated by the change.

"It's still not specific, and it might give more confidentiality," Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mary Maclean Asbill said after the meeting.

Several sections of the bill deal with large animal farms, which the state legislature has moved repeatedly to protect in recent years in the face of lawsuits against the industry from neighbors who say hog farm odors and other issues lower their property values.

There's a gulf between what bill supporters, including the pork industry, say these sections would do and what environmentalists worry they will mean once implemented.

"As a guy standing between the two, I'm trying to figure out where the truth lies," Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, said after the vote. "I still have a number of questions. The language seems – I still am not comfortable that we need to do this."