Committee advances text changes to S.212 on water/wastewater connections, keeps permit discretion with ANR

A House Natural Resources & Energy review on Feb. 6 focused on S.212, a bill that would expand general-permit authority for water-supply and wastewater-connection projects and establish tiered application fees based on proposed design flows.

Legislative counsel Michael Grady walked the committee through the new draft and the proposed fee schedule. The draft ties fee tiers to design-flow bands — for example, projects with design flows below 2,000 gallons per day were discussed as a lower-fee category, with higher bands carrying larger application fees and allocations. A committee member noted and the group agreed to correct a numeric line in the draft where an amount had been misstated in the working document.

The draft clarifies that applicants may be required to be "certified by a licensed designer" rather than using the earlier phrasing "licensed under this chapter," language committee members said avoids misclassification of out-of-scope professionals while keeping a licensing requirement for project designers.

On municipal fees, staff explained a $100 per-filing payment for the state A and R land-records database (described in committee discussion as necessary to ensure permits that 'run with the land' are discoverable in title searches). Municipalities may continue to collect local technical-review fees; committee members noted the $100 filing cost would likely be incorporated into local fees charged to applicants.

Committee members debated a delegation approach that allows municipalities to assume permit-issuing roles for certain low-risk, low-complexity projects — examples given included small on-site septic systems and limited subdivisions where replacement-area review is routine. Brian Redmond of the Wastewater Protection division told the panel those determinations are best made by the department through criteria in a manual or guidance, with the department reserving the right to require individual review for classes of projects deemed not uniform.

Members agreed to add explicit "low risk/low complexity" language and leave the department discretion to define qualifying activities. The committee also asked that guidance/manual language emphasize that many municipalities may not have complete records of buried infrastructure, so the manual should account for that reality.

The committee voted to adopt the text changes presented by counsel and called the measure to the next step; Senators Beck, Bobo, Hurd and Williams recorded affirmative votes during roll call. The chair said the committee will refer the bill to finance and the Joint Fiscal Office for budget review.

Next steps: the edits adopted will be incorporated into the draft and returned to the committee’s files; the bill will move to fiscal review before further committee action.