Sen. Marc Basnight wants to ban plastic bags in the Outer Banks.

The Democratic Senate leader is pushing a bill that would ban plastic shopping bags in coastal counties that he represents. If successful, the pilot program could be implemented statewide.

Shoppers in Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties would receive bags made of 100 percent recycled paper, which cost more, or bring their own reusable bags.

Last week, Basnight began using paper bags for takeout orders at his restaurant.

Environmentalists blame the bags for causing problems with litter and harming waterborne creatures, but retailers warned that the recycled bags cost more.

"The cost gets passed on to consumers," said Andy Ellen, a lobbyist for the N.C. Retail Merchants Association. (N&O)

Oil rigs off North Carolina's coast would not be visible.

UNC-Chapel Hill geology professor Lou Bartek said that drilling rigs can be as tall as several hundred feet, but they would be 45 miles off the coastline. That means tourists would not be able to see them from state beaches.

But that doesn't mean they wouldn't affect the area.

"You would have boats running back and forth that are supplying the rigs, and you're going to have a pipeline of some sort to take what you're producing and get it to where it will be refined," he said. "That's going to have a footprint."

Bartek said that a big question would be where the pipeline goes. He said any natural gas processing would likely be done inland and not on the Outer Banks, but it would also require a deep port that could handle the ships to take the gas elsewhere.

"One of the problems we're going to run into is that there hasn't been a refinery built in this country in a long time," he said.