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Major energy bill coming to NC House floor as lawmakers struggle to grasp impact
By: Travis Fain, WRAL statehouse reporter July 13, 2021 RALEIGH, N.C. — Energy legislation laying out close to a decade’s worth of policy and setting up a glide path to retire coal-fired electricity plants in North Carolina will likely be up for key vote in the coming days. Lawmakers are struggling to understand House Bill 951, a lengthy, complex bill negotiated over months. The bill delivers a number of regulatory changes that Duke Energy, the state’s largest power provider by far, has wanted for years. It would also dial back – years earlier than planned – on coal-burning plants in North…
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Monitoring Kick-off! Working together to inform the public through Community Science
This summer, Clean Water for North Carolina is re-engaging our environmental monitoring efforts to prepare for our Community Science programs! Asheville staff Amanda Strawderman and Shelby Cline (pictured below) recently conducted air monitoring and water testing near the Pee Dee River. While on their trip, they caught glimpses of industrial-sized chicken houses (often known as poultry CAFOs or factory farms), dodged poison ivy, met a friendly cat with her four kittens, and managed to gather some data while they were at it.
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EPA recommends that Army Corps of Engineers not grant Mountain Valley Pipeline stream crossing permit
By: Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury and Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch July 9, 2021 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers not grant Mountain Valley Pipeline a critical permit to cross several hundred streams in Virginia and West Virginia. “EPA has identified a number of substantial concerns with the project as currently proposed, including whether all feasible avoidance and minimization measures have been undertaken, deficient characterization of the aquatic resources to be impacted, insufficient assessment of secondary and cumulative impacts and potential for significant degradation, and the proposed mitigation,” EPA Wetlands Branch Chief Jeffrey Lapp wrote…
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‘Bipartisan’ Infrastructure Plan is a Privatization-Promoting Disaster
By Food & Water Watch, June 24 2021 Today the White House announced that it had reached a bipartisan infrastructure ‘compromise’ with a group of Senators. The plan would rely on privatization schemes that will undermine public control and prove to be costly. The proposed financing mechanisms include “public-private partnerships,” “private activity bonds,” and “asset recycling.” Public private partnerships are privatization deals in which a private company takes control over the operation, and sometimes financing, of a public project. Private activity bonds give tax subsidies to debt issued by corporations to finance privatized projects. Asset recycling refers to schemes where a…
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Reach Out & Get Involved for Environmental Justice!
2020 will forever be etched in our minds and hearts, having lost so much and so many to COVID-19. On top of a global pandemic, we witnessed (even participated in) increased awareness of health, racial, and economic justice issues being raised to new heights. If we have learned anything over the past year, it’s that life is precious and delicate, and that it is time for a new normal! We’re getting ready to reopen our offices toward the end of summer and reenter the world of on-the-ground organizing, in…
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Major energy bill emerges at NC statehouse
By: Travis Fain, WRAL June 17, 2021 RALEIGH, N.C. — State lawmakers released a long-anticipated energy bill Tuesday, saying it would retire coal-fired power plants faster, cut greenhouse gas emissions and shape North Carolina energy policy for the better part of a decade. The bill came together over months of closed-door negotiations with Duke Energy, other electricity providers, the solar power industry and large electricity users, such as manufacturers and retailers. The 47-page bill is complex, wide-ranging and may morph as it begins the public stage of its legislative journey. Environmental groups and others cut out of the crafting process thus far were digesting the…
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Juneteenth – A Day to Acknowledge & Celebrate
Juneteenth National Independence Day is our nations first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This year, Juneteenth will be commemorated on Saturday, June 19th. “Juneteenth being made a Federal Holiday is long overdue. It’s sad that our children weren’t taught Black History in school. Had they been taught they would know all the GREAT things we as Black people contributed to the World in which we live.” – Belinda Joyner, Clean Water for NC Juneteenth, also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day or Freedom Day or Jubilee Day commemorates June 19, 1865, as the day enslaved African Americans in Galveston,…
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NC Senate GOP rejects Cooper’s DEQ appointee
By: Laura Leslie, WRAL June 2, 2021 RALEIGH, N.C. — After an angry debate, a key Senate committee voted on party lines Wednesday to reject Gov. Roy Cooper’s nomination of Dionne Delli-Gatti as secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Quality. Senate Leader Phil Berger is urging Cooper to withdraw Delli-Gatti’s nomination before it goes to the Senate floor for a vote. Senate GOP leaders say they have approved all 15 nominees as agency heads sent to them by the Democratic governor. But in Cooper’s first term, at least one nomination had to be quietly pulled because Senate Republicans threatened to reject it. Sen….
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Help Protect NC Communities from Dirty Biomass Projects
In North Carolina, black, brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), Superfund sites, coal ash facilities, biogas operations, and wood pellet plants. Although NC DEQ is responsible for regulating and monitoring industry operations in a manner that protects natural resources and communities from environmental and health risks, many residents across the state continue to grapple with environmental injustices and the burdens these facilities’ place on their health and quality of life. Enviva is the world’s largest wood pellet manufacturing company, with NC facilities in Ahoskie, Hamlet, Sampson County, and Northampton County….
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Two NC bills have different agendas for permits in environmental projects. Here’s what they would do.
By: Kristen Johnson, The Fayetteville Observer May 13, 2021 Two bills in the North Carolina General Assembly have different agendas for the operation of environmental projects and their impacts on communities living next to them. One would make it easier for corporations to get permits needed to operate solid waste management systems, the other would make it tougher. In the Senate, the NC Farm Act of 2021 calls for a general permit for the installation and operation of biogas digester systems, which is favored by the pork industry but condemned by some community members. In the House, the Environmental Justice…
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