Last October, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality placed stricter controls on what outside materials MSD could accept, thus barring the plant from taking Asheville’s treatment residuals. The city’s current plan is to landfill the sludge in Buncombe County and Concord, N.C. — at over 2 1/2 times the cost of its previous disposal arrangement.
As of Saturday, Dec. 1, vehicle owners in Haywood, Henderson and Rutherford counties will no longer have to submit their cars and light-duty trucks to an annual emissions inspection. Inspections remain in place for Buncombe and 21 additional counties, while the three other counties bordering Buncombe — Madison, McDowell and Yancey — have never required them.
Cleanup efforts are finally beginning at the CTS of Asheville Superfund site on Mills Gap Road, but past controversies and a lack of trust in Environmental Protection Agency officials continued to dominate the discussion during a Nov. 30 public meeting to review the impending remedial projects and address residents’ concerns.
“This is a remarkable environmental success story! Many agencies and organizations can be proud of their contributions to this. Together, they’ve demonstrated that bold action at many different levels can successfully address serious environmental issues.”
We all have to breathe to live, and the good news is that here in Western North Carolina, the quality of the air we all share is much better than it was just a few years ago. Across North Carolina, government employees are monitoring air quality and the associated health risks to make sure they stay within specified legal parameters. Meanwhile, citizen volunteers are also collecting data and working to make more information available to the public.
The CTS Corporation has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to overturn a June ruling from a federal appeals court that would allow 23 local citizens to go forward with a their lawsuit demanding compensation and cleanup of the company’s contaminated former Asheville site.
For everyone following the battle over coal-ash regulation, the Democratic National Convention could not have chosen a better location. Right now, every politician staying in the Charlotte area is drinking the same water that 1.5 million local citizens drink. However, anyone arriving by helicopter might have lost their thirst! Right next to Mountain Island Lake […]
Want to know how much carbon dioxide your local power plant, paper plant or landfill emit? A new EPA tool maps the info, including five sources near Asheville.
The Environmental Protection Agency lists two coal-ash-storage dams in Buncombe among similar high-hazard structures in North Carolina and the U.S. But there’s no indication the two dams — each about 90 feet high and located just off Interstate 26 near Arden — present an immediate danger.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will oversee the removal of coal ash at the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant in Roane County, Tenn., where approximately 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled last December. In related news, a coal-ash pond at an Asheville power plant is on a list of potentially dangerous storage ponds, according to a report released by two environmental groups.
When Charles Dickens published works such as A Christmas Carol and Hard Times in the mid-1800s, coal loomed large among the world’s energy sources. The smokestacks in Dickens’ tales belched black, toxic smoke. That smoke may be gone or at least reduced today, thanks to better filtering and monitoring. But we still rely on coal, […]
Shuler called a hearing on groundwater contamination at the CTS site in Asheville, bringing a bit of Washington to town by holding the hearing at the Skyland Fire Department on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Lacy H. Thornburg has ruled that Duke Energy must comply with the Clean Air Act for its new unit at the Cliffside power plant. The Dec. 2 order forces Duke to undergo a stringent process to investigate the plant’s likely pollution levels, as well as the appropriate technology to control toxics released from the new coal boiler that Duke says will replace several smaller older units.
