‘Transilient’ project comes to Asheville June 7-8

Former Asheville resident, activist and writer Basil Soper will bring a new project to Asheville June 7-8: Transilient. The photo documentary, co-founded with Johanna Case, will help show that transgender people “deserve to be seen as living, breathing, feeling humans who have experienced many of the same things that cis [people who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth] people do,” says Soper.

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs may be closer to home than we think

A deadly pathogen can make it around the globe in 24 hours or less, and in just eight hours, one E. coli bacterium can generate more than 16 million clones that make their host very, very sick — particularly if the mother strain is one of a growing number of antibiotic-resistant superbugs that have health leaders on alert from Asheville to Beijing.

Hall Fletcher Elementary moves forward with year-round school

On a cool, foggy July morning, more than 300 children bustle past a row of blooming sunflowers and into Hall Fletcher Elementary as teachers hand out new pencils, the principal greets them by name, and the UNC Asheville mascot poses with them for photos. But it’s only midsummer: Why are these students filing through the doors about a month before their peers at other city schools?

UPDATE: Asheville City Council asks local agency to toughen SO2 standard on Duke Energy plant

At tonight’s meeting, April 28, Asheville City Council members may agree to ask the local air agency to “strengthen” proposed limits on sulphur dioxide emissions at Duke Energy’s local power plant. The move comes ahead of a Wednesday, April 29, public hearing that the Western North Carolina Regional Air Quality Agency will hold to consider renewing the air permit for the Duke Energy plant.

Expect a big turnout at CleanUp Candler April 9 community meeting

Can a community initiative rise from the ground up, with no leaders and no set agenda? The answer is yes, and it’s apparent in newly affixed “Ole Town Candler” bumper stickers and a CleanUp Candler campaign that’s taking off via a Facebook page. And on Thursday, April 9, the initiative takes another step forward with a community meeting at Enka Middle School.

EPA clarifies Southside Village status

The 74 homes in Southside Village are not part of the CTS of Asheville Superfund site next door, say several residents of the gated community off Mills Gap Road. In two recent letters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency backs up that assessment, saying it “does not believe contamination associated with the CTS of Asheville Superfund Site poses unacceptable risk to residents of SSV.”