Emotions ran high at a March 10 press conference and community meeting at the Skyland Fire Department concerning the former CTS of Asheville plant. As uniformed police officers wearing bulletproof vests kept watch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials announced that the plant and adjacent Mills Gap Road property have been proposed for addition to the […]
Emotions ran high at a March 10 press conference and community meeting at the Skyland Fire Department concerning the former CTS of Asheville plant. As uniformed police officers wearing bulletproof vests kept watch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials announced that the plant and adjacent Mills Gap Road property have been proposed for addition to the National Priorities List of hazardous-waste sites. Addition to the list would rank the property among the most contaminated sites in the nation, qualifying it for cleanup under the Superfund program.
Photos by Jonathan Welch
Rising energy costs, atmospheric carbon levels and global temperatures are spurring interest in harnessing solar power, but the upfront cost of installing such systems is often a substantial deterrent. Public institutions face the same hurdle as individuals: how to justify buying an expensive solar-energy system that could take 20 years to pay for itself. Sometimes […]
Another growing season is upon us, and that means gardeners, indie farmers and assorted other earth lovers will be gathering for this year’s Organic Growers School Spring Conference, slated for Saturday and Sunday, March 5-6 (see box, “Just the Facts”). Now in its 18th year, the event will once again play out on the UNCA […]
Photo by Jonathan Welch
Residents who live near the contaminated former CTS facility on Mills Gap Road have waited for years for cleanup, and as the time draws closer for EPA’s review of the site for inclusion on the National Priorities List (which would place it among the most severely contaminated sites in the U.S.), residents have decided to wait no longer. A group of 16 individuals and families filed suit against the Elkhart, Ind.-based corporation yesterday in federal court. Complainants include Tate MacQueen, spokesperson with the advocacy group Citizen’s Monitoring Council, which has worked to get the issue noticed and addressed, and Lee Ann Smith, whose young sons were treated for cancer after they were exposed to high levels of contaminants in a stream flowing from the CTS property near their home.
Backyard gardeners have been doing it for decades: composting eggshells, apple peels and other food wastes, reducing their solid waste stream in the process. But what about large-scale local food services?
Environmental author and activist Jeff Biggers will give a free public lecture at Warren Wilson College Thursday evening. His book, Reckoning at Eagle Creek, The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, received the Sierra Club’s David Brower award, and has been called “a world-shaking, immensely important book” by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love), who wrote of it: “If you’re an American, it is almost a patriotic duty to read it.”
Feb. 14 is coming up fast, and while Valentine’s Day has a colorful history dating back centuries, the occasion we celebrate today is primarily a creation of modern marketing. Consider the following tidbits from the American Greetings Corp.: • Worldwide, about 1 billion valentines are sent each year, making it the second busiest card-sending event […]
Last fall, the U.S. Forest Service in North Carolina began using some new approaches to address hemlock trees under attack by the hemlock woolly adelgid in Western North Carolina’s national forests. The insects, which look like tiny white fluffy masses on the trees, continue to kill eastern and Carolina hemlocks throughout their range, including WNC. Thousands of trees — no one knows for sure how many — have died across the landscape here, diminishing a keystone species that’s been part of the local ecosystem for millennia. In this photo, the damaged and possibly dead trees stand out as gray sentinels in the forest.
photo courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service
The statistics are hard to ignore. In Buncombe County, 28 percent of kindergartners — and 39 percent of fifth-graders — are overweight. New U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines released this month propose the first major nutritional overhaul of school lunches in 15 years. Based on recommendations by the nonprofit Institute of Medicine, these guidelines would […]
The recently reconstituted Green Drinks enviro-social hour convened at Craggy Brewery Wednesday evening, Jan. 12, to learn about what’s at stake for the environment in the new North Carolina legislative session. Republicans have assumed a majority in both the state House and the Senate in this session — something that hasn’t happened here since Reconstruction.
In a wooded corner of the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s facility in Swannanoa sits a derelict incinerator overgrown with vines; an open door reveals piles of ash within. Corroded metal containers and other solid waste protrude from the ground nearby, murky puddles collecting in their partially submerged forms. A cross-country trail […]
“For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.” — William Shakespeare, Henry V When you think of ecological services — the free life-support systems on which we all depend — think honeybees. And thank them. After all, bee pollination is essential to […]
“For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.” — William Shakespeare, Henry V When you think of ecological services — the free life-support systems on which we all depend — think honeybees. And thank them. After all, bee pollination is essential to […]
A North Carolina “Cash Five” lottery ticket worth $129,902 has not yet been claimed for a drawing held Dec. 20, and operators of the convenience store where it was purchased are seeking the ticket holder.
My favorite stories are the ones that involve some adventure and a sense of discovery. My first staff assignment for Xpress promised to deliver on both counts. When the National Security Agency abandoned its top-secret spy station deep within the Pisgah National Forest in the mid-1990s, neighbors southwest of Brevard believed hush-hush government activity was […]
On Monday, Dec. 21, the CTS Citizens Monitoring Council delivered a report listing actions it says must be taken to clean up chemical contamination at the Mills Gap Road site and surrounding neighborhoods.
Under various names, the plant now known as Blue Ridge Paper Products has been discharging wastewater into the Pigeon River for more than a century. And in recent decades, the brown, foul-smelling waterway has been the focus of an ongoing fight. Environmentalists maintain that both the discharge permit issued by the North Carolina Division of […]
The Tanzanians were fishing with dynamite. It worked, but the long-term results — depletion of fish stocks, destruction of the living coral reef — led the government to ban the practice. The fishermen persisted, ignoring the law, the government pamphlets and advice from Western ecologists. Yet when local religious leaders ruled that exploding ecosystems violates […]
The NC Division of Waste Management has released a public notice regarding its intent to clean up hazardous chemical contamination at the Harris Teeter supermarket at 1378 Hendersonville Road, across from Carolina Day School in South Asheville.
The WNC Regional Air Quality Agency (WNCRAQA) announced its intent today to modify the permit for the Asheville Steam Electric Plant, located in Arden. The permit controls how much pollutants the plant can legally put into the air.
