“The loss of life and damage caused by current global warming demonstrates that the Earth is already too hot for safety,” states the document approved by a 6-0 vote of Asheville City Council on Jan. 28. “Restoring a safe and stable climate requires an emergency climate mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II.”
PRESS RELEASE FROM THE NC DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES DENR requires Duke Energy to address coal ash issues RALEIGH – As part of implementing Governor Pat McCrory’s recent executive order on coal ash, state officials are requiring that Duke Energy provide plans for excavating inactive coal ash storage ponds at four of its facilities. Four letters […]
By Stephanie Carroll Carson Courtesy of North Carolina News Service DANBURY, N.C. – It took about two months for more than 39,000 tons of coal ash to leak into the Dan River from Duke Energy’s retired coal-fired power plant, but cleanup is expected to take much longer than that. The hold-up goes beyond the large […]
As spring weather returns to Asheville, so does the risk of dangerous levels of ozone pollution. To raise awareness and help notify the public when ozone levels become hazardous, environmental agencies will start issuing daily air quality forecasts Tuesday, April 1, for Asheville and other metropolitan areas across the state.
Kelly Martin of the Western North Carolina Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal initiative spoke at the Council of Independent Business Owners’ Friday, Feb. 7, meeting to address future goals and investments that could help wean the region off coal energy dependency.
Asheville City Council chambers were as packed as they’ve been in quite awhile as development teams, UNC Asheville staff, Boy Scouts and advocates of clean energy and civil liberties all filled City Hall for tonight’s meeting. (Photo by Max Cooper)
Asheville filmmaker Carly Calhoun has released a series of short documentaries on the impact of coal ash, with an eye toward doing a feature-length documentary.
Around 70 people in a variety of oar-powered boats took to the waters of Lake Julian to protest the continued use of coal at the Arden power plant. (photo by Bill Rhodes)
There’s an ironic juxtaposition of the old and new along Interstate 26 as you approach Asheville, said Bruce Nilles, the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign director. The Progress Energy plant burns coal day and night to provide power to consumers across Western North Carolina, while a short distance away, along I-40 a six-acre solar farm […]
Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club’s ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign, spoke at the May 23 Green Drinks. His goal: Start a local conversation about retiring Progress Energy’s plant in Skyland and get WNC off coal for good.
Activists yesterday chained themselves to railroad tracks to block a train carrying coal to Duke Energy’s Marshall coal plant in Catawba County near Terell, NC.
(Photo courtesy of Greenpeace)
Greenpeace activists supplied this shot of their morning mission to climb a coal-supply ramp and hoist a banner calling for Progress and Duke Energy to “stop destroying mountains.”
Rugged individualists like Normon Plombe have long been gnashing their teeth about the nanny government that makes them wear bicycle helmets and seat belts and vaccinate their kids [“Channel Your Inner American Revolutionary,” Feb. 9 Xpress]. That's the same government that tries to keep the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal dust out of the air you […]
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.
A public event at A-B Tech’s Simpson Auditorium November 17 will examine the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. The Mountaintop Removal Road Show features a graphic 20-minute slide show about the impacts of mountaintop removal on neighboring communities and the environment, using recent aerial photos of decapitated Appalachian mountains. The program will begin at 12:30 p.m.
Photo by Robert Llewellyn, courtesy of Southwings
If you flip on a light switch in the Asheville metropolitan area, you’re drawing power from Progress Energy’s Skyland plant.
The catastrophic failure of a retaining wall near Knoxville, Tenn., last month has shined a spotlight on the lack of regulation of toxic coal ash from power plants.
In an order signed Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg ruled that pollution from the nation’s largest public utility constitutes a “public nuisance” and must be cleaned up.
A Progress Energy spokesperson reports that the coal-ash storage ponds at its Asheville plant are closely monitored and safe.
At 1 a.m. on Dec. 22, some 500 million gallons of coal sludge flooded 15 homes in a 400-acre area west of Knoxville. Unleashed by a break in a waste-pond retaining wall at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston coal-fired plant, the wave of mud and coal ash knocked at least one home off its foundation and was as deep as 6 feet as it rushed downstream.
