Now is the time for renewables

I play in and around the French Broad River: rafting, tubing, hiking, gardening and partying. The French Broad is beautiful and brings people to enjoy our community. I am concerned that this important river is being contaminated slowly, daily and quietly by coal-ash ponds that leak poisons like arsenic, chromium and mercury into the groundwater. […]

Want to clean up our toxic coal-ash problem?

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 […]

MSD gives itself high marks in its 2011 performanc­e report

Every day, the Municipal Sewerage District collects and treats — and discharges into the French Broad — an average of 18 million gallons of wastewater, relying on millions of microbes to do what they’ve been doing since the Earth was young: consume organic waste. And every year, the Clean Water Act requires the utility to provide an assessment of how well they’re doing. That report was submitted to DENR August 30; let’s take a look.

An Asheville native reflects, laments

I grew up here, attended preschool at both First Presbyterian downtown and Asbury United Methodist, [and visited] the north branch of the library when it was behind First Union Bank. I frequented Beanstreets and Reader’s Corner. I’ve watched this town and all the changes it’s been through. Businesses come and go, and some preschools might […]

Clear as mud

“Water is a living thing; it is life itself. In it life began. And everything that lives in water requires oxygen. It is also a moving thing. A burden bearer, water can carry off great loads of humanity’s leavings—but … as the oxygen in water is used up by waste … the living creatures in […]

Raindrops

A welcome sound woke me at 2 a.m. one recent Saturday: Plunk … plunk … . I listened: It was faint and dull. It could be a raccoon fiddling with my trash-can lid (too faint for a bear, too loud for a mouse—we have both here). Plunk. Plunk. Pit. Pat pat pitter-pat. Rain hitting my […]