“We’ve pretty much been doing cleanups for 50 years without really seeing any real changes,” says Asheville GreenWorks’ operations manager Chelsea Adams. “We go back to the same roads, in the same section of river and creek, every single year and do cleanups over and over and over.”
Jane L. Laping is a member of Asheville GreenWorks’ Oakley TreeKeepers.
“Mountain Xpress readers: Please attend the Sept. 27 meeting and urge Asheville City Council to take immediate action to protect public health and the environment.”
Growing up in Hendersonville, Ashley Featherstone assumed she would move away for work. “I was always told that you could never find a job here,” she recalls. “There are [fewer] jobs here than there are in places like Atlanta and Charlotte. But I just decided that I was going to find a job.” And she […]
On Sept. 6, 1951, thousands of dead fish floated down the highly polluted French Broad River.
“At the unconsciousness rate we are polluting our planet and the threat of nuclear annihilation by our militaristic world leaders, vermin will probably inherit Earth soon enough.”
ASHEVILLE
Asheville, N.C.
It’s been just over a year since the locally developed Muddy Water Watch app was launched, enlisting citizen watchdogs to help protect their communities’ waterways. Conceived by the environmental nonprofit MountainTrue as an enhancement of its existing Muddy Water Watch program, the app makes it easy for residents to report potential problems with sedimentation in streams as well as other water quality issues.
“Western North Carolina is home to the native brook trout. Recently, the brook trout population has drastically declined.”
“It would be a miracle if everybody for one week didn’t drive.”
The Environmental Quality Institute’s Stream Monitoring Information Exchange program is currently seeking volunteers to attend a volunteer training on Saturday, March 29th, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., at UNC Asheville. Once trained, volunteers work in small groups to sample a couple sites, two times per year (about 10 hours of annual service). Volunteer opportunities are open to anyone (11th grade and up) with any level of experience or identification skills.
Yesterday, Feb. 14, thousands of gallons of oil spilled into Hominy Creek. Since then, local individuals and organizations have posted videos investigating the impact of the spill, including questioning if the measures erected to stop the spill from spreading are effective and showing oil entering the French Broad River.
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.
The international debate over climate change came home Dec. 3, as the Buncombe County commissioners butted heads over a proposal to reduce the county’s carbon footprint by 80 percent over time. Now, county staff is trying to figure out how to begin implementing the directive and determine how to measure the progress.
Trade it in for cleaner air, today, Friday Aug. 10 at the Buncombe County Landfill 85 Panther Branch Road, Alexander.
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.
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
Girl Scouts demand clean up of Buttermilk and Smith Mill creeks in West Asheville.
The state attorney general has renewed a legal bid to curb incoming pollution from 13 other states.
