Hold your sprayers: Gov. Cooper puts the kibosh on leachate bill
Leachate won’t start spewing garbage juice for at least another month now that Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed House Bill 576. The measure would require state environmental officials to permit an untested...
View ArticleNeonic pesticides shorten bees’ lives in newly discovered way — with...
A new study confirms that honeybees exposed to neonic pesticides, long implicated in their illness and death, send them to an early grave– putting the health of entire hive at risk. Canadian...
View ArticleWant to have your say on seismic testing, drilling off the NC coast?...
If you enjoyed the beach over the long holiday weekend or have plans to go to the coast later this summer, you owe it to yourself to read Lisa Sorg’s new piece on the main Policy Watch website. Sorg...
View Article200,000 gallons of dairy manure spills into Pott Creek, prompting utilities...
Lincolnton and Dallas public utilities have stopped withdrawing water from the Catawba River after 200,000 gallons of manure spilled from a dairy farm upstream. A pump at Gladden Farm in Catawba County...
View ArticleAs EPA prepares to rescind the Waters of the US rule, state ag department has...
H ouse lawmakers handed the state Department of Agriculture $250,000 to fight a legal battle that is all but moot. And now, unlike many cash-strapped agencies, the department has an extra...
View ArticleFewer fish kills so far this season, but human negligence responsible for...
H erbicides, fabric dye and wet concrete discharging into North Carolina lakes and creeks have killed 1,470 fish so far this year, the lowest number since at least 2012. But the season is still early....
View ArticleThe Week’s Top Five on NC Policy Watch
1. Is North Carolina stuck in an abusive relationship? Behavior of state leaders, state policy community raise warning flags The last seven years in North Carolina politics and policy have been...
View ArticleDéjà vu: Controversy over safe drinking water, coal ash, prompts DEQ to...
T he NC Department of Environmental Quality, facing criticism over its new performance standards for contaminants in drinking water, said today that Secretary Michael Regan will convene a science...
View ArticleDEQ, DHHS at loggerheads again, still bickering over drinking water risks of...
P eople living near Duke Energy coal plants — Roxboro, Mayo and Belew’s Creek, in particular — don’t know whom or what to believe. In 2015, state health officials said their drinking water was unsafe...
View ArticleDEQ inspectors: Chemours failed to stop all discharges of GenX into Cape Fear
Three weeks after Chemours reportedly stopped discharging contaminated wastewater into the Cape Fear River, state environmental inspectors found GenX was still entering the water. On June 27, the NC...
View ArticleThe Week’s Top Five on NC Policy Watch
1. State School Superintendent muzzles communication from DPI A directive from Superintendent Mark Johnson to temporarily halt key listserv communications from the Department of Public Instruction has...
View ArticleFirst sampling results of GenX in Cape Fear River are in; health officials...
Initial sampling results of GenX in drinking water are in. They show that levels of the chemical far exceeded new — and drastically reduced — health department goals before Chemours stopped discharging...
View ArticlePublic hearings on Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Fayetteville, Rocky Mount focus...
Aside from the risks of blasting, the threat to endangered and rare species, the potential for a natural gas leak or explosion, the possible disruption of Native American burial grounds, and the...
View Article“People of NC require your protection”: Gov. Cooper urges EPA to quickly set...
Gov. Roy Cooper sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt today seeking “urgent action to get us answers and solutions” about the health risks of GenX in drinking water. “We need the EPA to move...
View ArticlePoor neighborhoods can be more prone to mosquitoes — and their health risks —...
They are voracious bloodsuckers that feast on their prey like the after-church crowd lining up at a Golden Corral buffet. Of the 60 mosquito species living in North Carolina, the Asian tiger mosquito...
View Article“Not off our coast”: Gov. Roy Cooper opposes offshore drilling
Citing the environmental and economic risks to North Carolina’s sensitive shoreline, Gov. Roy Cooper today said he opposes seismic testing offshore drilling. “It’s a bad deal for our state,” Cooper...
View ArticleFormer DEQ secretary Donald van der Vaart passed over for No. 2 slot at EPA
Despite a compelling cover letter to the Trump administration, former DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart will not be EPA deputy administrator, a job for which he was being considered. Instead, the...
View ArticleNC Attorney General Josh Stein launches investigation into Chemours, demands...
Environmental documents, research data, organizational charts, marketing materials: These are the thousands of pages of information that Chemours must provide to the state attorney general’s office,...
View ArticleGov. Cooper asks lawmakers for emergency funds for DEQ, DHHS over GenX; Sec’y...
Gov. Roy Cooper and state health and environmental officials today tried to assure Wilmington residents that their drinking water is safe, even if it contains low levels of GenX, an unregulated...
View ArticleComplaint: Lawmakers could be sued over leachate bill because their election...
If lawmakers override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the leachate aerosolization bill, they could open themselves to a lawsuit, according to court documents filed in the Covington redistricting case....
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