Deciding the Next 15 Years for Western NC’s Forests: The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Management Plan

This year, the National Forest Service will share the first draft of a new management plan for Western North Carolina’s two national forests, Nantahala and Pisgah.

This big-picture plan changes every 15 years, and is incredibly important because it sets the ground rules for all activities in the forests: from wildlife management and timber sales on public lands to the hiking, fishing and mountain biking for which our region is famous. Everyone who loves our forests has an issue they care about that will be impacted by the new forest management plan.

Comprising more than a million acres combined, Nantahala and Pisgah are a central part of our natural and cultural heritage and a driver of our region’s economy. Generations of people stretching back to the first inhabitants of the Blue Ridge have depended on our beautiful mountains, forests, rivers and streams for their livelihoods. Our crafts, cuisine and culture reflect this deep connection to the land. Nantahala and Pisgah are also among the most biodiverse temperate forests on earth, with more than 2,000 species of plants, over 400 bird species (over 220 that rely on these forests for nesting,) and more than 100 species of mammals that attract attention from biology experts and enthusiasts from all over the world.

Looking Glass rock amidst Western NC’s famous fall colors.

The blackbelly salamander, a native to the Appalachian Mountains.

To honor this heritage and range of virtues, MountainTrue’s approach to our public lands seeks balance and sustainability. We want a forest plan that:

Protects our wild places and unique natural habitats for future generations,
Benefits our region’s economy,
Includes timber harvest as a tool for restoration and habitat creation,
And continues to offer inspiration, adventure and solitude to all of us who enjoy these mountains.

Previous management plans for Nantahala and Pisgah have come up short. The 1987 plan tilted too far toward resource extraction and put our wild places and sources of clean water and recreation at risk. The Western North Carolina Alliance (now MountainTrue) appealed that plan, eventually prompting the Forest Service to add a 1994 amendment with protections for streams and springs, and to begin restoration for old-growth forests that had been decimated at the turn of the 20th Century. But the goals of the 1994 amendment were not realized due to decreasing federal budgets, lack of political leadership for protective designations, and a lack of ecosystem specific priorities for timber harvest and restoration.

Fast forward to recent years: the early draft of the forest management plan released in 2014 would have zoned almost 70% of the forest for timber management. MountainTrue again pushed back, with thousands of our supporters asking the Forest Service for a more balanced forest plan.

Those of us who care about our forests are trying something different this time: coming to the Forest Service with a win-win vision first.

That’s why MountainTrue is an enthusiastic participant in the Nantahala Pisgah Forest Partnership, a collaborative group that has gathered in the spirit of cooperation and compromise to bring all forest interest groups into the same room at once: timber, water, wildlife, recreation, wilderness and more. We don’t leave anyone behind, and we believe it’s critical that everyone be willing to support everyone else’s values with the expectation that the support will be reciprocal. For the past five years, the Partnership has come up with a vision and a set of win-win strategies for a forest plan that allows all of our interests to co-exist and thrive.

The Forest Service has also received recommendations from other groups participating in the forest plan revision, and now we want to share the best of those ideas with you. Check out our events calendar for upcoming panels, presentations and information sessions about the forest plan.

With the forest management plan expected to be released this year and the draft environmental impact statement expected this spring, this is your chance to take part in constructive dialogue with other voices that rely on our forests. These forests are valuable national treasures that deserve the best plan around – we hope you’ll help make that vision a reality!

Sign Up for our Richmond Hill Invasives Removal Work Day March 10!

Action Expired

MountainTrue has worked for the past six years to restore Asheville’s only forested park, Richmond Hill. A favorite of dog walkers, mountain bikers and disc golf fans, the park has unfortunately become overrun with non-native invasive plants like multiflora rose, which has very sharp thorns that can harm our canine companions. The invasives crowd out native species and prevent them from growing, reduce valuable habitat, and diminish the natural beauty of the woods.

We have seen incredible improvements at Richmond Hill since holding invasive species removal days, with a 95% reduction of invasive species in some areas! We hope you’ll join us for our next restoration workday on March 10th, and we will subsequently host work days at Richmond Hill on the second Saturday of every month for the rest of the year.

Where: Richmond Hill Park, 280 Richmond Hill Drive, Asheville, NC 28806

When: Saturday, March 10 2018 from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

Other Info: Be sure to wear long sleeves and pants as well as closed-toed shoes to this event. Bring a snack and water. We will provide all other equipment necessary! We ask that you leave your pets at home for this work day.

Community Planning For All: Trolley Tour Reportback

On January 27, the rain held off just long enough for our Community Planning For All Trolley Tour led by Chris Joyell of the Asheville Design Center (ADC). Nineteen attendees packed onto the trolley to learn about infrastructure projects that were all designed in collaboration between communities in Asheville and the ADC.

West Asheville Bus Shelter

Our tour began at the West Asheville bus shelter across from New Belgium Brewery at the intersection of Haywood Road and Craven Street. For this project, ADC’s volunteer architects held outreach events, listening sessions and design workshops to incorporate the voices of transit riders in the shelter’s design, and even held a public vote online to decide what materials would be used to build the shelter. The result was a “Mix & Match” design using three salvaged materials from the stockyard that once stood at New Belgium Brewery: wood slats, metal, and a bottle cap mosaic. The final design will include an interpretive panel with history about the surrounding neighborhoods.

Burton Street Peace Garden

Formerly a vacant, overgrown lot, the Burton Street Peace Garden was a positive response by the Burton Street community to the war in Iraq and heavy drug activity and crime in their neighborhood in 2003. The site now has vegetable and flower gardens watered by rainwater collection barrels, a fire pit and a cob pizza oven. It also features sculptures and visual art by local artists including Dwayne Barton, telling stories of African-American history and social and environmental justice.

ADC’s 2011 DesignBuild Studio helped design the garden’s 300-square-foot pavilion. Constructed out of salvaged materials from the neighborhood, like an old Texaco gas station sign as the door, the pavilion serves as a gathering and educational neighborhood space.

Photo Credit: Hood Huggers International

13 Bones Pedestrian Bridge

From there we visited the innovative 13 Bones Pedestrian Bridge created by the ADC’s 2013 DesignBuild Studio. Built near the old 12 Bones Barbecue location in the River Arts District, the title is a playful nod to the site’s history. Currently, the bridge is a peaceful place to gather along the French Broad River, and will also be the first piece of infrastructure for the upcoming Wilma Dykeman greenway project along the French Broad.

Triangle Park Mural

Photo Credit: Michael Carlebach

Our tour ended at the Triangle Park Mural, a memorial to the historic African-American business district in the heart of “The Block” in downtown Asheville. The Block was once the cultural and economic hub for Western North Carolina’s African-American community from Reconstruction until the late 1960’s, when close to 500 acres of majority-black neighborhoods were cleared in the East-Riverside Redevelopment Project.

The Triangle Park Mural is a tribute to that history. Its design is the culmination of community interviews, family stories and donated photographs, and celebrates the people of the Block, East End and Valley Street neighborhoods. ADC artist Molly Must painted the mural alongside six local artists and nearly 100 community volunteers, many of whom had their own stories about the Block’s heyday.

MountainTrue believes that creating livable communities in Asheville’s built environments is key to protecting our natural environment too. When we have attractive and functional bus shelters, neighborhood gardens that create food security and strengthen community, places to gather along our region’s waterways and green spaces that celebrate marginalized communities, we come closer to the region we want to live in: one where the health of our natural environment is a priority, and our communities thrive within it. Stay tuned: more community-powered design to come!

Learn more about MountainTrue's recent merger with the Asheville Design Center

Go

Are you an architect or designer in Western NC with an interest in equitable, community-driven design?

Sign up to join us!

Speak Out: No More Leaks At Duke’s Cliffside Coal Ash Ponds!

Action Expired

Thanks to your voice, Duke Energy has not been let off the hook for its coal ash pollution. We are making progress and applaud the Department of Environmental Quality for its recently drafted special order by consent that will require the corporate polluter to dewater its ash ponds with the goal of stopping most of the illegal seepage of its toxic waste at the Cliffside Power Plant. But it doesn’t go far enough.

For too long Duke Energy has been allowed to pollute the Broad River. The special order by consent recognizes the illegality of that pollution and starts to remedy it, but this order still allows some of the polluting seeps to be permitted and remain in place.

Between now and February 14th, North Carolinians can weigh in on the state’s draft order before it goes to the Environmental Management Commission for approval. This is our chance to ask DEQ to strengthen this order even more by not permitting any seeps and ensuring that any seeps remaining after dewatering are cleaned up. We should also demand that when the time comes, DEQ require full excavation of Cliffside’s coal ash to lined storage away from the Broad River.

‘Let’s Turn Our Community Into A Demonstration Plot’: A Faith Spotlight on Piney Mountain United Methodist Church

Members of Piney Mountain United Methodist Church during their light bulb drive, August 2017.

It was something you don’t see every day: in the Hominy Valley just east of Candler, NC, a man pulls a wagon of light bulbs while another drags a wheelbarrow full of green peppers, okra and tomatoes. Winding around the neighborhood, the small group knocks on the doors of 35 homes, and when their neighbors open, they do not ask for money or signatures. Instead they hand out 16 energy-efficient LED light bulbs to each home free of charge along with some fresh produce, and invite them to a community cookout and a series of free classes on creation care.

These generous visitors were congregants of Piney Mountain United Methodist Church for their LED light bulb drive last August. Piney Mountain, known for being a “working church” that serves in the Hominy Valley community, breaks the mold of what may be expected of rural congregations: the church has been incredibly active in the mission to protect our mountains.

“There are a lot of blessings of the rural community,” says Piney Mountain Pastor Kevin Bates. “My people love their land, they love their mountains, and they do a lot of farming. One of my parishioners raises cattle, and he loves every one of those cows and names them all.”

Pastor Bates was determined to connect his parish’s love of the land with an understanding of how climate change affects the earth and how they care for their neighbors. In 2016, Bates received a $1,000 Thriving Rural Communities grant for the neighborhood light bulb drive from the Duke Divinity School Endowment. Piney Mountain has now distributed over 1,300 energy efficient LED light bulbs to help lower their neighbors’ energy bills and reduce carbon emissions at the same time.

“I’d watched people come into the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Mission (ABCCM) crisis center in Candler saying, “I need help with my heating bill. I need help with my heating bill,” Bates says. “And [ABCCM Site Coordinator] Ian Williams and I decided we need more than a Band-Aid fix for this issue. So the LED light bulbs were a beginning: we thought, let’s start moving people in the right direction so that instead of them asking for $100 come December, let’s save them $100 over the course of the year.”

LED light bulbs are 80% more efficient than regular incandescent light bulbs, and even more efficient than the spiral-shaped compact fluorescents (CFLs.) They’re also safer than CFLs since they do not contain mercury. On top of the energy savings, the LED light bulbs will eliminate about 1,000 pounds of carbon emissions per year – the carbon equivalent of planting 15,000 trees in their community over the next ten years.

“We need more than a Band-Aid fix for this issue. So the LED light bulbs were a beginning: we thought, let’s start moving people in the right direction so that instead of them asking for $100 come December, let’s save them $100 over the course of the year.”

–Pastor Kevin Bates

Piney Mountain goes door-to-door in the neighborhood surrounding their church in the Hominy Valley, east of Candler, NC, to build community and create energy savings for their neighbors.

Pastor Kevin Bates (left) and a Piney Mountain congregant (right) load boxes of LED light bulbs into a wagon at church.

Pastor Bates’ passion for connecting faith with care for the environment is clear, and for him, the effort began with preaching. He did a six-part sermon series on creation care through the lens of Biblical passages – from the Genesis creation story to the Book of John, Job, and Revelations, Bates points out that the Bible is full of references to our connection to the earth and the image of God as a gardener. “Other times, my sermons were more focused on the justice elements of what it means when we don’t care for the land,” he says. “There are plenty of places in the Minor Prophets where people are abusing the land and the prophets speak out against it because it’s hurting people, especially the poor. We know that’s the case now, and my congregation responds, ‘we’re farmers too – we get what’s happening.’”

Bates adds that the deep connection to the land felt by many parishioners allows them to feel and respond to climate change on an emotional level. “My people have noticed that they have changed when they plant in the ground, and they have even changed the way they fertilize because of changing snow patterns,” Bates says.

Piney Mountain offered free public classes last fall on home energy savings, composting and canning to keep fostering creation care, and used local knowledge to teach the classes. “I think canning was the best class that we had. I don’t know how many older grandmothers have said ‘I wish my grandchildren and kids knew how to can, but they just bring their tomatoes over here and make me do it,’” Bates laughs.

Many residents of the Hominy Valley make lifestyle choices that, while sometimes considered part of a recent wave of trendy “green” practices, are actually long-standing traditions in rural communities that just make sense economically. In the home energy savings class, Bates realized that most of the participants still used clotheslines and didn’t need to convert back to them to save energy like they might in more urban areas.

Bates serves on the Steering Committee for the Creation Care Alliance, and hopes Piney Mountain will offer more classes in the spring. Piney Mountain also plans to work more closely with the Energy Savers Network and to help make Buncombe County’s recently adopted resolution for 100% renewable energy by 2042 a reality.

Fittingly, Bates’ personal call to this work also connects to an agricultural vision. He speaks of the Koinonia Farm in Georgia that was founded in the early Civil Rights Movement by Clarence Jordan, who believed that black and white people need to live and work together in order for true reconciliation to occur.

“Now obviously there’s a lot of hard work that goes into living together with people,” Bates says. “But with Koinonia Farm, Clarence Jordan spoke about creating a demonstration plot for the kingdom of God, because it demonstrated to the world a different way, the way of the Beloved community. And it was also a protest against the way the world works now. So I turned that language to my congregation and said ‘let’s turn our community into a demonstration plot. Demonstrating to the world a different way: a way of reconciliation with people and land.’”

Are you clergy and interested in bringing creation care back to your faith community?

Sign up now for CCA's clergy retreat by Jan. 22!

Would you like to connect to the Creation Care Alliance’s network of faith communities caring for our mountains in Western NC?

Email Scott@creationcarealliance.org

Press Release: Duke Energy Request to Raise Energy Bills Would Hurt Working Families, Limit Energy-Efficiency in Western NC

Action Expired

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Duke Energy Request to Raise Energy Bills Would Hurt Working Families, Limit Energy-Efficiency in Western NC

Media Contact:

Eliza Stokes

Advocacy & Communications Associate, MountainTrue

E: eliza@mountaintrue.org; P: 828-258-8737 ext. 218

Jan. 10, 2018

Macon County– On Tuesday, January 16, residents of Western North Carolina will have the opportunity to gather at the Macon County Courthouse in Franklin to voice their opinions about Duke Energy’s proposed rate hike. Duke Energy Carolinas, which serves 2.2 million customers across the state and much of Western North Carolina, has requested approval to raise residential energy rates by 16.7% and to increase their revenue by approximately $647 million. The rate hike is being requested soon after the company rose energy rates by 5% in 2013.

Public interest advocates call the request an attempt to pass Duke’s coal ash clean up costs to the public, which they say would discourage energy-saving measures and be especially harmful for low-income families. The North Carolina Utilities Commission, the body that decides whether or not to approve Duke’s request, will receive the public testimony.

The rate hike would increase a typical residential customer’s bill by $18.72 per month, and would raise energy bills for residential customers more than for industrial and commercial customers. The rate hike would also include a 66% increase of the base energy charge from $11.80 to $17.79, discouraging energy saving measures by customers.

“Working families in Western North Carolina know that when you’re struggling to pay the bills and the mortgage and to put food on the table, you learn to be careful about how you use electricity,” says Robert E. Smith, a former Board Chair of the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance. “But with Duke Energy’s new mandatory fee, all families would be charged a minimum of $17.79 per month – about $213 per year – even if they never turned their lights on.”

Public interest advocates believe this rate hike would leave residents of North Carolina’s far western counties, many of whom already face a harsh economic reality, with another unneeded financial burden. Counties including Jackson, Macon, Swain, Graham, Cherokee, and Clay have been named Tier 1 counties by the North Carolina Department of Commerce for 2018, meaning they face the highest level of economic distress in the state. According to the NC Department of Commerce’s 2018 County Tier Designations, Graham County has a median household income of less than $34,000, with 22% of families living below the poverty line. Swain County has a median family income of $36,103 and a 24.5% poverty rate, while Yancey County has a median household income of $36,418 with a 21.7% poverty rate.

Over half of Duke’s rate hike – a total of $336 million – would be used to pay for the company’s coal ash cleanup costs. Before proposing the rate hike to the NC Utilities Commission, Duke sought to have these costs covered by its insurance provider, but was refused. Due to past actions, the insurance company stated that “Duke failed to take reasonable measures to avoid and/or mitigate the damage resulting from coal ash disposal.” In 2015, three Duke Energy companies including Duke Energy Carolinas plead guilty to nine criminal environmental violations for their failure to protect NC waterways from coal ash pollution. More recently, it was revealed that Duke was aware of the harms of coal ash beginning in the 1980’s, but did not begin to take precautions.

The NC Utilities Commission hearing will be held Tuesday, January 16 at 7 pm at the Macon County Courthouse located at 5 W. Main St. Courtroom A, Franklin, NC, 28734. Those who plan to speak should arrive at 6:30 pm.

MountainTrue is the oldest grassroots environmental non-profit in Western North Carolina. With offices in Hendersonville, Asheville, and Boone, we work in 23 counties to champion resilient forests, clean waters and healthy communities in our region. MountainTrue engages in policy advocacy at all levels of government, local project advocacy, and on-the-ground environmental restoration projects. Primary program areas include public lands, water quality, clean energy, land use/transportation, and citizen engagement. For more information: mountaintrue.org.

###

MountainTrue Defends Old-Growth Forest in Jackson County

By Josh Kelly, Public Lands Field Biologist

On the steep, rocky slopes of Savannah Ridge in Jackson County, there is an ancient oak forest that has weathered centuries.

The oak trees are short and generally twisty; not worth much at the sawmill despite being hundreds of years old. These trees have stood, well-protected by the rugged terrain and their scant commercial value, even as the surrounding forests were logged in the early 20th century. Now, they are among the oldest and rarest trees in the Eastern United States.

Less than 0.6% of forests in the East qualify as old growth. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, we are blessed with a greater percentage, but still less than 5 percent. These old-growth forests hold a host of values: wildlife habitat, scientific information, undisturbed soils and genetics that have stood the test of time. Because these trees are so rare, so ecologically valuable and take hundreds of years to form, MountainTrue believes that existing old growth on public land should be protected from logging.

The Forest Service is not required by the current forest management plan to evaluate the old-growth condition of the stands they identify for timber sales. That’s where MountainTrue comes in. Our Public Lands staff reviews all timber projects in Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests for the presence of old growth.

We had a victory in protecting old growth just this past year. The story begins in 2016, when the Mossy Oak timber sale was put forth for public comment. The Mossy Oak Project included 235 acres of proposed logging in 10 separate units spread out over 9,500 acres. Most of the project made sense in balancing ecological and economic considerations, and the logging was designed to benefit species like deer, grouse and golden-winged warbler. However, two of the units caught our eye. Unit 6 overlapped with an important natural area identified by the NC Natural Heritage Program, and Unit 7 – part of that same ancient oak forest on Savannah Ridge in Jackson County, with the short, twisty trees – looked like a potential site of old-growth forest.

It turns out that Forest Service records indicated that Unit 7’s trees are, on average, over 150 years old. To increase the size of the unit, eight low-value acres of the ancient forest had been packaged with eight acres of younger, higher value forest. Beginning in April 2016, MountainTrue notified the Forest Service that we had identified old growth in Unit 7 of the Mossy Oak Project.

Counting the rings from the core sample allowed us to determine that this tree is part of an ancient old-growth forest.

After over a year of input, a visit to the site with the Forest Service and a formal objection to the Forest Supervisor, the eight acres of ancient oak forest from Unit 7 are no longer on the chopping block. Instead, the Forest Service and MountainTrue will work together to protect and enhance the old-growth characteristics of this small but invaluable forest. We hope that in the future it will not require such persistence to protect old growth on public land, but if there’s one thing MountainTrue has in spades, it’s persistence and love of the land.

In that spirit, we are working to ensure that old-growth forest is far more than an afterthought in the new Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Management Plan, which is due to be drafted in early 2018. We’ll fight to make sure the new plan has language to make the protection of existing old-growth forest just as important as creating young forest habitat through logging.

Stay tuned: The future of our region’s ancient forests hangs in the balance.

Want to join our Forest Management Plan campaign? Sign up for updates and action opportunities at mountaintrue.org/get-involved.

You Can Help Make This Work Possible!

Give

Our Members Fuel Our Work

Support Us

Super-Volunteer Sky Conard Receives 2017 Esther Cunningham Award

Sky in front of the Green River in Henderson County. Photo: Hendersonville Times-News.

By Julie Mayfield, Co-Director

Our Esther Cunningham Award is given in honor of Esther Cunningham – the founder of the Western North Carolina Alliance, one of three organizations that merged in 2015 to become MountainTrue.

To celebrate Esther’s legacy, this award is given to people who have fought the fight, often giving over a large portion of their lives to these battles, who win some and who keep fighting even in the face of defeat. Sky Conard is one such person. We became aware of Sky in 2010, when she formed the Green River Watershed Alliance to help protect, restore and plan for the Green River in Polk County. As a resident at Lake Adger, she saw firsthand the impacts of poor land management and the lack of water planning for the lake and the river.

Since then, Sky fought the proposed Lee Nuclear Station in SC due to the impacts it would have had on the Green and Broad rivers; she secured funding for a watershed assessment and convinced NC’s DEQ to add new water quality monitoring sites on the Green River; and she pushed Polk County to prepare a report on repairs needed for the nearly century-old Lake Adger dam.

In 2015, she created another group called Protect Polk Water to fight the proposed sale of the Polk County water system to an outside entity. This would have been a terrible deal for residents and elected leaders were doing their best to do it quietly, including having one important meeting at 6 a.m. Sky wasn’t about to let this meeting go unnoticed. She organized a protest, asking people to show up in their pajamas. The media loved it and, needless to say, the Commissioners didn’t try that again. The proposed deal later died, due in no small part to the attention Sky generated.

Polk County Commissioners did their best to quietly sell the county’s water to a private entity by holding a Commission Meeting at 6 a.m. Sky organized community members to show up bright and early to the meeting for a “pajama protest.” Sky is second from the right in her wiener dog pajamas.

She has since turned her attention to Lake Adger, where she has tirelessly campaigned to get the state to meet its obligation to dredge the vast amount of sediment that has poured into the lake over recent decades. Again, against all odds, she secured a dredging feasibility study, hired a drone to get aerial photos and secured a pledge from the state to dredge the marina channel.

Sky also recently encouraged MountainTrue to create the Green Riverkeeper program. This should mean we’re doing more and she’s doing less, but that’s not Sky. She’s still out there, scouting problems, raising alarms and fighting for our watershed.

Sky, thank you for your dedication, your passion and your vision for a healthy Green River watershed. Thank you for carrying on the legacy of Esther Cunningham – an ordinary person who became extraordinary because she cared deeply about the world around her and wasn’t content to sit by and let it be harmed.

To sign up to volunteer with MountainTrue, visit www.mountaintrue.org/eventscalendar.

Can You Help Support This Work?

Donate Now

Help Us Protect Western NC's Natural Places Today.

Support Our Work

Youth, Ecology, and Compassion: Creation Care Alliance Looks to Future Generations

By Scott Hardin-Nieri, Director of Creation Care Alliance of WNC

The Creation Care Alliance partnered with the Asheville Youth Mission and Christmount Conference Center on Oct. 14 for our 2nd annual “Mission: Earth” conference, an afternoon of youth programs about climate, social justice and faith.

The afternoon was a sight to see: teens cultivated pollinator gardens, distributed food to those in need at 12 Baskets Cafe, and listened to stories and shared time with people without homes at the Saturday Sanctuary Homeless Day Shelter at First Presbyterian Church.

MountainTrue’s Watershed Outreach Coordinator Anna Alsobrook guided one youth group in stenciling storm drains throughout West Asheville to remind the public to protect our shared water resources.

Young people from Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Circle of Mercy, Land of the Sky United Church of Christ and New Hope Presbyterian Church took part in the conference. In small groups, the teens listed challenges and possible solutions for poverty, climate change, pollution, food insecurity and faith. Then, they “cross-pollinated” ideas – seeking out challenges or solutions that apply to one or more of the issues. “It is all interconnected,” several teenagers determined as they completed the activity.

Mission: Earth conference participants building pollinator gardens.

Mission: Earth closing circle at Christmount Conference Center.

This past year, CCA staff and volunteers have encouraged youth participation in events like the Earth Day Vigil and the 100 Days of Creation Care Action event. Most recently, we’ve launched Spiritual Opportunities for Intentional Living (S.O.I.L.), an intergenerational, collaborative week-long conference exploring climate change, pollution, poverty, race and reconciliation. Participants learn to incorporate resilience through spiritual practice and by sharing their own creation care work in TED talkstyle presentations, and also find time for play throughout the week by whitewater rafting, swimming and square dancing. CCA believes that young people have a crucial role to play in tackling issues of social and environmental justice, and we’re expanding opportunities for youth leadership in our work. We hope you’ll join us.

To attend our S.O.I.L. conference in summer 2018 and to help build CCA’s youth involvement, contact Scott Hardin-Nieri at scott@creationcarealliance.org or (828) 258-8737 x 217.

This work is made possible by people like you. Could you donate today to help us keep giving?

Go

Can You Help Us Support This Work?

Give Today

Read Board Chair Katie Breckheimer’s Article on the Southeast Regional Recycling Council Forum for Hendersonville Times-News Here!

Dec. 6 2017

MountainTrue Board Chair and Recycling Team member Katie Breckheimer recently wrote an article for the Hendersonville Times-News on the Southeast Regional Council’s fall recycling forum. Check out Katie’s full piece here, and find out more about MountainTrue’s Recycling Team efforts here!