MT Raleigh Report | April 4, 2017 – Stream Dangers

In this installment of MTRaleigh – Rumors, deal-making and legislating surrounding the repeal of HB2 sucked up much of the air at the General Assembly this past week. In this edition of MTRaleigh, we’ll look at the danger to streams posed by legislation moving through the legislature and give a quick overview of HB2 drama.

Stream Dangers

This year’s version of the Regulatory Reform bill is moving through the General Assembly at a pretty good clip. It has already passed the Senate and has been voted out of committee on the House side. We expect to see it on the House floor early in the week.

As you probably remember, these “reform” bills often mean rolling back or weakening environmental protections. This year is no different. Of particular concern are the sections on stream mitigation. The bill includes a provision that requires the state to formally request a change from the Army Corps of Engineers to double the length of stream damage (from 150 feet to 300 feet) before developers are required to pay into a fund that supports stream repair in other parts of the state to offset the damage their projects have. The bill would also completely eliminate mitigation requirements for intermittent streams. In addition to funding stream restoration, these rules also act as an important incentive for developers to limit the impact of their projects.

While some legislators called the current regulations overly burdensome, Upper Neuse Riverkeeper Matthew Starr said that the flooding the state experienced during Hurricane Matthew demonstrates why the changes are bad policy.

“Just months after the worst recorded flood on the Neuse from Matthew the first bill that we’re doing with streams will ensure that we have exponentially higher risk from flooding,” Starr said during committee hearings.

HB2 Repeal, Reset, Redux?

Late Wednesday night GOP legislative leaders and Gov. Roy Cooper announced an agreement to repeal House Bill 2. On Thursday, both the GOP Senate and the GOP House approved the new legislation, with liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans voting against the compromise bill. Governor Cooper signed the legislation Thursday afternoon.

To date, the HB2 debate has taken up an enormous amount of time and energy, delaying the legislature’s consideration of a number of other important but less high-profile issues. With the HB2 issue now settled, look for the General Assembly to go into overdrive on a wide range of other bills and issues – the budget, tax reform and energy policy among them.

The legislation approved last week:

Repeals House Bill 2 in its entirety
Reserves the authority to regulate bathrooms to the state, essentially returning to the status quo before Charlotte passed a 2016 ordinance allowing transgender people to use the restroom of their gender identity.
Enacts a moratorium on similar local ordinances until Dec. 1, 2020.

Gov. Cooper and business leaders – including the NC Chamber of Commerce – supported the new legislation, which reportedly will meet the requirements of the ACC, NCAA and the NBA to consider locating sporting events in North Carolina.

LGBT civil rights organizations, including Equality North Carolina, opposed the bill, arguing that it continues discrimination against transgender people. HB2 supporters also opposed the new bill, arguing that it abandons the privacy protections for women and children in the original legislation.

Hendersonville Rep. Chuck McGrady was deeply involved in the extensive negotiations on the HB2 compromise. You can find an interview with him on the issue here.

In other news of interest to WNC environmentalists –

State hosts public meeting in Asheville on Duke Energy’s coal ash plans

What to Know About Trump’s Order to Dismantle the Clean Power Plan

Despite renewable energy’s impressive gains, NC lawmakers move to limit it

Tell Congress to Take AmeriCorps Off the Chopping Block

Action Expired

Laura McPherson, Mary Kate Dodge and Jack Henderson are MountainTrue’s hardworking and dedicated AmeriCorps.

Laura McPherson is our Forest Keeper. She combats non-native invasive plant species and restores native plant habitats by coordinating and leading volunteer work days and invasive species educational programs. Mary Kate Dodge is our Outings and Outreach Coordinator; she helps organize our educational events and helps us raise awareness about the work we do protecting Western North Carolina’s environment. Jack Henderson is our Water Quality Administrator and runs our river cleanups and water testing and monitoring programs.

Their work is critical to our mission.

Each year, AmeriCorps Project Conserve places more than three dozen dedicated members with local environmental nonprofits. Since its inception, 268 members have served 455,600 hours, increasing community understanding of conservation and the environment and creating sustainable improvements to at-risk ecosystems in our communities.

The federal agency that supports the AmeriCorps service program — The Corporation for National & Community Service — is at risk! It is one of 18 agencies that are recommended for elimination in the White House’s recent budget proposal.

Please take a moment to call your Congress members and let them know that AmeriCorps is making a difference in our community.

NC Senator Richard Burr (202) 224-3154
NC Senator Thom Tillis (202) 224-6342
NC Representative Mark Meadows (202) 225-6401
NC Representative Patrick McHenry (202) 225-2576
Click here to find your Senator: https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/senators_cfm.cfm
Click here to find your Representative: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Photos from Our SMIE Water Quality Training in Henderson Co.

SMIE 1 On Saturday, March 11, MountainTrue held our Stream Monitoring Information Exchange (SMIE) bio-monitoring training at Blue Ridge Community College.

MountainTrue volunteers monitor stream health throughout Henderson County and go out into the field to do bio-monitoring twice per year, in April and October. Through the SMIE bio-monitoring program, we sample aquatic macro-invertebrates, or aquatic insects, as indicators of water quality. Bugs tell us a lot about the health and vitality of our rivers and streams.

Participants learned basic stream ecology, how to identify aquatic macro-invertebrates, why macro-invertebrates are terrific indicators of water quality, and the sampling protocol. The event was led by MountainTrue Water Quality Administrator Jack Henderson and volunteer members of the Clean Water Team.

After a morning classroom session, the class headed out to the Big Hungry River field side, where participants got to put their newly learned sampling methods and identification knowledge to practice.

Thank you to Blue Ridge Community College for hosting!

Class training

Learning starts in the classroom …

Bringing out the nets

… then it’s put in practice in the field …

Sorting and identification

… where bugs are identified and give us clues to river health.

Flowers in February: WNC’s Changing Climate

It’s a beautiful, sunny spring day in Western North Carolina. Maybe you’re out for a hike or first-of-the-year paddle, or getting a head start on your garden by planting those first sweet peas and lettuce seeds. The first days of Spring should be occasion for celebration, but not so this year–because warmer days are coming a full two months earlier than they should. Sometimes the evidence of our shifting climate and the dangers it poses to our natural and human environments is blatant; like the unprecedented wildfires raging through our mountains last summer. So far this year, the effects of global climate change may be more pleasant, but they’re no less damaging; and with the climate-harming policies we’re seeing coming out of the Whitehouse and Congress these days, it seems like there’s no relief in sight. In the past 30 days 6,096 new daily high temperature records were set over across the U.S., according to the along with 5,174 record warm low temperatures. These swinging temperatures spell possible disaster for fruit growers across the country and Western North Carolina, as we can typically expect freezes until May 15 Local farmer Janet Peterson of Cloud 9 Farm in Fletcher is being impacted by the changing climate year round:

“We’re still feeling the effects from the drought that started last year, we just haven’t gotten enough rain. Last year I lost about 1/3 of the blueberries I planted to drought. Right now my blueberries are 3 weeks ahead of schedule; they’ve come out of dormancy and buds are swelling and I have to start watering them much earlier than normal. We received a grant to extend our irrigation system for raspberries through the WNC Ag Options because a wet March just isn’t happening.”

And it’s not just her crops that are disrupted by the early Spring.

“The honeybees are also coming out of dormancy several weeks early due to the warm weather, and there’s not enough food out for them as many flowers aren’t blooming. They’re out flying on these warm days gathering Maple pollen and eating up their winter stores, so I’m having to feed some of my bees. I’m even hearing reports of bees swarming to start new hives, which shouldn’t be happening until April and I’ve never heard of it this early.”

Scientists have long agreed that climate change is happening now, and is being caused by human activity; namely the large-scale burning of fossil fuels for energy. The Southeast is an epicenter for climate change impacts, from 1980-2012 our region has experienced more billion-dollar weather disasters than the rest of the country combined: Drought, hurricanes, record rainfall, heat waves and the associated flooding, crop loss, property damage, wildfires and loss of human life. Scientists are also very clear that unless we curb the amount of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, things are only going to get worse. Storms and droughts will be more extreme, our farmers will no longer be able to grow the crops they’re used to and we’ll start losing serious ground in our coastal cities to sea level rise. It’s likely that if we don’t reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from 400 parts per billion to around 350 ppb, we risk “triggering tipping points and irreversible impacts that could send climate change spinning truly beyond our control”. While we can all take individual steps to lower our carbon footprint, the magnitude of change needed to avoid global climate disaster will require significant commitments from industrialized countries to move toward fossil-free means of power generation. Many world leaders have risen to the occasion, making serious commitments to energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy and backing those commitments up with investments to drive quick growth in the clean energy sector. The United States, unfortunately, has lagged behind and the current Administration and Congress are poised to widen the gap and put us further behind in the struggle to maintain a livable planet. At a time when we need visionary leadership to avoid more climate disasters, our Representatives are putting forth bills like H.R. 637 “Stopping EPA Overreach Act of 2017“, that prevents the EPA from regulating climate change-causing greenhouse gasses by stating they are not air pollutants and requires the EPA to analyze the net impact of regulations on employment. This scare-tactic rationale pitting the economy against the environment is downright wrong: economists have found no clear evidence that regulations have a net negative effect on jobs and have actually found that the economic value health and other benefits of protecting our air and water quality, not to mention stabilizing the climate, far outweigh the costs. More now than ever, we all have a duty to call out to our lawmakers that climate change is real, it’s happening now, and we’re all going to all going to pay the price.

Don’t Let Congress Put Profits Over People and The Planet

Action Expired

The current Congress is hard at work. Unfortunately, instead of working in the public interest and to protect the natural resources we all depend on, many lawmakers are determined to dismantle regulations and structures that protect public and environmental health — all in the name of saving industry the cost of doing business in a responsible way.

Soon, your Representatives will be voting on H.R. 637 “Stopping EPA Overreach Act of 2017“. This bill prevents the EPA from regulating climate change-causing greenhouse gasses by stating they are not air pollutants and requires tthe EPA to analyze the net impact of regulations on employment. If the EPA were to determine that a regulation would have any negative impact on jobs, they would not be allowed to issue the regulation, even if the regulation would save human lives.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES NOW! Use the script below and click here to tell us you made a call!

We’ll be in touch with you about future advocacy opportunities like in-district meetings with your Congressional Representatives.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, 5th District (Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Catawba, Forsyth, Stokes, Surry, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yadkin): 202-225-2071

Rep. Mark Meadows, 11th District (Buncombe, Avery, Burke, Caldwell, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Swain, Transylvania): 202-225-6401

Rep. Patrick McHenry, 10th District (Cleveland, Gaston, Lincoln, Polk, Rutherford, Catawba, Iredell, Buncombe): 202-225-2576

Sen. Richard Burr: 202-224-3154

Sen. Thom Tillis: 202-224-6342

**Click here if you’re not sure who represents you

WHEN YOU CALL:

Ask for the staff person in charge of environmental issues (if there isn’t one, it’s OK, just ask their name and continue)

Introduce yourself, make it personal (“I’m a mom, a teacher, a retiree, a business owner”) and give them your zip code, whether they ask for it or not.

Sample script (make it your own! The more personal the better!):

“I’m calling to ask (Representative) to oppose H.R. 637 “Stopping EPA Overreach Act of 2017. This bill explicitly prioritizes industry profits over human health, which I find unconscionable. The argument that environmental regulations destroy jobs is downright wrong. In fact, economists have found no clear evidence that regulations have a net negative effect on jobs and have actually found that the economic value health and other benefits of protecting our air and water quality far outweigh the costs. While regulations may be a contributing factor to one industry moving, they open the door for others (it’s good to use a local example such as: In Asheville the French Broad River used to be said to be “too thick to drink and too thick to plow” because of all the water pollution from industry and agriculture. Now that the river is cleaner, it supports an array of local industry, from tourism and hospitality to world-class breweries.

Climate change is happening now. Last summer WNC experienced unprecedented wildfires and now spring is coming 6 weeks early, endangering commercial apple, peach and other crops. EPA must retain the ability to regulate greenhouse gasses to protect our communities, local economies and environment, and H.R. 637 would strip the EPA of that ability.“

Public Lands are Priceless, not Worthless

Action Expired

America’s public lands are a sacred legacy for us all, but Congress is well on its way to changing that. On Congress’ first day in session, the House approved a package of rules in House Resolution 5 that sets a zero-dollar value on federally protected lands that are transferred to states. By devaluing federal lands, Congress is paving the way to hand them over to states that cannot afford to manage these lands and will likely seek to raise funds by selling off our national treasures to developers or to mining, fracking and logging industries.

All three WNC lawmakers voted yes on this bill, now they need to hear from you that they’ve made a huge mistake: America’s public lands are priceless, not worthless, and need to be protected for all to enjoy and experience!!

Call your representatives NOW, using the script below, and click here to let us know you made that call!

Rep. Virginia Foxx, 5th District (Ashe, Catawba, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Iredell, Rowan, Watauga, Wilkes and Yadkin): 202-225-2071

Rep. Mark Meadows, 11th District (Buncombe, Henderson, Transylvania, Jackson, Macon, Clay, Cherokee, Graham, Swain, Haywood, Madison, Yancey, McDowell, Polk): 202-225-6401

Rep. Patrick McHenry, 10th District (Cleveland, Rutherford, Catawba, Lincoln, Burke, Caldwell, Mitchell, Avery): 202-225-2576

Sen. Richard Burr: 202-224-3154

Sen. Thom Tillis: 202-224-6342

**Click here if you’re not sure who represents you

WHEN YOU CALL:

Ask for the staff person in charge of public lands (if there isn’t one, it’s OK, just ask their name and continue)

Introduce yourself, make it personal (“I’m a mom, a teacher, a retiree, a business owner”) and give them your zip code, whether they ask for it or not.

Sample script (make it your own! The more personal the better!):

“One of the things I love most about living in Western North Carolina is access to high quality, federally protected public lands. The Pisgah and Nantahala Forests, and all our public lands are a sacred legacy that need to be protected for all Americans and future generations. Representative/Senator [insert name]’s affirmative vote on House Resolution 5 endangers that legacy by paving the way to hand over control of these lands to the States.

States don’t have the funding and resources to protect and manage these lands, for example the expense of managing wildfires alone would break state budgets. Tracts of land or rights will be sold off to private developers and industry just to raise the money to manage lands. Our national parks and forests are priceless, not worthless, as the [Rep./Senator] seems to believe by voting ‘Yes’ on HR 5, and they’ve made a huge mistake that will transfer these national treasures from American taxpayers to private companies at no benefit to taxpayers.

President Trump has reiterated his campaign promise to not transfer public lands to states, he needs to keep that promise and Congress needs to stand with the American people. Keep all federal lands under federal management. Protect our natural legacy.”

Feb. 9: Hendersonville Green Drinks: Green, Sustainable Brewing

Hendersonville, N.C. — On Thursday, February 9, Hendersonville Green Drinks welcomes Stan Cooper, Co-Manager at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., who will speak about sustainability initiatives at the Mills River brewery.

In June 2016, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was the first production brewery in the United States to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) certified, Platinum — the highest level awarded—for its Mills River, North Carolina, brewing facility.

What: Hendersonville Green Drinks: Green, Sustainable Brewing.
Who: Stan Cooper, Co-Manager at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Where: Black Bear Coffee Co. 318 N. Main St. Hendersonville, NC
When: Thursday, February 9, networking at 5:30 p.m. , presentation at 6:00 p.m.

About Hendersonville Green Drinks
Hendersonville Green Drinks is presented by MountainTrue and the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy. Come to Green Drinks to learn more about current environmental issues, have relevant discussions, and meet with like-minded people. This is a monthly event and everyone is welcome. You don’t have to drink at Green Drinks, just come and listen. Black Bear Coffee offers beer, wine, coffee drinks and sodas. A limited food menu will be available.

Mountain Xpress: Heat pumps drive rapid growth in WNC’s peak electricity demand

Did you catch this recent MountainXpress article — “Heat pumps drive rapid growth in WNC’s peak electricity demand”? Virginia Daffron takes a look at some of the strategies that we’ll be advocating for with Duke Energy, the City of Asheville, Buncombe County and all the community partners participating in the Asheville Energy Innovation Task Force.

Through the task force, MountainTrue has joined forces with fellow community leaders and stakeholders to set an ambitious goal for Western North Carolina: to avoid or delay Duke Energy’s plans to build a new power plant to meet our region’s growing electricity demand. Together. we’re developing strategies to reduce our community’s demand through proven energy saving solutions and by fostering innovative partnerships.

We can put WNC on the path to a clean energy future and everyone has an important role to play! Click here or contact our Campaigns Director Joan Walker to learn how to get involved with the Energy Innovation Task Force.

New Riverkeeper Report: Dead in the Water

The North Carolina Riverkeepers have released a new report: Dead in the Water: Environmental Enforcement in North Carolina. This the first comprehensive report that details the work of Riverkeepers across North Carolina.

Our state has a proud history of environmental protection. However, 2016 was a year of vast devastation and increased pollution, from storms, the burgeoning hog and chicken industries, coal ash and other chemicals and abuses. Contributing to the problem were environmental officials who turned a blind eye to the problems and were slow to respond to issues. Combine this with State government that attempted to roll back protections and you have a state where Riverkeepers had to work harder than ever to protect our waters.

Read all about their work by clicking here.

MountainTrue Raleigh Report — January 10, 2017

Happy New Year from Raleigh, where state government is rushing right into 2017

Just after the clock struck midnight on January 1, Roy Cooper took the oath of office and was sworn in as our state’s 75th governor. He has just begun to announce his cabinet, staff and agenda, and we will learn more in the coming weeks.

New DEQ Head Named

One of Cooper’s first announcement was his pick for the new secretary of DEQ – Michael Regan. Regan is a longtime environmental advocate, who is a veteran of both the Environmental Defense Fund and the EPA.

While at EDF, he worked on a legal challenge and eventual settlement with Duke Energy that required the utility to retire its oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. He also believes that a clean environment and clean energy are drivers for economic development, including in poor and rural areas.

Regan said his first goal as secretary is to get the advice of those who serve in DEQ. He also pledged to improve transparency and work with stakeholders to help solve environmental problems.

Regan is a native of eastern North Carolina and a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University and George Washington University.

Under a new law, Regan’s nomination must be confirmed by the state Senate.

Legislative Outlook

Cooper will soon be joined in Raleigh by members of the 2017 General Assembly. Legislators return on January 11th for what is expected to be a short organizational meeting to officially elect Senate and House leaders.

Lawmakers are expected to recess for two weeks to allow committees to be appointed so that the real work of the 2017 legislature can begin on January 25. Our state does not set constitutional limits on the length of the session, so how long the 2017 General Assembly will be at its work is anyone’s guess. It will certainly continue at least until July 1, the beginning of the state’s fiscal year.

Lawmakers are coming off three December special sessions – one on disaster relief, another to change Cooper and other statewide elected officials’ authority and a third on HB2. While the disaster session went largely as expected, the two other sessions were extremely controversial. The first session passed a wide-ranging elections bill that made appellate court races partisan and merged lobbying, ethics and elections oversight into one agency. In that same session, lawmakers limited Governor Cooper’s ability to hire and fire appointees for his administration and moved a good bit of education policy-making power from the State Board of Education to the new superintendent of public instruction. WRAL has a good summary of what happened in the special session. Pretty much everything that passed during this session is now being challenged in court. A week later, legislators returned to Raleigh, argued, finagled and voted but ultimately couldn’t pass a repeal of HB2, the controversial legislation concerning LGBTQ civil rights.

DEQ Shenanigans

Of course, no MountainTrue Raleigh report would be complete without some news from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. Shortly before Cooper took office, GOP-appointed DEQ Secretary van der Vaart demoted himself in order to avoid dismissal as a political appointee when Cooper took office. He will return to a position in the air quality division as a section chief, where he worked for 20 years before being promoted by former Governor Pat McCrory.

What’s Next?

It’s hard to imagine that the acrimony and partisanship on display during much of 2016 in Raleigh won’t continue in the new year. Much hinges on what the courts decide on the changes to the Governor’s powers, HB2 and court-mandated redistricting.

Here at MountainTrue, we’ll continue to talk to legislators from both parties about clean water, clean air and making North Carolina’s future a sustainable one. We will keep you posted as issues develop and hope you will join us in our advocacy efforts.