Press Release: Buncombe County Commissioners Approve 40 Solar Projects for Public Buildings and Schools

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Eliza Stokes, MountainTrue
E: eliza@mountaintrue.org P: 410-493-7284

July 21, 2020

Asheville, NC — At their July 21 meeting, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to greenlight a proposal for 40 new solar panel installations at county-owned buildings, Asheville City and Buncombe County public schools and A-B Tech Community College. Together, the 40 new solar sites will create approximately 6.7 MW of new solar energy each year – the equivalent of powering 767 homes entirely with solar energy.

The vote was celebrated by local residents, many of whom submitted public comments to voice their support for the solar projects and had advocated for Buncombe County to pass a resolution for 100% renewable energy in 2017. After that resolution passed, many community members had been frustrated with the lack of concrete progress on this commitment.

“I was thrilled and frankly relieved when I heard that it passed,” said Josh Draper, a rising senior at TC Roberson High School. “Until today our longstanding county resolution, like so many others, was just a vague, distant goal with no practical solution in sight. Now, instead of waiting idly by for the most urgently needed change, we can be productive and set an example for neighboring communities to follow.”

Buncombe County and the City of Asheville released a joint request for proposals, or rfp, for solar panels at feasible sites on their properties in the fall of 2019. The County and City invited other entities to join the bidding process with the hope of increasing the impact of the rfp on carbon emissions and reducing the overall cost. High school students spoke out in favor of this concept at Buncombe County and Asheville City school board meetings last October, leading both school boards to vote to join the solar exploration.

“This is the right thing to do for our children’s health and future,” said Beatrice Nathan, Co-Chair of the local chapter of Mom’s Out Front. “I hope the County Commission sees the value in taking steps toward a world with better air quality and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the City of Asheville was part of the joint solar rfp, it will fund its solar projects separately. As for the County and schools, the 40 projects will be funded by a $10.3 million bond taken out by the County and paid over the course of 15 years. Between the solar rebate from Duke Energy, utility savings and positive cash flow from selling excess solar energy, the solar projects are expected to be revenue positive every single year – often by millions of dollars.

“This shows that solar energy isn’t a luxury item or another headache to add on to a financial downturn,” says Eliza Stokes, renewable energy organizer at MountainTrue. “Instead, solar can be a buoy that helps keep our local economy afloat and creates resilience for the times ahead.”

The company selected to install the solar panels is MB Haynes, an employee-owned company based in Asheville. Before the vote, several Commissioners spoke to hiring a local company as a key aspect of their support.

“The idea of doing something bigger, trying to do it together, none of us really knew how it would turn out,” said Chairman Brownie Newman at the Commission meeting. “I really appreciate the schools being willing to go through this process with us, and I think it’s gonna achieve a lot more good for our community…The one challenge I would leave with us is that as exciting as this is, when we look at the need to move to renewable energy we’re still not moving fast enough. This is just the first of many such efforts we’re gonna need to take on to be a leader.”

Projected Financial Benefits Of 40 Solar Projects (Source: Buncombe County)

Year	Solar Financial Benefit	Debt Payments	Cash flow positive?
1	$ 2,623,000	$ 684,000	$ 1,939,000
2	$ 638,000	$ 951,000	$ 1,626,000
3	$ 654,000	$ 933,000	$ 1,347,000
4	$ 670,000	$ 916,000	$ 1,101,000
5	$ 687,000	$ 898,000	$ 890,000
6	$ 704,000	$ 880,000	$ 714,000
7	$ 721,000	$ 863,000	$ 572,000
8	$ 739,000	$ 845,000	$ 466,000
9	$ 757,000	$ 827,000	$ 396,000
10	$ 795,000	$ 810,000	$ 381,000
11	$ 815,000	$ 792,000	$ 404,000
12	$ 835,000	$ 770,000	$ 469,000
13	$ 855,000	$ 752,000	$ 572,000
14	$ 876,000	$ 735,000	$ 713,000
15	$ 898,000	$ 717,000	$ 894,000
16	$ 920,450	$ –	$ 1,814,450
17	$ 943,461	$ –	$ 2,757,911
18	$ 967,048	$ –	$ 3,724,959
19	$ 991,224	$ –	$ 4,716,183
20	$ 1,016,005	$ –	$ 5,732,188
21	$ 1,041,405	$ –	$ 6,773,592
22	$ 1,067,440	$ –	$ 7,841,032
23	$ 1,094,126	$ –	$ 8,935,158
24	$ 1,121,479	$ –	$ 10,056,637
25	$ 1,149,516	$ –	$ 11,206,153
26	$ 1,178,254	$ –	$ 12,384,407
27	$ 1,207,710	$ –	$ 13,592,117
28	$ 1,237,903	$ –	$ 14,830,020
29	$ 1,268,850	$ –	$ 16,098,870
30	$ 1,300,572	$ –	$ 17,399,442

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Call On Buncombe County Commissioners To Vote YES To 40 Solar Projects!

Action Expired

On July 21, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners will vote on whether or not to install solar panels at 40 sites of county-owned buildings, Asheville City and Buncombe County public schools and A-B Tech Community College. Will you take action below to call on our Commissioners to vote YES on Tuesday?

Why We Support:

This proposal would install about 6.7 MW of new solar energy in Buncombe County – the equivalent of powering 677 homes entirely with solar each year. Since these solar energy systems are expected to last 30–40 years, this is equal to taking 677 homes off the grid.
The solar panels would be installed by an employee-owned solar company based right here in Buncombe County, showing that we can face the climate crisis and support local jobs at the same time.
The prices offered to install these solar projects are significantly cheaper than what County staff first estimated, and the energy savings from the solar panels will save the county money on utility costs every single year.
Buncombe County made a commitment in 2017 to move our county to 100% renewable energy. Voting yes to these projects is an important step to start making progress on this commitment.

The county’s vote on Tuesday will decide whether all 40 of these solar projects move forward. Will you take action by contacting the Board of Commissioners below?

Submit a public comment to be read at Tuesday’s Commission meeting before the vote by emailing comment@buncombecounty.org or calling and leaving a voicemail at 828-250-6500.

Press Release: MountainTrue joins lawsuit against Trump administration’s moves on National Environmental Policy Act

July 15, 2020

Press release from the Southern Environmental Law Center:

“The Trump administration in an announcement today hobbled the nation’s bedrock environmental protection, the National Environmental Policy Act, a law that has given marginalized communities a say in what happens to them when governments propose life-altering projects like highways and pipelines.

In doing so, the administration illegally cut corners in a way that the courts have rejected time and time again.

“This is a blatant and transparent effort from the Trump administration to further silence communities that are not as well connected, not as wealthy, not as valuable to the White House as others,” said Kym Hunter, a Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney who is heading the organization’s defense of NEPA. SELC is representing 16 conservation organizations.

“And the fact that it is happening now, when so many in our communities are crying out for equity and fairness, is particularly appalling,” Hunter said.

Oddly, if early press reports are correct, President Trump may somehow invoke the proposed Atlanta I-75 truck-lane project as an example of NEPA issues. However, that project is in its infancy and is at the beginning of its NEPA review.

Note: The President may also invoke other Georgia projects as well. Please feel free to contact us for a response.

In addition to diminishing public voices, the NEPA rewrite also curtails agencies from considering climate change in their reviews. Further, it also eliminates consideration of what is known as “cumulative impacts.” For example, when a new highway or bypass is proposed near a current interstate, the projected increase in pollution is added to the existing pollution levels to get a full understanding of how nearby communities will be affected. The Trump administration NEPA rewrite eliminates the consideration of these “cumulative impacts.”

SELC is preparing to sue the Trump administration on behalf of its 16 clients alleging, among other things, the administration made a mockery of the laws and policies that are designed to make changes like this a transparent and public process.

· Before its decision to alter what is often called the “Magna Carta of environmental laws,” the Trump administration held just two public hearings — in Denver and in Washington D.C. — in a country with a population of 330,000,000.

· Even so, the Council on Environmental Quality received more than 1.1 million public comments and has a duty to review each one. However, CEQ moved forward with rulemaking less than four months later, an impossibility if it followed its mandate.

· CEQ created a back channel for Trump administration cronies and supporters who complained that they were having a hard time mustering enough support to counter overwhelming public disapproval.

Among other things, the Trump administration is reducing the amount of public input from NEPA’s requirements and making it far more difficult for communities and stakeholders to propose alternatives to major projects that may permanently alter communities.

SELC used open-records laws to obtain more than 8,500 pages of internal documents from CEQ, the agency in charge of the change. Some show how those involved in the NEPA rewrite want to narrowly interpret the purposes of projects so alternatives from the public can’t be considered.

For example, the documents say that the stated purpose of a proposed natural gas pipeline should be to move gas from one place to another, and not “meeting the energy needs in a geographic area.” Under that thinner scope, solar or hydroelectric power can’t be alternatives because they don’t move gas, “even if these energy sources are preferred by certain agencies or groups.”

Developers of the recently canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline were unable to overcome widespread public opposition and legal challenges to the project, in part because the $8 billion pipeline was billed as a necessity for providing energy to the Virginia coast. Those arguments fell apart under public and legal scrutiny when experts showed the pipeline was not necessary to meet energy demand.

However, these changes to NEPA would largely prevent communities from mounting the same kinds of challenges to massive money-making pipeline projects that come at a high environmental and fiscal cost to affected communities and landowners in their paths.

Hunter said the CEQ documents reveal hints of industry fingerprints in the effort to weaken NEPA; however, the full extent of the influence isn’t clear because CEQ blacked out close to half of the records provided. SELC has filed a motion to gain full access to the records.

The authorship of documents released under FOIA is not clear. But the documents show whoever wrote them also wants to limit or eliminate objections from other federal agencies involved in permitting large projects. In the documents, for example, an author complained that some agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are too diligent in protecting endangered species.

“As a result,” one document states, “the USFWS has become one of the stickiest wickets” in the process.

Statement from MountainTrue Co-director Julie Mayfield:

‘The National Environmental Policy Act has served as our basic national charter for protection of the environment since it was enacted in 1970. It is a critical tool to ensure government transparency and gives affected citizens — especially communities of color and low income communities — a much-needed voice in agency decision making.
MountainTrue has leveraged NEPA to ensure that the I-26 highway connector through Asheville did less harm to neighboring communities of color. And in our work on Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests, NEPA provides the framework for every set of comments, every administrative challenge and every appeal of a timber sale or other management decision with which we disagree.
The new rules put forth by President Trump’s Council on Environmental Quality would gut NEPA’s substantive and procedural safeguards and are a threat to public health and our environment. They cannot be allowed to stand. Mr. Trump, we’ll see you in court.'”

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July 2020 E-Newsletter

July 15, 2020

Equity Reading: Racism is Killing the Planet

MountainTrue regularly discusses articles and essays about racial and economic equity, many written by people of color, at our staff meetings. To expand the reach of this process to our members and supporters, we are beginning to include resources by these thought leaders in our monthly e-newsletter.

First up is “Racism Is Killing the Planet” by Hop Hopkins of the Sierra Club, who connects climate change and the exploitation of poor people in sacrifice zones to the ideology of white supremacy. As Hopkins writes: “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism.” Read more.

Good News at the General Assembly For WNC’s Waters!

MountainTrue’s Watershed Outreach Coordinator Anna Alsobrook fishes for water samples in a storm drain in Asheville’s Southside neighborhood. New funding from the state legislature will increase our ability to conduct water quality testing.

In a big win for our legislative advocacy, MountainTrue has secured $200,000 in funding for better pollution spill response in North Carolina’s waters and $100,000 for MountainTrue’s water quality testing in our region. “Not only will this expand our monitoring of harmful bacteria in the French Broad, but it will provide a significant boost to efforts to track and eliminate pollution sources,” says Hartwell Carson, MountainTrue’s French Broad Riverkeeper.

These achievements would not be possible without the leadership of Senator Chuck Edwards and Representative Chuck McGrady, as well as the MountainTrue members who make it possible for us to fight for WNC’s communities and environment in the legislature. Thank you! Read more.

Want The Skinny On How Our Legislators Are Protecting Our Environment (Or Not)?

Join us Monday, July 27 at 12 p.m. for a special live Raleigh Report featuring MountainTrue’s lobbyist Rob Lamme and our legislative advocacy team. During this webinar we’ll discuss MountainTrue’s legislative priorities and work, and how environmental issues have fared in the General Assembly this year.

Rob Lamme has represented MountainTrue in Raleigh for state government affairs since 2016 and has worked in North Carolina policy and government for more than 20 years. He is the former communications director and budget director for the North Carolina Senate, as well as government relations director for the NC Department of Health and Human Services. Sign up here.

Subscribe to the Raleigh Report

Sign up to receive our Raleigh Report email in your inbox! Rob represents us in Raleigh to help us stay in close contact with our region’s legislators. Through these relationships, we have recently secured state funds for better pollution spill response and expanded E.coli bacteria testing in our rivers. Read the latest Raleigh Report here to learn more about these recent wins!

June 29: A Milestone For Our National Forests

Upper Creek Falls on Upper Creek (part of the Catawba River Watershed) in Pisgah National Forest. Photo by Ken Thomas

On June 29, MountainTrue delivered more than 600 public comments on the Draft Management Plan for Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests. This moment marked a major milestone in a six-year public campaign to win a better Forest Management Plan.

In that time, MountainTrue members and supporters have generated thousands of comments throughout the different phases of the plan through our online action alerts and cards that we handed out at trailheads (before the pandemic). MountainTrue staff have spent tens of thousands of hours in the field, reviewing planning drafts and documents, working with stakeholders and drafting formal comments. We organized four panel events across Western North Carolina and six more online virtual info sessions since the COVID-19 lockdown.

Let’s take this moment to celebrate each other for our collective hard work. Great job! And let’s hope that it all pays off with a great management plan that protects our forest ecosystems, helps sustain our region’s economy and provides our community with wonderful places to work, play and rejuvenate. Read more.

Ash Re-Treatments Underway

MountainTrue’s AmeriCorps Water Quality Administrator Grace Fuchs re-treats an ash tree during a recent MountainTrue workday.

Over the past few years, MountainTrue has taken on the task of responding to the destructive Emerald Ash Borer – a small, non-native invasive beetle that is fatal to all species of North American ash trees. We’ve treated over 1,100 trees across WNC, and since each treatment lasts three years, now we’re going back to groves that were initially treated in 2017. So far we’ve re-treated over 100 trees in a beautiful grove on Bluff Mountain along the Appalachian Trail in Madison County. Later this summer we’ll also begin treating a new site in the Big Ivy area of Pisgah National Forest, which does not yet have any treated groves of ash. Read more.

MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center Innovates Solutions For The Housing Crisis

MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center (ADC) is leading a review of 40 City-owned properties for small-scale affordable housing development to increase permanently affordable housing options in Asheville. This effort is part of a collaborative with the City’s Community Development Department, Asheville-Buncombe Community Land Trust, Habitat for Humanity, and Homeward Bound.

Typically, new affordable housing in Asheville is incentivized by federal, state and local funding for private developers when they commit to making a small number of new housing units affordable for a certain number of years. Instead, this model will provide affordable rental housing and homes for ownership within the city without time limits allowing qualifying families to build generational wealth, and making our communities more culturally and economically diverse. New homes can be constructed on smaller lots throughout the city within current zoning restrictions. This type of small scale development, often called “missing middle” housing, can bring density to a neighborhood without disrupting the character of the community.

ADC volunteers from Advantage Civil Engineering, a local civil design firm, are helping to identify the top City-owned properties that are candidates for affordable housing development. As the Asheville-Buncombe Community Land Trust takes ownership of these properties, revenues generated by home sales and rentals will flow back into the Community Land Trust and fund the purchase of more affordable housing. We hope this project can serve as a model for how to deliver small-scale, permanently affordable housing to help meet our region’s needs.

Update on Swim Guide Testing in the High Country

Willa “Wild Bill” Hill helps out with water samples for our Swim Guide monitoring program.

Our Swim Guide monitoring program in the High Country is in full swing, and this year we’ve expanded to include two additional testing sites on the New River and four more sites on the Watauga River tailwaters. So far we’re seeing mixed bacteria results across the watershed, with three of the sites we monitor consistently failing to meet EPA water quality standards: Calloway Bridge on the Watauga River, Guy Ford Bridge and Hickory Nut Gap Road on the Elk River.

These results could be due to changes in how land near our rivers is being used and/or higher than average rainfall. We believe the increased E. coli levels at these sites are due to a combination of leaking septic systems and sewer infrastructure, as well as stormwater runoff from golf courses and agricultural operations. Water pollution is caused not only by leaks in broken sewer pipes, but also when heavy rains overwhelm sewage systems and cause them to overflow – releasing large amounts of untreated sewage directly into rivers, streams and lakes. Unfortunately, these pollution events are common, and we believe many of them go unreported to the public.

To better track sources of pollution we’ve hired Hannah Woodburn as our AmeriCorps Water Quality Administrator, added lab capacity to our testing program and have begun using new cutting-edge techniques. One such technique is using a fluorometer to trace the optical brighteners and detergents commonly found in sewage in order to track pollution in real-time. Learn more about our water monitoring program in the High Country and our campaign to stop the root causes of these pollution problems here.

Outdoor Spaces Accumulating Litter

With more and more people turning to outdoor spaces, public lands, and waterways for recreation during the summer, the litter they’re leaving behind is adding up. We’re seeing lots of plastic bottles and flip flops on the Green River, masks and gloves at trailheads, and overflowing trash cans in our parks and greenways.

You can help! MountainTrue and our partner organizations have organized virtual cleanups, like the Riverkeeper Beer Series Cleanups, but you don’t need us to tell you when or where to go. Just grab a trash bag next time you take a neighborhood walk or hit your local trail and fill it up. Every little bit helps, and you can be an example and encourage others to think twice about littering.

Laurel Creek Inholding Now Part of Nantahala National Forest

On June 17, the US Government purchased a 49.33-acre in-holding at the headwaters of Laurel Creek in Clay and Cherokee counties, making the land public and part of Nantahala National Forest! The purchase from the Mainspring Conservation Trust closes the loop on a 12-year battle by the former Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, MountainTrue and several other partners to prevent private landowners from building a road through the National Forest and cabins at the top of pristine headwaters of Fires Creek. Read the whole story here.

Road Construction, Clean Water and Muddy Water Watch Training

A settling basin installed by NCDOT protects Blair Creek from sediment pollution associated with the widening of NC Hwy. 69 in Clay County.

Quite a bit of road construction is happening across North Carolina’s far western counties right now, as the NC Department of Transportation (DOT) is actively working to repair parts of major highways that are sinking or sliding and to widen other sections of roadways. We’ve been on the lookout for muddy waters with all the rain we’ve been getting, but we haven’t found any associated with road projects! DOT and its contractors have been doing an excellent job installing and maintaining practices like the one pictured above to keep our streams and rivers clean. We are planning a virtual training event for the Muddy Water Watch program so you can learn how to easily notify us and regulatory authorities with the proper information when you see sediment entering a waterway.

“Confluence” Water Quality Conference is Virtual and FREE This Year!

Every year the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream program hosts an excellent water quality conference called Confluence, named for the point at which streams converge. This year it’s being offered virtually and free of charge! There will be live sessions at different times every day this August, and each session will also be recorded and made available on the conference website. There will also be opportunities for virtual networking and social time.

The conference will conclude with a live keynote address by Paddle Georgia Coordinator Joe Cook on Saturday, August 29th. See the Confluence 2020 schedule here.

Events Calendar

TODAY: July 15, 11:30-12:45pm: MountainTrue University: Dear White People
This week’s MountainTrue University will feature Tanya Marie Cummings, a MountainTrue board member and the founder of Pathways to Parks, in a talk sharing how she’s experienced racism as a black woman in WNC and in the outdoors. Tanya believes that when white people pull their heads ‘out of the sand’ and strive to understand the ugly disease of racism, they can become allies to black people to effectuate the change that America so desperately needs.

July 26, 2-5pm: Apalachia Lake Paddle
Join us for a socially distant canoe outing on the peaceful Apalachia Lake, which has very little private shoreline development and no commercial recreation facilities. Fishing and swimming are both options along the way, so bring your line if you’d like.

July 27, 12-1pm: MountainTrue Raleigh Report Live with Rob Lamme
Join us for a special live Raleigh Report featuring MountainTrue’s lobbyist Rob Lamme and MountainTrue’s legislative advocacy team. We’ll discuss MountainTrue’s legislative priorities and work, and how environmental issues have fared in the General Assembly this year.

August 1: Virtual Riverkeeper Beer Series Cleanup with The Wedge Brewing Company
Despite the unusual times we find ourselves in, there is still trash collecting in our rivers. On August 1, we’re calling for as many folks as possible to help us clean up the French Broad by cleaning your local creek, roadway or neighborhood. We’re also holding a socially distanced in-person cleanup with limited capacity in partnership with the Wedge Brewing Company.

August 22: Virtual Beer Series Cleanup With Wicked Weed Brewing
Join MountainTrue, the French Broad Riverkeeper, Wicked Weed Brewing and 98.1 The River for the another Riverkeeper Beer Series cleanup. Clean up the French Broad River and your local creek, roadway, or neighborhood.

Laurel Creek Inholding now part of Nantahala National Forest

by Callie D. Moore, MountainTrue Western Regional Director

On June 17, 2020, the U.S. Government purchased a 49.33-acre in-holding at the headwaters of Laurel Creek, in Clay and Cherokee counties, making the land public and part of Nantahala National Forest! The purchase from the Mainspring Conservation Trust closes the loop on a 12-year battle by the former Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, MountainTrue and several other partners to prevent private landowners from building a road through the National Forest and cabins at the top of pristine headwaters of Fires Creek.

The long journey to public ownership began back in 2008 when the Forest Service released a scoping notice for a proposed road-building project in the Fires Creek watershed of Nantahala National Forest in Clay County. Through the scoping letter, we learned that in March 2006 some people had collectively purchased an almost 50-acre inholding (piece of private land completely surrounded by public land) on the rim of the Fires Creek watershed with no vehicular access and they were requesting to build a road to it. The preferred route was following a very old logging road, turned horse trail, for 3.5 miles up the Laurel Creek and Hickory Cove Creek drainages, and then constructing 0.34-miles of new road at the very top.

The potential environmental impact of this project was extreme. Of the 3.84 miles of proposed road, 57% (including all of the new road construction) lies within the Nantahala (geologic) Formation. As was reported in the Environmental Assessment, “The Nantahala Formation is one of many formations known to the North Carolina Geologic Survey as posing a high risk of generating acid runoff because of the abundance of iron sulfides in the rock.” Additionally, there are 13 stream crossings and 1.44 miles (37%) lies within 100 feet of perennial streams.

Fires Creek is classified by North Carolina as an Outstanding Resource Water (ORW). There are only nine ORWs in WNC! Yet, despite this and a state Significant Aquatic Natural Heritage Area designation, as well as the area’s popularity for a wide variety of recreational activities from hunting, fishing and horseback riding to hiking, swimming and nature study, and the potential environmental impacts, the Forest Service continued to favor and would ultimately approve the Laurel Creek route for the road.

Over a 10-year period, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, MountainTrue and our partners advocated for water quality protections related to the road-building activity though comments, objections and appeals. After five revisions to the Environmental Assessment, the final decision included many provisions that made the project cost-prohibitive for the landowners. In 2018, they sold the inholding to Mainspring until the Forest Service could acquire the funds to purchase it.

This is a major victory for clean water, public lands and outdoor recreation. And it’s a victory that would not have been possible without the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Without the requirement for the Forest Service to solicit and consider public input, there would likely be a 4-mile road (open for vehicular traffic only to the inholding landowners and their guests) right beside Laurel and Hickory Cove Creeks in the heart of the pristine Fires Creek watershed! There would probably be private homes up on top of the rim and a superb 3-day backpacking loop permanently severed. Without NEPA, we probably wouldn’t have even known about the project until construction and water quality violations began.

Project partners in alphabetical order:
Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
NC Wildlife Federation
Mountain High Hikers
MountainTrue (and Western NC Alliance before that)
Southern Environmental Law Center
The Wilderness Society
Trout Unlimited NC Council
Wild South

MT Raleigh Report: Some Good News at the General Assembly – Really!

Last week, the North Carolina General Assembly completed most of its work for the 2020 session – and among the flurry of late night meetings and last minute bills that are typical of the end of session, there was some good news for Western North Carolina’s rivers and streams. Legislation approved by both chambers of the General Assembly included two modest but important appropriations: $200,000 to help the Department of Environmental Quality better respond to pollution spills, and $100,000 to MountainTrue to expand our water quality testing efforts focused on E. coli pollution.

Both appropriations occurred because they were on MountainTrue’s legislative agenda, and because we’ve worked closely with our legislators for the past two years to secure them.

The funding for DEQ goes back to a petroleum spill in the Watauga River several years ago that MountainTrue’s Watauga Riverkeeper responded to and worked to resolve for months. At the time, spill response by DEQ was delayed because the source of the pollution could not be determined, and DEQ only provided funding to clean up gas tank spills if their source was known. In the absence of any other funds, DEQ did not have the resources to respond quickly, making a bad situation worse.

MountainTrue met with DEQ senior management on the issue, and then began advocating for a state appropriation to DEQ to clean up spills of undetermined origin. After meetings with WNC legislators Rep. Chuck McGrady, Sen. Chuck Edwards and Sen. Deanna Ballard in 2018 and 2019, the funding was included in the legislature’s final budget. Unfortunately, it was not allocated due to disagreement about the state’s spending plan between the legislature and Governor Cooper.

This year, however, the appropriation was included in separate legislation – again with the crucial support of Rep. McGrady, Sen. Edwards and Sen. Ballard. Governor Cooper is expected to sign this legislation into law.

The same bill also includes $100,000 for MountainTrue to expand our water quality testing in the French Broad, as well as other WNC rivers and streams. Our water sampling has brought widespread attention to water quality issues in the French Broad, and the public health impact of bacterial pollution.

E. coli bacteria makes its way into our rivers and streams from sewer and septic leaks and stormwater runoff — especially runoff from animal agricultural operations with substandard riparian buffers. E. coli can indicate the presence of other more harmful microbes, such as Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Shigella, and norovirus. Contact with or consumption of contaminated water can cause gastrointestinal illness and skin, ear, respiratory, eye, neurologic and wound infections. The state’s investment will allow MountainTrue to do more sophisticated analysis and help us pinpoint the sources of E. coli and related pathogens.

We won these victories because you, our members, made it possible for MountainTrue to fight for WNC’s communities and environment in the legislature. We are the only WNC environmental organization with a permanent presence at the legislature – and that’s because of you all!

As for the rest of the summer, lawmakers are expected back sometime before July 11 to take up some unfinished business, including veto overrides, before recessing for the rest of the summer. They are scheduled to return in early September to address additional funding for the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll keep you posted when there are more updates. Until then, we are grateful to be able to celebrate these victories with you!

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