MT Raleigh Report – Feb. 19: GenX Gridlock in the General Assembly

Over the last month, the North Carolina General Assembly has met twice in “special session” to consider legislation to address one of the most high-profile threats to our state’s water quality – and public health – in recent years. Of course, we’re referring to the discovery of GenX, an “emerging contaminant” in the Cape Fear River as well as other public drinking water supplies in North Carolina.

GenX is the commonly used term for a chemical compound produced to make Teflon, which is used to make nonstick coating surfaces for cookware.

GenX and its chemical cousins – other perfluorinated and polyfluorinated compounds – are poorly studied, generally do not break down in the environment, cannot be removed by most water treatment techniques, can behave strangely in the human body and have largely unknown health risks.

Unfortunately, despite statewide media attention and widespread public concern, the General Assembly has been unable to approve legislation to address this pressing problem. You may recall that MountainTrue first reported on the GenX issue in a Special Report in November 2017.

The General Assembly’s recent inaction reflects a growing split between the GOP-controlled House, which is increasingly more interested in responding to the GenX issue, and the GOP-controlled Senate, which continues to balk at the demands of Gov. Roy Cooper – and the House – for increased investment in the state agencies charged with responding to the GenX issue.

This split came into high profile in the legislature’s special session in early January, when House Republicans offered to provide the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) with $2.3 million for staff and equipment to address GenX. When the Senate refused to consider the idea, House Republicans ran the bill anyway, got a unanimous, bipartisan vote in support of the proposal and sent it over to the Senate, which refused to even take the legislation up for debate.

Fast-forward almost a month later, to Feb. 7, when legislators arrived in Raleigh for another special session. This time it was the Senate’s turn to take up the GenX issue. Like the House a month before, the Senate offered DEQ more than $2 million in one-time funding. But, in an awkwardly worded bill, the Senate restricted the money’s use to a limited scope of work that did not include permanent funding for the new staff and equipment Cooper and Department officials say they need to respond to GenX.

The Senate approved the bill along partisan lines, but this time it was the House that refused to consider the bill. The result was another stalemate that no one in Raleigh expects will end any time soon.

What’s behind the Senate’s reluctance to invest in the state’s response to GenX? Many Senate GOP members are unwilling to spend taxpayer dollars on GenX as a result of their belief that the Cooper administration and DEQ were slow to respond to the issue and won’t put the funding to good use.

The House bill, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger said in a statement, “does nothing to prevent GenX from going into the water supply. It leaves North Carolina taxpayers holding the bag for expenditures that should be paid for by the company responsible for the pollution, fails to give DEQ authority to do anything they can’t already do, and authorizes the purchase of expensive equipment that the state can already access for free.”

What Berger and his Senate colleagues fail to acknowledge however is the strain responding to the GenX issue is putting on the Department and its backlog of water quality permits awaiting processing because of staff shortages. It is a sad irony that just as DEQ was looking into the GenX issue last year, the legislature was cutting its budget.

Now we have a stalemate over a growing pollution problem that may affect hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, is straining the already too-meager resources of state regulatory agencies and which the legislature either can’t or won’t address.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of people living near the Chemours plant are drinking bottled water after their wells have tested positive for GenX. There are also growing concerns – still being explored by DEQ – about food supplies in the region after GenX was discovered in honey harvested near the Chemours site. And state officials acknowledge that for those living near Chemours, airborne GenX may be a bigger threat than the waterborne version of the compound, so they have expanded their testing to include both.

Oh, and don’t forget that GenX has also been detected in treated water in Cary and Chatham County.

For MountainTrue, our priorities for this issue are the same ones we listed for you several months ago. We believe it is well past time for the legislature (and DEQ for that matter) to respond to the GenX situation, both in the Cape Fear region and statewide. This response should include:

A full audit of all industrial discharges into North Carolina rivers and streams so that we understand what chemicals are being discharged into our water;
Expanded state investment in water quality monitoring to detect emerging contaminants in all public drinking water supplies;
Full enforcement of the state’s authority under the Clean Water Act to detect emerging contaminants and to ensure they do not pose a risk to human health or the environment until proven otherwise;
Full public disclosure of the results of water monitoring and discharge audits so that everyone — including the public — understands what is in our water; and
A transparent, open decision-making process to determine the best way to eliminate, reduce and prevent emerging contaminants in public drinking water.

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

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

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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