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)

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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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