The future of smokable hemp in North Carolina remains unsettled, nearly a month after lawmakers last took it up. Two Senate bills dealing with hemp are stuck in the House Rules Committee. One, Senate Bill 352, would effectively ban smokable hemp in December. Senate…
Fiery arguments over hemp regulation smoldered out Wednesday, July 24, when House members reversed feverish efforts to criminalize the plant’s smokable flower. In discussion that left some members scratching their heads, Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, backed away from arguments that smokable hemp should be instantly banned.
If North Carolina bans smokable hemp, hundreds of farmers will lose money on their crops — and faith in their legislators, says Blake Butler, executive director of the N.C. Industrial Hemp Association. Hemp and marijuana are different plants, but some House lawmakers want to throw…
Just days after warning of the need to regulate solar panel disposal, Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, scrapped his bill for a relaxed version. Facing opposition from solar-friendly senators and the renewable energy lobby, Newton gave regulators…
Benefit or boondoggle? That’s the billion-dollar question. North Carolina surpassed the $1 billion mark in renewable energy investment tax credits issued in 2018 — three years after the lucrative subsidy program to stimulate solar development expired. Taxpayers have picked up the bill, and could be on…
Municipal sewage systems jettisoned tens of millions of gallons of untreated human waste into Hurricane Florence floodwaters, dwarfing the hog manure lagoon discharges state and national media cited as public health and environmental hazards. The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality issued preliminary estimates…
State Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, says waste-handling operations at North Carolina hog farms functioned as intended in the flooding of Hurricane Florence. But state Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, has a different takeaway. “Short answer is that the lagoons haven’t held up well in…
As the trade dispute with China picks up, bigger farms in North Carolina are scrambling to cope with a shrinking market of customers. U.S. agriculture relies heavily on exporting its products overseas, where China is the world’s fastest-growing market and foreign consumers help keep farms in…
State Rep. Dean Arp, R-Union, said Gov. Roy Cooper created a slush fund 10 times larger than actual mitigation costs by preying on vulnerable energy utilities seeking approval of a state permit to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The secret $57.8…
Gov. Roy Cooper committed an unforced error by circumventing the General Assembly and creating a constitutionally questionable $57.8 million Atlantic Coast Pipeline fund, political observers and legislators say. Cooper could have been tone deaf to the sour notes his action was sure to sound, they say, and may lack…
