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 the hook for hundreds of millions of more tax...
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 Wednesday, Oct. 10, showing municipal sanitary sewer systems disgorged 26.7 million gallons...
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 Florence.” Repeated attempts to get comments...
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 business. North Carolina is a growing part of the...
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 million escrow account Cooper negotiated has poisoned the process, and the companies should not...
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 inner circle advisers influential enough to...
With the nation split down the middle on myriad issues, political parties are operating — or not — in a toxic atmosphere. “Congress needs to return to regular order,” Meredith College political science professor David McLennan said. “It would be nice for the General Assembly to return to some sense of normalcy, too.” He believes...
Constitutional questions persist about the murky $57.8 million deal between Atlantic Coast Pipeline operators and Gov. Roy Cooper. “Laws are presumed to be constitutional,” Gerry Cohen, former general counsel for the General Assembly, told Carolina Journal on Thursday, Feb. 15. “So this law the legislature’s passed … is on its face constitutional. But it doesn’t...
Gov. Roy Cooper ended the most recent session of the N.C. General Assembly much like he started it. The General Assembly in late June passed House Bill 576 — known as the “Allow Aerosolization of Leachate” bill. The Senate voted 29-14; the House, 75-45. Cooper, a Democrat, responded with another veto, his sixth. Lawmakers have overridden the first...
Julie Morgan saw the environmental hazard in her Moore County hometown created by yesteryear’s textile mill technology, and she saw the industrial materials that supported it. She hopes the contaminated remnants of the crumbled Robbins Silk Mill lead to preventive studies on what advocates hail as an industry of tomorrow — the solar installation boom....
North Carolina has no plan for disposing of millions of tons of material from solar installations dotting the state. Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, has asked the legislature to study the environmental safety issues associated with closing the facilities. House Bill 319 is set for a vote Wednesday on the House floor. As Dixon presented the...
