News
Biochar offers new path for Helene recovery
Western North Carolina turns storm debris into soil, energy, and economic opportunity
News
NC Supreme Court mulls class-action status for Carteret solid waste fee dispute
North Carolina’s highest court will decide whether a legal challenge to Carteret County’s solid waste fees will move forward as a class-action suit. The court heard an hour of oral arguments Wednesday in the dispute.
News
House committee OKs recovery commission and fall legislative return dates
After a month-long summer recess, the North Carolina General Assembly briefly reconvened Monday afternoon. The House Rules Committee considered several bills regarding disaster recovery funds, environmental waste management, student use of wireless communication devices, General Assembly appointments, and an adjournment resolution.
News
Top NC court to decide if suit against Carteret fees can proceed as class action
North Carolina’s highest court could decide in the months ahead whether residents challenging Carteret County’s solid waste fees can proceed with a class-action suit. The county is appealing Superior Court Judge Kent Harrell’s August 2024 decision allowing three different classes of plaintiffs in the dispute.
Opinion
A free-market solution to NC hog-waste management
Hog-waste management in North Carolina has become a subject of increasing concern over the last two decades. Hog farming in North Carolina primarily utilizes the open-pit lagoon system for waste disposal, which has raised substantial environmental and public health worries. Concerns are focused mainly on the potential for lagoon overflows leading to the contamination of...
Opinion
Are counties taking the lead in solar plant pushback?
North Carolina’s installed solar power is second only to California’s. Some may cringe at the thought of following California’s energy policy, given the rolling blackouts imposed there. Solar power seemed like an attractive option in 2007, when the Democrat-controlled legislature handed Democratic Gov. Mike Easley a bill that provided sweeping incentives to encourage solar power...
Opinion
Waste problems from wind and solar are why we need proper decommissioning
Bloomberg Energy this month issued an attention-grabbing report on a serious waste problem with wind turbines: Retired turbine blades are clogging up landfills. This problem is only going to get worse, as Bloomberg reports, because right now the blades at the end of their lifespan are from wind power built more than a decade ago....
Opinion
Laying waste to the landfill monopoly
North Carolina House Bill 56 got a lot of press earlier this fall when the General Assembly overrode the governor’s veto of the legislation. But most of the discussion was about GenX, an industrial chemical that had been found in the Cape Fear River, and the associated health concerns. However, tucked away in that legislation...
Opinion
Politicians Eating Their Cake and Having It, Too
Raleigh used federal stimulus money for a project that would eliminate jobs.
Opinion
For Local Control on Landfills
As wrenching changes in daily life are unlikely and uneconomical, and sackcloth is itchy and rides up in the wrong places, landfills foes aren't likely to accomplish their ends.
Opinion
Try Throwing Away Dogma
I know it drives environmentalists nuts when their dogmatic prescriptions are described as a new secular religion.
Opinion
Pounding Away With a Tax
All too often, government policymakers choose the clumsiest tool they can find to do a job. That is, indeed, an important reason not to give governments too many jobs to do.
