Zachary Turner/WFAE Radio Buncombe County has invested over $10 million in the past few years to install solar panels in many of its municipal buildings and most of Asheville City Schools. “We went from having zero solar projects to a whole bunch of solar projects in a real short order,” said Jeremiah LeRoy, Buncombe County […]
Shannon Osaka/The Washington Post Sales of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles have soared over the last few years — helping to slow global warming and take dangerous pollutants out of the atmosphere. But one technology critical to fighting climate change is lagging, thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and […]
Madeleine May, Chrissy Hallowell & Katrina Kaufman/CBS News In a video obtained by CBS News, the leader of an “election protection” activist group of 1,800 volunteers in North Carolina is seen instructing attendees at a virtual meeting to flag voters with “Hispanic-sounding last names” as one way to identify potentially suspicious registrations as the group […]
Peter Castagno/Port City Daily A New Hanover County commissioner is advocating the purchase of a long-vacant property to preserve the region’s greenspace and potentially create an ‘Airlie Gardens 2.0.’ At the same time, a Charlotte-based developer seeks to use the site for a major new rental complex in Wilmington. Next month, City of Wilmington Planning […]
Kathy N. Ross/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Nine days after Helene’s flood waters drilled through the Ferguson dairy on Riverside, a caravan of five trucks pulling gooseneck trailers headed up Panther Creek, carrying round bales covered with Bible-verse references spray-painted in red on their white wrappings. It was a convoluted way to get to the farm, over […]
Pat Kimbrough/High Point Enterprise A new public-private venture is seeking to raise $40 million for an affordable housing loan program in High Point. The High Point Community Foundation Housing Impact Fund would go toward construction of multifamily “workforce housing” rental units for teachers, firefighters, police officers and others who earn less than the area median […]
Trista Talton/Coastal Review Online The state’s environmental regulatory agency has established temporary caps on the amounts of several PFAS that industries will be allowed to release into groundwater. Until permanent limits are set, interim maximum allowable concentrations introduced by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources allows officials to set cleanup […]
Fixing the State Health Plan isn’t going to be easy, and it’s going to take the General Assembly’s help, this election’s candidates for state treasurer say. Given the size of the plan’s prospective deficits, “there’s no way to make enough changes in the short run to not have to ask for more money from the […]
Andrew Dunn, former comms chief for Dan Forest’s 2020 gubernatorial bid, recently restarted his “Longleaf Politics” Substack and on Monday offered his take on a to-do list for legislators’ future after-action review on Hurricane Helene. These include looks at: The coordination of initial disaster response. The communications playbook officials follow for getting word to the […]
N.C. Treasurer candidates differ on how they see the State Employees Association of North Carolina fitting into their strategy for dealing with the issue. Harris has the SEANC’s endorsement and thinks the group can play a key role in convincing legislators to raise the employer contribution to the State Health Plan. A lot of fixes […]
Will Doran/WRAL News A new ruling from the North Carolina Supreme Court has the potential to massively reimagine the state’s health care industry, allowing for more competition between hospitals, doctors and other medical providers. The case in question concerns “certificate-of-need” laws, an issue that in recent years has deeply divided state lawmakers on both sides […]
Will Atwater/NC Health News Since the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina’s mountains, flooding rivers and damaging water systems, the demand for drinking water wells has soared in Buncombe County. Shaken, homeowners, businesses, schools and care facilities want to guard against water disruption in the event of future weather events. Last week, […]
Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News With the North Carolina General Assembly’s preliminary $273 million relief bill in the rearview mirror, Western North Carolina Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) is looking down the road at the General Assembly’s next move — a billion-dollar relief bill coming Oct. 24. During a recent meeting with Haywood County officials, Corbin spent […]
Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio North Carolina Republicans are showing signs of strength after three days of early, in-person voting — by casting ballots at essentially the same rate as Democrats. After Saturday’s voting, 13.9% of registered Republicans have cast ballots in both mail voting and early, in-person voting. That compares with 13.7% of Democrats and 10% […]
Jeff St. John/Canary Media For years, Duke Energy has studied the threats that climate change poses to its power grid. It has produced tomes forecasting the risk to its power lines, substations, and power plants from fires, heat waves, and floods. But the scope of Hurricane Helene’s devastation in the utility’s inland Carolinas territories — […]
