According to Steve Ford, in a piece for NC Policy Watch called “Policies, power, pride divide the NC House and Senate” (7/13/2015), the state’s current Republican senators were a bit disappointed that some of their regulatory “reforms” were causing controversy and being stalled due to environmental concerns.

Thanks to some fortunate happenstance and a lot of hard work from the staff at the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, a piece of property in downtown Franklin will go from being a potential environmental nightmare to a model example of restoration and redevelopment. 

“We wanted to improve the area, but we didn’t think the opportunity would be available so quickly,” said LTLT Executive Director Sharon Taylor. “But our organization is in a perfect position to take the title of that property and it’s a win-win for everyone.”

Scientific work by professors and students at Western Carolina University is earning recognition and winning research money. The Cullowhee campus, already recognized for its outdoor opportunities, is making an impact on several environmental fronts. Here are three recent examples of that work.

Jackson County Commissioners have voiced their opposition to fracking in the mountains loud and clear, and now they’ve signed an agreement making Jackson the first county in North Carolina to lean on the Natural Resources Defense Counsel for help writing rules to mitigate the industry’s impact in their jurisdiction.

Harold Faircloth was recently named Environmental Specialist of the Year in North Carolina after uncovering widespread lead contamination in private wells throughout Macon County.

“I had been so busy with my duties and responsibilities in my position in addition to my research and analysis of the lead in private drinking water wells that I didn’t expect anything,” he said about his award. “I feel as though I have been admitted to a special fraternity of achievers and scholars involved with environmental health.”

Economy of scale tends to lean toward effectiveness of action, and that’s a fact that three environmental advocacy organizations in Western North Carolina plan to take advantage of over the coming year. By January 2015, the Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance, Western North Carolina Alliance and the Environmental Conservation Association, known as ECO, hope to have merged into one organization with a new name and a familiar purpose.    

By Doug Wingeier • Columnist

In early October we spent two weeks in our 150-year-old log cabin situated on a corner of our daughter Ruth and husband John’s 40 acres in central Minnesota, which has no electricity or running water. 

While there we enjoy a simple life — reading by oil lamp and candlelight, outhouse comfort, vegetarian diet, sleeping sundown to sunup. Ruth is a licensed nurse midwife who has delivered more than 2,000 babies (many of them home births) in the 30 years she has lived there. John is recently retired after working as an Alaskan bush pilot, builder and cabinet maker, skilled factory worker, and a math and science teacher. They have raised three boys, the youngest now a college junior.

As Brent Martin stared down the barrel of an impending tug-of-war over WNC’s national forests, he dreaded yet another round in the same old fight that’s played out time and time again in his decades as an environmental advocate.

Loggers versus wilderness lovers. Horseback riders versus hikers. Hunters versus environmentalists.

Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or an environmental activist? Do you feel frustrated with the way issues dear to you are being handled by local and state decision makers? Instead of sitting on the sidelines and attempting to influence the political process from the outside, you might want to try becoming part of it.

A new campaign by the Western North Carolina Alliance, a regional environmental organization, is asking local conservationists, tree huggers and eco-activists to consider taking the plunge into the political realm.

By Brent Martin

It is a rare event these days to come across a work of non-fiction dealing with any environmental issue that does not leave one with feelings of despair and loss. Author Jay Leutze, however, has given us a tale of how one little corner of Appalachia, when galvanized to stand up for their homes and natural resources, persevered in the face of despair and overwhelming odds, and won. But Stand Up That Mountain is more than just the story of how the Dog Town community in Avery County, N.C., hung in there for years to ultimately defeat the Putnam rock quarry, it is also a blow by blow account of Leutze’s development as a conservationist — now one of North Carolina’s most valuable and treasured — who had moved to his old family home on Yellow Mountain in the Roan Highlands to withdraw from some such distractions in order to follow his passion to become a writer.