After Tropical Storm Fred moved through Western North Carolina in 2021, litter cleanup throughout the East Fork and downstream along the Pigeon River was an unfunded effort, leaving local responsibility on the backs of property owners, volunteers and programs like Adopt-a-Stream.

To the Editor:

The economy of this great nation, and indeed, the world, is a huge thing that, like those supertankers and container ships that help keep it all running, does not change direction very fast or easily short of some major shock to the system. 

To the Editor:

Savings and Loan Collapse. The year 1982 marked the beginning of supply side economics in which deregulation and tax cuts were viewed as the solution to stimulating corporate growth.

What started off as a clever idea to address recidivism has grown into something more — a community-driven response to concerning and costly social ills like homelessness, mental illness and substance abuse disorder. 

It’s tough for a person to get back up on their feet, no matter how well they may have done in the past. Such was the case for Jeremiah Moynihan, a Florida man who after living in Western North Carolina for the last several years found himself sick and homeless with nowhere to turn. 

A new National Park Service report shows that 13,297,647 visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2023 spent $2.2 billion in communities near the park. That spending supported 33,748 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $3.4 billion.

Pactiv Evergreen, owner of the now-shuttered paper mill in Canton, announced last week that it had agreed to sell its Pine Bluff, Arkansas paper mill and an extrusion facility off Howell Mill Road in Waynesville to a South American company for $110 million during the fourth quarter of 2024, if traditional closing conditions are met and foreign antitrust regulators approve. 

Without immediate action from the General Assembly, Pandemic-era federal grants to child care providers will run out on July 1 — plunging the state into a child care crisis that will hamper economic and workforce development, make child care more difficult to find and further burden North Carolina’s working parents already feeling the pinch from unaffordable housing and the relentless corporate greed that’s driving inflation. 

Stakeholders around Western North Carolina recognize the end of COVID-era child care stabilization funding and the broader lack of available child care resources as a multilayered impediment to economic development.

The Town of Waynesville, in collaboration with NCWorks Career Center, will host a youth hiring event from 2-5 p.m. Friday, June 14, at the Waynesville Recreation Center.