Jackson County Schools has found itself at the back of the line to get a piece of the quarter-cent sales tax voters passed last year.

A new health sciences building at Southwestern Community College would allow an additional 288 students to prepare for in-demand health careers in Western North Carolina, and while the Jackson County Commissioners are excited about the project, paying the $19.8 million estimated price tag will be a challenge. In the 2016 master plan that first conceptualized the building, the cost was pegged at $16.3 million, but construction costs have since risen, and the county has several other major capital projects that it’s also pursuing.

Simply removing contaminated dirt from the Southwestern Community College shooting range won’t be enough to close out a lead removal project that’s been in the works since April 2014, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality announced this month. 

Southwestern Community College is asking Macon County commissioners to pitch in 40 percent of the cost to construct a new training facility for first responders — much more than the 25 percent match the county was anticipating.

The first round of soil removal at Southwestern Community College’s lead-contaminated shooting range has substantially reduced the concentration of metal in the soil, but there’s still more work to be done before lead measurements retreat to safe levels. 

Southwestern Community College is gearing up to start work on a $17 million health sciences building, with its trustees last week spending hours listening to pitches from four different companies before selecting the firm LS3P to design the project.

Southwestern Community College is receiving $7.17 million from the Connect N.C. bond to make major infrastructure improvements to its three campuses, but none of that money will be going to SCC’s small Swain County campus.

After more than two years of tests and evaluations, the end is now in sight for an effort to remove 450 tons of lead-contaminated soil from a shooting range at Southwestern Community College. The job will cost $237,000, but by the end of the summer the soil should be excavated, treated, hauled away and replaced with new, uncontaminated soil.

They all do something with their hands.

Meandering around Western North Carolina and greater Southern Appalachia, one thing becomes apparent — folk ‘round here are quite imaginative. It’s been said you can’t throw a rock in any direction without hitting someone with a zest for life coupled with a deep sense of the creative self.

The lead-contaminated shooting range at Southwestern Community College in Webster is in for another round of testing after the state called for further sampling to determine levels of several other potentially toxic substances in the soil.