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Forsyth
Citizens Struggle for Clean Water, Justice TOP
Along
South Stratford Road, between Winston-Salem and Clemmons,
the Bennett and Bailey general store was the focal point of
the Hope community, selling everything from groceries to gasoline.
The store is gone now, and so are the groceries, but fuel
tanks leaked for years underneath the store. The groundwater
is now contaminated with lead, benzene, and methyl tert-butyl
ether (MTBE), among other toxic chemicals, and the contamination
has spread to neighboring properties, including a trailer
park.
Residents
of the community are concerned about the health of their families,
and angry that the state and Winston-Salem have done not enough.
As the city has expanded, water lines have moved within 300
feet of the Hope community. But trailer park residents, who
pass a series of monitoring wells and a cleanup pumphouse
every day, still rely on well water.
Dennis
Wilkinson, the owner and a long-term resident of the trailer
park, feels that the city is discriminating against low-income
families because they want the trailer park to close down.
Harold Stanley, who lived next door to the trailer park, has
worked had to bring attention to the problem. As a child,
he often saw an oily sheen in a small creek flowing next to
his property. Now he wonders if contaminated groundwater may
have been a factor in his mother’s death. CWFNC is working
with residents in their efforts to get clean water, an effective
clean up and legal help.
Future
in Doubt for Ecusta Paper Mill, Accountability Needed! TOP
Brevard—Last August, the Ecusta Mill, maker of cigarette
and bible papers, closed down after months of demands by owners
for wage concessions from workers. Transylvania County’s
unemployment rate is now the highest in the state at nearly
14%. International investor Nat Puri, who had bought the company
and began divesting assets even before labor negotiations
went sour, made no commitment to keeping environmental systems
running after declaring bankruptcy and putting the mill up
for sale. Without wastewater treatment of fluids collected
from toxic landfills, both groundwater and nearby rivers are
threatened. While the NC Attorney General has intervened to
keep systems operating, the state never should have let itself
get in this position! CWFNC is proposing state legislation
to require polluters to post an environmental performance
bond before being issued a permit to operate, especially for
toxic industries like pulp and paper. That way, funds
will already be available to handle environmental operations
and clean up at abandoned or bankrupt facilities.
New
Battle to Protect NC's River Basins TOP
Neuse, Cape Fear, White Oak and New River Basins—With
leadership from Rick Dove and many other NC activists who
have been fighting industrial hog operations for over a decade,
Sierra Club, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and
the Waterkeeper Alliance filed a suit in March against a new
EPA farm pollution rule. The groups argue that the rule violates
the Clean Water Act by allowing large-scale livestock operations
to continue to foul the nation’s waterways with animal
waste through unregulated spreading of manure on fields, and
would actually provide a “shield” to damage claims
on factory farms. The administration’s rule “puts
corporate profits ahead of environmental protection,”
said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance.
A successful suit could finally change the practices and permitting
for hundreds of operations impacting NC waters, as well as
quality of life for many communities.
Major
Legal Victory for Asheville Neighbors Fighting Super Walmart
TOP
A Buncombe County Superior Court judge has just granted legal
standing to residents of several Asheville neighborhoods who
have sued to block construction of a Walmart Supercenter along
the Swannanoa River. Funds raised for this lawsuit, filed
last September, have been nearly depleted but citizens have
been heartened by this latest decision which allows the case
to go forward. The suit alleges that City Council did not
follow proper procedure when it approved the development last
summer, amidst an outpouring of community protests citing
safety, traffic and major environmental impacts. Also pending,
is a DENR decision on the developers proposed cleanup plan
for a toxic plume in the middle of the proposed construction
site.
New
Report on the Application of Sewage Sludge TOP
Oxford—Granville County’s Environmental Advisory
Committee has released a powerful new report on the application
of sewage sludge on 12% of the county’s agricultural
land. Only five counties, Orange, Davie, Harnett, Robeson
and Union, have more acres permitted for sludge application,
which often includes heavy metals, persistant toxic compounds
and pathogens, with occasional analyses required for only
nine toxins out of thousands likely to be present. The study’s
authors, Committee Chair Brenda Currin and project investigator
Neil Gresham (whose family farm is adjacent to major sludge
applications), found that neither the state nor EPA monitors
these applications for contaminants or timing and that staffing
and testing are completely inadequate to protect the waters
to which these fields drain, or the health of farmland for
future crops or grazing. The report concludes that the county
should establish a local monitoring and enforcement program
and strengthen and fully implement its own ordinance to protect
county residents, landowners and the future of our water quality
and agriculture.
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