Brief update….
Update on a previous post. Now that the legislature has adjourned, it’s safe to say that the ill-conceived fertilizer related elements of SB 1136 have rightfully been tanked. The bill was referred to a conference committee and the language was removed that limited local…
Hoffman follow-up
There are minor and major infractions that impact wetlands. And then there is what happened with Hoffman Forest. Following up on an earlier post, as recent as 2012, management of the forest by NC State involved ditching, bedding, and draining of wetlands within the…
Big Egg
Rose Acres may be a misnomer for the State’s largest egg producing facility. While this uber-industrial egg-laying facility’s footprint may take up acres, the ventilation fans blowing ammonia from the egg-laying houses would certainly not make this facility or any place downwind, smell rosey….
2013 Monitoring – Falls Impaired
In previous posts, we touched on the monitoring status of Jordan Lake mostly because that Lake seem to get most of the news headlines. It’s important, however, not to forget that the State’s most ambitious nutrient reduction strategy is quietly in the process of…
God, Guns, and Fertilizer
One bill moving around NC legislative halls looks to keep the regulation of fertilizer out of the hands of local jurisdictions with Senate Bill 734 which seeks the following: “No county, city, or other political subdivision of the State shall adopt or continue in…
Troubling activities with the Hoff
The sale by NC State of Hoffman Forest has rubbed plenty of folks the wrong way. The proposed sale of its 79,000 acres for $150M to an Illinois agri-company looks to change the primary management of the land from forestry to something else. While…
The Solution to Pollution?
NC DENR is seeking permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to deploy SolarBee circulation units in Jordan Lake this spring. As reported by the N&O, the technology has little record of its performance in a lake the size of Jordan. A check of…
2013 Monitoring– Jordan Impaired
Even with NC Division of Water Resource’s burdensome workload (e.g., Coal Ash crisis, added legislative mandates, and budget cuts) the Division managed to put out its 2013 annual Jordan Reservoir monitoring report. Like previous years, 2013 water quality did not look good. It was…
Gulf Hypoxia Update
Though it’s not NC news, the factors influencing our neighbors to the South often mirror those influencing our waters and are worth tracking. Here’s an update on an earlier post dealing with Gulf of Mexico dead zone modeling. The Gulf of Mexico has a…
Toxic Algae and Climate Change
UNC’s Hans Paerl had a recent interview on NPR’s Science Friday about nutrients, climate change, and toxic algal blooms. While he comments on work in China, it has relevance here in NC and I wanted to pass along. You can get a link to…