The Two Rivers Saponi-Occoneechee Association is hosting this month an Indigenous-led conversation on environmental justice.

The three-hour webinar set to begin at 11 a.m. July 18 “centers Indigenous knowledge systems, lived experience, and community-led solutions to environmental justice,” organizers said. The program is being offered at no charge but attendees are asked to register for the webinar through an online form.

The Two Rivers Saponi-Occoneechee Association is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of the Saponi and Occoneechee Indigenous American community in Southside Virginia, specifically Mecklenburg, Brunswick and Greensville counties, all of which border North Carolina. The Saponi and Occoneechee peoples have a long history in the region of North Carolina, Virginia and surrounding areas.

The webinar is to explore uplifting Indigenous knowledge and stewardship practices, examine environmental injustices impacting land, water and communities, create space to identify projects and systems that have caused harm, and highlight the original inhabitants of organizers continued.

The following panelists are included:

• Dr. Crystal Cavalier, founder of 7 Directions of Service, Occoneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.
• Hannah Jeffries, North Carolina Climate Justice Collective Fellow, Meherrin Indian Tribe.
• Toniekia Poole, owner of Native Roots Farm, LLC, Occoneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Meherrin Indian Tribe.

More information is available on the organization’s Facebook page.

Note: This story has been updated to correct the misspelling of Louis Bacon’s first name.

Restoring land as close to how it was more than two centuries ago is by no means a cheap venture.

Just ask Louis Moore Bacon.

Since 2012, Bacon has invested more than $100 million in the property on which his ancestor, Roger Moore, founded Orton Plantation in 1725 off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County.

Nearly a third of that cost has gone toward restoring an expansive, historic rice field system and an earthen dike enslaved Africans built some 250 years ago to protect the fields they planted, grew, and harvested Carolina Gold rice from the river.

If the state green lights a proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Port of Wilmington, all of it – the dike, 350 acres of historic rice fields and hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands – will face threat of “irreversible damage,” according to Bacon.

In a 22-page letter he submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management late last year, Bacon detailed how the proposed Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project “threatens the failure” of the earthen dike.

“The structural integrity of the dike is Orton’s number one concern,” Bacon wrote. “The Project poses a real and unacceptable risk of catastrophic failure of the dike system. Failure of the dike will result in a cascading series of events including saltwater intrusion into the historic rice fields, rendering them incapable of growing rice and destroying the freshwater ecological water system at the Orton Property. Failure of the dike would flood the rice fields and freshwater ponds with saltwater, erasing what stands today as a preserved monument to enslaved African Americans dating back centuries.”

He closed the Nov. 24, 2025, letter with an ardent request of the division: Object to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ determination that the proposed project aligns with the state’s coastal policies and rules.

The Corps, Bacon wrote, failed to analyze how the proposed project to deepen and widen the harbor channel might affect historic and cultural resources along the river.

His objections echo those of other individuals and groups voicing concerns about how the project the N.C. State Ports Authority says is needed to keep the Wilmington Port competitive might impact those sites along the river.

Deepening the river channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widening it along areas throughout the river will allow larger vessels to travel to and from the port, attracting more business, according to the authority.

But opponents of the proposed project say that, in addition to threatening historic and cultural resources along the river, it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse contaminants in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, and is not economically justified.

Like Bacon, their hope is that the Division of Coastal Management rejects the Corps’ determination.

The determination

Two days before the New Year, NCDEQ announced that the Corps was giving the Division of Coastal Management more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing the division’s deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

Division officials have until then to determine whether the proposed project is consistent with the state’s coastal rules, including those under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

The division must decide whether to concur with Corps’ determination, concur with conditions, or object.

Related: Wilmington residents see no good in proposed harbor project

If the division decides the latter, that could shutter the proposed project altogether.

“An objection generally prevents the federal permit or approval from being issued unless DCM and the project proponent negotiate a resolution that would allow the project to go forward,” according to the division’s Dec. 30 release notifying the public about the extension.

The Corps “may be entitled to certain mediation/appeal privileges” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, which heads programs including the National Coastal Zone Management Program and Estuarine Research Reserves and works with coastal states, territories and partners to manage resources and address impacts from climate change.

The division has to render its decision months before the Corps wraps what it says will be a detailed examination to identify all historic and cultural properties within the project study area.

“To ensure historical and cultural sites are identified and evaluated properly, the Corps is executing a study specific Programmatic Agreement (PA) with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the North Carolina State Ports Authority, and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,” Jed Cayton, public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email responding to questions.

The programmatic agreement, he wrote, is a “commonly applied strategy to protect cultural and historical resources.”

“It facilitates more informed decision-making by allowing time for additional data collection and formal coordination efforts to extend beyond the feasibility study phase,” Cayton said.

The agreement, which is currently being reviewed, must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur some time after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement on the proposed project.

Under a tentative timeline the Corps has shared with the public, the federal agency is expected to release the final EIS sometime this summer.

Construction on the project would not begin until 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

‘Necessary analysis’

Today, the Orton property spans about 14,000 acres. More than 830 acres of that land, including 6,800 feet of restored and repaired earthen dike and coinciding system of canals, roads, dams, and ditches, around the rice fields is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In his letter to the division last year, Bacon argued that CAMA protects the historic resources on his land “from irreversible damage and it protects the Property’s significant ecological resources from adverse impacts.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, the Corps released last September, “does not disclose these obvious impacts,” Bacon wrote.

“There is no analysis in the Draft EIS about the effects of the Project on the Orton Property or the CAMA-protected resources at Orton. None. This analysis cannot be deferred. The Corps’ consistency determination must be supported by ‘comprehensive data and information.’”

“The Corps’ failure to undertake the necessary analysis is the simplest reason that Division should object to the consistency determination,” he continued.

His land is among nearly 30 historic sites and properties the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office lists as being within the proposed projects area of potential effects.

Last October, that office penned a letter to the Corps requesting the programmatic agreement, “so as to address effects on known and potentially National Register-eligible historic properties to be adversely affected by the proposed undertaking and the regularly scheduled maintenance dredging, spoil placement, and environmental mitigation measures following the proposed undertaking.”

While Corps studies of historic properties that may be affected by the proposed project “appear to have focused solely on the physical impacts of dredging the river-bottom, placement of dredged materials, and locations of mitigation measures, we believe from nearly two decades of observation and monitoring erosion at historic properties along the channel that we can expect other effects will result from the proposed project,” the letter states.

Dark Branch

Among the list of 28 sites and properties identified in that letter is Dark Branch, a community in unincorporated Brunswick County where land remains largely owned by the descendants of emancipated slaves.

Dark Branch, also known as Kendall Chapel, was founded in the early 1870s by a handful of formerly enslaved people, including Robert “Hooper” Clark, who’d been forced to work the rice fields of Orton, Lilliput, and Kendal plantations.

The land they purchased between those plantations became “a thriving hub of Black farming, entrepreneurship, and civil rights activism,” according to the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

Dr. Charles Chavis Jr., Clark’s fourth-great-grandson and executive director of the Dark Branch Descendants Association, explained in a telephone interview that there is a direct connection between the cultural resources that have been restored at Orton and those members of the Dark Branch community have taken upon themselves to preserve.

“Everything that Mr. Moore Bacon has sought to preserve is the work of our ancestors and those who were enslaved on the various plantations,” Chavis said. “For us, this is not only about protecting our cultural resources, but also about protecting our community.”

Chavis, an assistant professor at George Mason University and founding director of the university’s John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, started the association about three years ago to preserve the community’s history.

There are about 20 historical structures in Dark Branch, including homes, a store, and sharecropping and slave cabins.

Some of those structures, as well as the community cemetery, one Chavis calls one of Dark Branch’s most sacred sites, are under threat of riverine flooding.

“We just can’t afford for it to get worse and we’re working with local organizations to try and get resources around historic resource preservation,” he said. “We’re concerned that any potential harm or more work done to the river is going to make our job as an organization harder to protect the cultural resources that we have. Based on the assessments and our conversations with those we’ve consulted with, it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse.”

Dark Branch is a member of the National Park Service’s Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

According to the Division of State Historic Sites, the Dark Branch Community Historic District was added to the National Historic Preservation Study List in 2024.

Sites that make that list are good potential candidates for the National Register.

The association continues to pursue a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dark Branch community lies within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Pender County.

The corridor links places of historic significance to the Gullah Geechee, West Africans torn from their native land and enslaved on plantations along the southern Atlantic Coast, and tells stories of their lives on the plantations and in the coastal plains after abolition.

Efforts are underway to build the North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail that will run from Navassa to Southport.

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the trail’s construction.

Veronica Carter, chairwoman of the heritage trail and member of the Leland Town Council, also raised concerns about how the proposed project might affect land within the trail. Carter is also board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Deepening the Cape Fear River will negatively impact our culturally significant, state-established North Carolina Gullah Geechee Blueway portion of our trail by increasing saltwater intrusion, worsening erosion, and degrading water quality, thereby threatening sensitive habitats,” she wrote Col. Brad Morgan, the Corps’ Wilmington District commander.

The Corps acknowledges that “more surveys are needed to determine the presence of additional historic and cultural properties within the study area,” Cayton said by email. “We have already included conservative cost estimates for this work, based on known resources identified within Wilmington Harbor and experiences at other similar projects, to ensure these resources are properly managed and respected.”

The chairman of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners likely won’t be wishing anyone a Happy Hanukkah.

When asked by a fellow member of the all-Republican commission to include the sentiment in his verbal list of holiday well-wishing at the close of the board’s meeting Monday in the county administration building in Beaufort, Chairman Chris Chadwick replied, “No, we don’t say that.”

His response drew a visible reaction from Commissioner Marianne Waldrop, her mouth agape at Chadwick’s prompt dismissal of her suggestion. 

Other commissioners smiled while chuckles, including those from other board members, could be heard on the video recording of the meeting as Chadwick turned to the audience and said, “I want to wish everybody Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and we appreciate y’all coming.”

As he spoke, Waldrop leaned toward her mic, pulled it closer, and said “And Happy Hanukkah.”

After the meeting adjourned, Waldrop looked at Chadwick and said she was setting “you up for success, not failure.”

When reached by telephone Wednesday, Chadwick told Coastal Review, “Nothing was meant by the comment in any negative fashion whatsoever.”

“I told (Waldrop) after the meeting she could say whatever she wanted, but I said, ‘Merry Christmas,'” he said. “She kind of caught me off guard, and I just said, ‘I say Merry Christmas,’ or ‘We say Merry Christmas.'”

Monday marked the second night of the Jewish Festival of Lights, the eight-day holiday in which Jews commemorate the second century B.C.E. rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean Revolt.

After watching a video clip of the meeting, Leonard Rogoff, president and historian of Jewish Heritage North Carolina, on Wednesday afternoon said by email, “At a moment when Jews have been slaughtered in Australia for celebrating their holiday, when armed police guard synagogues here in North Carolina as Jews worship, for the county commissioner to refuse to acknowledge his Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens is not in keeping with the spirit of the holidays. How could Jews not take offense?”

Rogoff is referring to the massacre last Sunday on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, where two shooters opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people and sending more than 20 others to area hospitals.

“Especially at a time when antisemitism is surging — tragically underscored by the murder of 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia — we need our elected leaders to honor the religious traditions of all constituents, not laugh and dismiss the observances of Jewish residents,” Tali Cohen, Anti-Defamation League Washington, D.C., regional director, said in an email Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re reaching out to Chairman Chadwick, and we hope this incident will prompt reflection on the importance of respecting people of faith across our community.”  

As of the time of this publication, neither Waldrop nor any of Carteret’s five other commissioners had responded to calls and emails requesting comment.

The board meeting, as is standard practice, was broadcast live and the entire recording is available on the county website. Videos of the latest meetings are aired at 8 p.m. on the next Thursday and at noon the following Sunday on Spectrum’s local cable channel 10. The meeting videos are archived for one year.

A district court judge has ruled that Chemours and its predecessor company cannot conceal thousands of pages of documents from the public.

The manufacturing giant failed to provide sufficient evidence the documents include commercially sensitive information that, if released, could competitively undermine the companies, Judge James Dever III concluded in his Dec. 3 ruling.

Information the companies requested to keep under seal are among 25,000 pages of documents lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Related: EPA seeks reporting rollback as new study finds hidden PFAS

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These human-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in humans and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and development issues and increased risk of some cancers.

Last February, attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont filed a motion requesting that the court keep thousands of pages of those documents under seal, arguing information in those documents contain internal communications about chemical production that, if made public, could give a leg up to their competitors.

Dever denied that request. He also rejected a second motion by the companies’ attorneys seeking to keep from the public an April 2018 report of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailing its inspection the Fayetteville Works facility.

“Defendants’ second motion to seal fails for the same reason as defendant’s first motion to seal. Defendants provide insufficient evidence to demonstrate that sealing the [Toxic Substance Act Compliance Monitoring Inspection] report serves a compelling interest which outweighs the public’s right of access,” Dever wrote in his 13-page ruling.

A document’s “status as confidential or commercially sensitive alone does not justify its sealing,” he continued.

“We thank the Court for its wise ruling in denying the motion to seal,” Cammie Bellamy, CFPUA public information officer, said in an email responding to a request for comment. “CFPUA will oppose every attempt by Chemours to delay, obfuscate, and deny the public its right to access the facts of this case. The documents that Chemours and its codefendants wanted to hide from the public include records of its decades of wrongdoing. The people of Southeastern North Carolina deserve better. CFPUA continues to work to hold Chemours accountable for its decades of polluting of the Cape Fear River – the source water for 500,000 North Carolinians.”

Dever also denied requests submitted to the court last April by environmental and community organizations, and the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, to intervene in the case and object to the companies’ motion to keep the documents sealed, ruling those motions are moot.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network.

“We think that this is absolutely the right outcome,” Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney with the center’s Chapel Hill office, said in a telephone interview Friday morning. “In this case, the companies have concealed decades of pollution in southeastern North Carolina and harmed drinking water from the Cape Fear River for 500,000 people.”

The release of the documents comes at a crucial time, she said, because Chemours wants to expand its production of vinyl ethers, which are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

The company’s permit application for that expansion is under review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“Chemours is expecting the public to just trust them while they are planning a massive expansion of their facility,” Zhuang said. “After all these decades of harm they have caused on North Carolina communities, secrecy is not an option anymore.”

Tests commissioned by the SELC and Cape Fear River Watch showed that Chemours is releasing “extremely high levels” of ultra-short chain PFAS, which are highly mobile and difficult to remove from raw drinking water, into the Cape Fear River.

The results of those tests, released last October, confirmed earlier test results published by CFPUA, which has spent tens of millions of dollars upgrading its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in downtown Wilmington to filtrate PFAS from reaching its customers’ taps.

CFPUA officials, along with those from other downstream facilities, are calling on the state to enforce polluters to treat chemicals at the source and set enforceable limits in discharge permits.

Anne Harvey David, chief counsel for environmental justice for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which asked to intervene in the case on behalf of the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, said in a release, “An effort to conceal information that details with the health and safety of thousands of North Carolinians cannot go unchallenged. We are happy to see this decision in favor of protecting public access to these documents. Information and transparency around the extent of the pollution is fundamental for the health and safety of the impacted communities.”

NACCP New Hanover County Branch President LeRon Montgomery said last week’s ruling “is one win in a long battle for our community to live free from harmful contamination of our air and water,” according to the release.

“The importance of this decision goes far beyond who it will impact today,” he stated. “The pollution of the Cape Fear River will impact generations to come, but so will having access to this information.”

As of this publication, it was unclear when the documents would be made public or whether the companies’ attorneys would appeal the ruling.

When contractors began cleaning up debris from the grounds of a former wood treatment plant in Navassa last year, they expected they’d be removing old railroad ties, pieces of treated wood and tires.

“We didn’t expect to see a tank there,” Ngozi Ibe said of the underground storage vessel at the property.

The same goes for other unexpected debris contractors found in a section of the former Kerr-McGee federal Superfund site designated as Operable Unit 2, Ibe, senior project manager and environmental justice specialist who manages the Multistate Trust site in Navassa, said in a Thursday night community meeting.

“We just found an extensive amount of material out there,” she said. “It was so much more than we had expected to encounter when we originally planned the work.”

As contractors unearthed the tank, which contained an unknown fluid, bricks coated in an oily sheen, and additional treated timber they did not anticipate finding in the area, it became clear more time would be needed to clean Operable Unit 2, or OU2.

The next round of cleanup is not expected to begin until sometime this fall, with work anticipated to go on for anywhere from six to eight weeks, Ibe said.

OU2 is a 16-acre section of the original 200-acre site where wood was treated for more than 40 years before operations permanently closed in the mid-1970s.

Operations on the land left a legacy of contamination of creosote, a gummy, tar-like substance used to treat wood used for railroad ties and utility poles.

The land was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010.

In order to evaluate the land and get an understanding of the extent of contamination on it to help determine how it may be used in the future, the EPA divided the property into operable units.

The site is comprised of five units, including a 20-acre tract where untreated wood was stored. That unit, or OU1, was removed from the EPA’s National Priorities list in 2021. There are no restrictions on future development of this parcel.

In April 2024, contractors began cleaning up OU2, where both treated and untreated wood were stored, by excavating a little more than 1.5 acres of surface soils contaminated with levels of dioxin and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons considered to pose an unacceptable risk to people and the environment.

Contractors also removed old tires, treated timber, slabs of concrete and other debris discovered through an initial investigation of the unit.

Workers dug down anywhere from one to two feet, in general, to remove contaminated soil. The excavated soil has been placed on temporary storage sites, lined and covered, in Operable Unit 4.

Contaminated soils removed from OU2 and stockpiled in OU4 are being managed and inspected no less frequently than monthly, as well as after every rainfall.

Backfill suitable for residential use has been injected into the trenches dug to remove the contaminated soil from OU2 and vegetation planted on those areas to prevent erosion and runoff.

Wells have been dug in the unit so officials can monitor groundwater.

OU4, the pond and process area of the former wood-treatment plant site, spans about 32 acres.

The EPA has divided OU4 into two sections: north and south.

Erik Spalvins, EPA remedial project manager, said Thursday night that the northern section of OU4 does not have groundwater contamination or creosote and that officials will decide how to address the two stockpiles from OU2.

There is groundwater contamination in the southern section of OU4. And, creosote contamination has been found as deep as 70 feet below the ground’s surface.

Spalvins said he hopes the EPA is ready to issue a proposed plan to address remediation in OU4 in August. The plan, which will be discussed at a public meeting, will go out for public comment on how residents in the area would like to see than land used.

“What we’re trying to do is provide as much flexibility in our decision-making process so that we don’t tie our hands in the future,” Spalvins said. “So, specifically in the feasibility study, we looked at a residential option and industrial commercial option and we are going to put it out for public comment.”

A feasibility study is currently underway for Operable Unit 3, or the marsh area of the site. Spalvins said the hope is that a draft proposed plan for that unit will be released sometime early next year.

The Multistate Trust plans to donate about 30 acres that was not contaminated for the proposed Moze Heritage Center and Nature Park, dedicated to preserving the stories of enslaved Africans who worked the rice plantations along river banks in southeastern North Carolina.

Claire Morgan, director of community partnerships and redevelopment and senior attorney with the Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, explained Thursday night that the 30 acres donated to the town will be included in a conservation easement to ensure it is used for the public good.

The trust has been working with the North Carolina Coastal land Trust to serve as the easement holder, but the town will own the land.

Indigenous advocate and author Gray Michael Parsons of Frisco is scheduled to speak this weekend on the “Balance, Resilience, and Indigenous Wisdom,” second in Coastal Carolina Riverwatch‘s Cultural Perspectives Series.

His talk is from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at Promise Land Market in downtown Morehead City. The nonprofit is offering the community event at no charge, but space is limited and advance registration is required to attend.

Parsons is a descendant of the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet people of the North Carolina Inner Banks and founder of the Secotan Alliance … and Beyond, a nonprofit formed in 2023 to honor Indigenous heritage, promote environmental stewardship, and uplift traditional Earth ethics. He is author of two books, “Hope on Hatterask” published in 2013 and “Pampico Blue” published in 2025.

The Secotan Alliance organization is named in honor of Chief Wingina, who led the Roanoke-Secotan tribe that occupied almost all of what is now called the Albemarle Peninsula, which includes Dare, Hyde, Beaufort, Washington and Tyrrell counties, when the English first made contact in the 1580s, according to the Secotan Alliance website.

“Parsons will speak on the significance of Indigenous ecological knowledge, the legacy of the Secotan people, and the enduring values of leadership, land connection, and community. Attendees will have an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue and informal conversation with Parsons following the talk,” organizers said.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch is an advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the waters in the White Oak River Basin.

An Outer Banks nonprofit that was created to preserve traditional Indigenous principles embodied by a late-16^th century Algonquian leader is concentrating on the roles of women during the organization’s annual two-day educational event scheduled for later this month in Dare County.

Called Secotan Alliance … And Beyond, the organization was formed in 2023 to honor Chief Wingina, leader of the Roanoke-Secotan tribe that occupied almost all of what is now called the Albemarle Peninsula, a five-county area in northeastern North Carolina, when the English first made contact in the 1580s.

The nonprofit’s mission “is to bring Wingina out of the shadows of history to a more prominent, respectful position, and to teach and promote the Indigenous Earth ethic that he and his people lived by,” Alliance Executive Director Gray Parsons told Coastal Review.

In addition to educating the public on the traditional indigenous principles of the Secotan Alliance under the leadership of Chief Wingina, “specifically in terms of their application and value in today’s world,” the organization works to “educate the public regarding the need and the methods to protect Mother Earth through individual, community, corporate and government actions based on the traditional indigenous earth ethic,” the website states.

The coming program, “In the Spirit of Wingina 2: Our Women, Our Words, Our Water” is set for May 30-31 in Nags Head and Manteo and will feature academic talks, oral tradition from Indigenous people, panel discussions and performances that are to highlight Chief Wingina’s Secotan Alliance, and general Indigenous environmental history, with a concentration on the roles of women.

Wingina’s Secotan Alliance was initially documented by the English during first contact in 1584, covering most of the Albemarle Peninsula which today includes Dare, Hyde, Beaufort, Washington and Tyrrell counties. Wingina tried to help the English during that expedition before sailing back to England. When the English returned to the area a year later, Wingina learned of their plans to establish the first English colony. Wingina then began working with nearby villages to unite and drive the settlers away from Roanoke, according to the organization’s website and state documents.

“Sadly it was Wingina’s attempts to expand the alliance inland in order to stop the English intruders that got him beheaded by the English military in June 1586,” the alliance’s website explains.

Parsons, who founded the nonprofit, is a descendant of the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet people of the North Carolina inner banks, and grew up in Washington, graduating from East Carolina University in 1972. He spent his career in various fields, including human services, medical sales and marketing, and the organic and natural foods industry.

“It’s our belief that everyone on the planet is ‘Indigen-US,’” which he said is different from the word indigenous. It’s spelled almost the same way, but by adding US, “that’s meant to be inclusive for everyone, to understand that all of their ancestors, at one point, lived in a sustainable relationship with creation.”

This means that when decisions were made to embrace new ideas or approaches, “there was always forethought given to seven generations ahead as to how those new approaches or adaptations would affect the next seven generations,” he explained.

The organization’s inaugural program was in May of 2024 in Manteo. “In the Spirit of Wingina … and Beyond” centered on the life of Wingina and his Secotan Alliance that he tried to expand in the mid-1580s with neighboring tribes when English expeditioners first arrived, and the traditional Indigenous approach to environmentalism.

Parsons, of Frisco, said that the two-day program will always be titled “In the Spirit of Wingina” but will have a different theme, with this year being the roles of women.

The program, appropriate for ages 16 and up, is being offered at no charge. Organizers ask that those who plan to attend register online ahead of the event for planning purposes. A full schedule, all program contributors and registration are available on the Secotan Alliance’s website.

About the 2025 event

The 2025 program will “focus on and celebrate the unique leadership roles of our women yesterday and today, all through the diverse use of interactive education, performing and musical arts, language and film,” according to the alliance’s website.

The programming begins at noon Friday, May 30, in the Virginia S. Tillett Center in Manteo, followed at 7 p.m. with a concert in Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head. The program will resume at 9 a.m. Saturday in the College of the Albemarle’s Dare County campus in Manteo.

The emphasis on day one is on Indigenous history and day two is more on the Indigenous Earth ethic, a chance for environmental organizations and Indigenous people to learn how to join forces, and begin effectuating change on a large scale, Parsons continued.

“Each year we will tell briefly the fundamental story of Wingina’s life framed in that critical 18-month period that he dealt as the leader of the entire, what we today call, the Albemarle Peninsula,” he said.

Parsons said that because the focus of this year’s event is women, the keynote speakers are female Indigenous historians. Dr. Helen C. Rountree, and Dr. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, professors emeritae at Old Dominion University and New York University, respectively, have been invited to speak.

Roundtree is scheduled to give her presentation, “Native American Life in Carolina’s Sound Country Before and After the Lost Colony” at 1 p.m. followed at 2 p.m. by Kupperman, who is to present “When Does American History Start.”

Roundtree is recognized for her scholarly work on Native American societies, and highlights the roles of Indigenous women in governance, community life and cultural preservation. Kupperman has written extensively on the interactions between European and Indigenous peoples in the 16th and 17th centuries.

“They’re both held in very high esteem,” Parsons said, and “are experts on indigenous history and specifically the role of women in indigenous history.”

Dr. Gabrielle Tayac is to take the podium at 3 p.m. to share “Piscataway Woman: Her Courage and Honor.” Tayac is associate professor in the history and art history departments at George Mason University, consult curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and contributing author for two books.

Also scheduled to speak are Dr. Crystal A. Cavalier, cofounder and director of the Piedmont-based 7 Directions of Service, Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider, Dr. Arwin Smallwood, who is Dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University, David Rahahę́·tih Webb, executive director at Muddy Sneakers, Outdoor Classroom, and Sandra Hope, director of the nonprofit Saving the Circle.

Panel discussions with representatives from Dare County, Frisco Native American Museum, Peace Garden Project, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, North Carolina Coastal Federation, and other organizations are also on the agenda.

That first day closes out with “An Evening of Indigenous Drum & Flute, Jazz & Indigenous Poetry.” Warren Perkinson of Yapatoko will perform Indigenous hand drum, song and flute, Coquetta Brooks will read Indigenous historical poetry about Wingina from the book “Pampico Blue,” and the Benjie Porecki Trio, out of the Washington, D.C., area, will give a jazz performance.  

“All three of these guys are excellent musicians,” Parsons said about the trio.

Perkinson, who will be performing on the flute at various times throughout the two-day program, will open the evening. Brooks is with the Pea Island Preservation Society, one of the event sponsors.

Programming is to resume at 8:30 a.m. May 31 with an emphasis on “The Traditional Indigenous Earth Ethic.”  Indigenous descendants and members of North Carolina tribes and coastal environmental organizations representatives will be giving talks or holding panel discussions throughout.

Parsons said that among the panel discussions planned, the “Historic Traditional Indigenous Earth Ethic” that begins at 2:50 p.m. May 31 will focus on defining the historic Indigenous Earth ethic, and the panel that follows at 3:30 p.m., “Contemporary Environmental Earth Ethic” will discuss it.

The second day will wrap up after the 4:30 p.m. discussion on the theme for 2026, which will recognize the anniversary of when Wingina was beheaded.

“June 1 of 2026, will be the 440th anniversary of that death,” which he said the event next year will acknowledge, Parsons said.

Parsons expressed his gratitude to the event sponsors, which include Outer Banks Community Foundation, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, Dare Arts, North Carolina Coastal Federation, Friends of the Outer Banks History Center, Island Bookstores in Kitty Hawk, Duck and Corolla, Outer Banks Pest Control, and Pea Island Preservation Society.  In-kind donations were provided by The Fresh Market, Waveriders in Nags Head, Front Porch Café in Manteo, and Crumbl Cookie in Southern Shores.

Those from out of town can receive the group rate at the Comfort Inn – South Oceanfront in Nags Head. Call 252-441-6315 and mention “Secotan Alliance.”

Dr. Ryan Emanuel does not remember when he first heard the English translation of the word pocosin.

He suspects it came from an authority figure, likely a teacher or professor. No matter. He believed the literal meaning of the Eastern Algonquian word was “swamp on a hill.”

It’s a translation that has been passed from generation to generation, one that Emanuel himself regurgitated in the courses he taught at North Carolina State University before accepting a job at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

That changed after the Lumbee and environmental scientist, in preparation for a television interview, took a deep dive into the word’s meaning.

He surfaced with not only the fact there is no evidence to support the longstanding translation, but a broader lesson about humility in accepting the unknown, vigilance in search of the truth, and ethically and responsibly distinguishing between Western academic knowledge and Indigenous knowledge.

Emanuel details the intricacies of why it’s important for scientists to thoroughly vet Indigenous-to-English translations in a paper he authored that was published last fall.

“We all know that, as scientists, we can’t make things up, and we have to cite properly as scholars,” Emanuel said. “And we’re used to doing that with our Western scientific knowledge. Why is it OK to not be careful with something like the translation of an Indigenous term when we’re so careful with other aspects of our science?”

He’s not pointing fingers.

His aim is not to convey a message that scientists, himself included, take the translations of Indigenous words at face value with bad intentions.

“It’s just that we didn’t do due diligence and we were not careful with the use of this word in our science,” he said.

It wasn’t until roughly a decade ago when Emanuel was invited to speak in an episode of “Exploring North Carolina,” a popular PBS program hosted by Tom Earnhardt, that he decided to give in to his own curiosity about the word’s translation.

Indigenous peoples pass along their histories through stories and oral tradition.

“But there’s a conspicuous absence in any of our communities of anything resembling this translation,” Emanuel said.

He started going through a chain of citations back through time. They all converged on a linguistics paper written in the late 1800s, the text of which is in a volume carefully filed at N.C. State’s Hunt Library.

Emanuel opened the old, dusty cover to the volume, read and reread its contents, realizing the paper says nothing about pocosin meaning “swamp on a hill.”

“That’s when the lessons of this paper started to hit home,” he said.

The first lesson? His own irresponsibility at taking the translation at face value and perpetuating “this myth of a translation.”

“I felt bad about doing that, especially as an Indigenous person who had learned the translation through nonIndigenous sources and didn’t even think to put it through our own kind of knowledge verification processes,” he said.

What also struck him as “uncomfortable,” he said, was that “nobody else had either.”

“I do think that this speaks to the humility aspect of the lesson,” Emanuel said. “As scientists who want to know everything, we have to be OK with the fact that there are some things we can’t know and this is one of those things.”

That’s a fact Indigenous communities live with every day. Their ancient languages were taken away, erased in different ways throughout colonial records and government documents.

The frustration or incompleteness someone may feel because they wish they knew the meaning of the word is certainly not lost on Emanuel.

“I’ve got an entire world view that I can’t truly know because all of that language has been taken away. We have to accept the fact that there is nobody around who can tell us any deeper meaning of that word that is used to describe the place that it is,” he said.

By and large, Indigenous communities do not dwell on this fact, he said. It’s not productive, nor healthy.

Instead, they think about what they have been able to preserve. Their strong sense of kinship, their responsibilities to their community, their relationship to the places from which they come, which include pocosin-filled landscapes.

But even those are a fraction of what they once were.

Once extensive in North Carolina, the freshwater wetlands of the Southeastern coastal plain have been destroyed or degraded by logging and ditching and draining for conversion to agricultural land.

Pocosins are sometimes referred to as “carbon sinks” because of their ability to sequester and store carbon dioxide, or CO2.

But even as efforts have in recent years been made to restore some of these areas to their original form, a North Carolina law passed in 2023 strips protections for pocosins, undermining not only their ecological and hydrological value, but their cultural significance to Indigenous communities.

“When you look across Indigenous communities in this part of North America, these landscapes are incredibly important culturally to us, yet that’s not part of the conversation when it comes to whether and how to protect and preserve these places,” Emanuel said.

He doesn’t want the mistranslation to be a distraction to the work that’s occurring in restoring pocosins.

“It’s just a reminder that the words that we use matter and that words that come from Indigenous languages remind us that these names were used for these geographies and other things for centuries, if not millennia, before we took them up and starting using them for our purposes,” he said. “They’re special and unique places and one of my favorite things to do is to take students out into the pocosins and have them tromp around on those organic soils and dig down into the muck and get that sticky soil all over their hands.”

Destructive flooding has plagued Carteret County’s underserved North River community for decades.

The unincorporated area between Beaufort and Havelock regularly experiences inundation linked to high tides and storms. The frequent flooding often disrupts daily life and causes significant damage to property and infrastructure.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Morehead City, has been working with residents here since August 2023 on a comprehensive long-term plan to address these challenges. The group recently released its findings.

The “North River Resilience Project: An Assessment of Resiliency Projects Prioritized by the North River Community” is a 40-page report that “aims to highlight the significant initiatives undertaken to enhance the resilience of the North River community against environmental challenges, particularly flooding.”

The report includes an overview of the community and its residents’ concerns, a statement of goals, a summary of progress made to date and future steps that should be taken.

Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider explained to Coastal Review on Monday that North River’s “critical environmental and quality of life challenges made it a key focus” for the organization’s resilience efforts in 2023 and 2024.

The project is “grounded in community-driven priorities, has identified and pursued solutions that enhance the well-being and sustainability of the area and its citizens,” and not only will “address pressing concerns but also build long-term community resilience and foster science-based solutions that align with the community’s vision.”

The community, its challenges

Demographics show that the North River community is primarily home to Black residents, with smaller percentages of white and other racial groups. The median household income is generally lower than the state average, and the poverty rate is higher than the national average, “highlighting the economic challenges faced by many residents,” the report states.

Because North River is unincorporated, the coastal community does not have access to any services offered by nearby Beaufort, although it is included in the town’s census data. The county provides limited services but “no communication from the County was provided, after several attempts (in writing and by phone) since November 2023,” the report states.

North River residents encounter “multiple flooding challenges, including sunny day flooding, storm flooding, and the long-term threat of sea level rise.” Also called nuisance or high-tide flooding, sunny day flooding happens when there’s high tides but no precipitation. Heavy rain events, like hurricanes, cause storm flooding, the report continues.

North River is particularly vulnerable to storm surges and heavy rainfall, which have caused extensive damage in the past, and “sea level rise poses a significant long-term threat to coastal areas, resulting in the permanent inundation of low-lying regions, increased erosion, and more frequent and severe flooding events.”

North River Resilience Project

The project was launched about a year ago, after staff had been asked to help with concerns about a proposed fire training facility, that many residents opposed, Rider said.

Residents have wanted their community center, which has been in disrepair for years, to be rebuilt as a “resiliency hub” that could house health and educational services and be an emergency shelter.

The community held a festival in November 2023 when residents discussed the frequent flooding that saturated graveyards, the neglected septic systems, homes and roads, and dilapidated community buildings. This gave insight into the priorities and helped shape a comprehensive approach to project funding and design, the report states. After that, the nonprofit began working with residents at forums, group discussions, events and during community-led monthly meetings that began in December.

“From those beginnings, (the project) evolved into the local community advocating for their needs relative to climate resiliency,” Rider continued. “We came to hear about the fire training facility, but what we learned was much more about the cumulative impacts of sunny day flooding, inequitable solid waste management services, and lack of support for infrastructure improvements.”

Several goals were accomplished and are noted in the report. Riverwatch coordinated with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to develop a StoryMap for North River that provides a centralized digital resource for ongoing information and tools designed to build resilience.

A nonprofit for North River was established to act as a dedicated entity that can apply for funding and manage projects prioritized by the community. Riverwatch provided $3,500 directly to the nonprofit for debris removal, a critical project addressing the accumulation of debris from years of flooding, and another $3,500 was allocated to establish a fund for cash matches required by federal grants, crucial for supporting the community’s resilience goals.

“Since initially reporting out the priorities from the community, these efforts are now serving as a guidebook to highlight projects in need of funding. Today, the community has a prioritized project that is now grant-funded, and the community has funds in the bank for any cash match requirement on future grants,” Rider said.

Rider continued that Coastal Carolina Riverwatch built strong connections with community members and leaders by participating in community events like festivals and hosting workshops. The monthly meetings and StoryMap/WIP tools help keep the community informed and actively engaged.

“One of the key benefits of this initiative is that it brings expert volunteers into the community to conduct the scientific work necessary to meet North River’s goals, whether it’s related to water quality, flooding, or environmental resilience,” Rider said. “Collaborative relationships with state agencies and academic institutions also ensure that North River residents have access to technical expertise and resources.”

Residents “advocated for change in their community, and we were listening. The community members’ dedication to protecting their quality of water and quality of life for now and future generations is a true testament to how projects like this can be successful,” Rider said.

Moving forward

Rider said the organization will continue working with to address environmental concerns and “we are looking forward to expanding our efforts within other communities in the White Oak River Basin that could benefit from such a partnership.”

Rider noted that the organization only goes where it is invited and works behind the scenes to support community members in the White Oak River Basin experiencing impacts to the quality of water and quality of life.

“I want to emphasize that the North River Resiliency Project is deeply rooted in elevating the voices of the community and addressing the systemic challenges they’ve faced for generations. Our goal is to ensure the people of North River are heard and empowered to lead the solutions,” she said. “Ultimately, this is about creating a more resilient future for North River, one that centers on the voices and needs of the people who call it home.”

North River residents can reach Rider directly, or simply learn more about the organization’s advocacy, by emailing Waterkeeper@coastalcarolinariverwatch.org.

Residents can help shape the future of environmental justice in North Carolina during the Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council‘s public meetings scheduled for this month.

The mapping and public engagement subcommittees are hosting the meetings that will cover the newly created NC Environmental Justice Tool. The interactive map displays information about environmental justice issues related to climate demographic, transpiration, health data and more.

Virtual options are set for 6-7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 13, 11 a.m. to noon Tuesday, Aug. 20, and 6-7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27.

In-person forums, all from 5-7 p.m., are scheduled for Aug. 15 at Asheville A-B Tech Community College, Aug. 22 at Warrenton Armory Civic Center, and Aug. 29 at Clinton Sampson Center.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed executive order 292 in October 2023 to rename the Secretary of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board to the Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The executive order calls on state agencies to develop and track goals to improve environmental justice in North Carolina. This executive order builds on executive order 246 issued in January 2022.

“The cause of environmental justice began in North Carolina more than forty years ago and this effort will help our state take this challenge head on,” Cooper said in October. “This Executive Order directs a whole of government approach that listens to communities that are suffering from pollution and the effects of climate change, and takes action to help them become safer, healthier and more sustainable environments.”

A now-former Onslow County deputy has been arrested in connection with an altercation between residents and a group gathered for a Native American prayer ceremony in Cedar Point, but a group leader says the actions by law enforcement and media in the weeks after perpetuated a racist and biased narrative.

Last week, Carteret County Sheriff’s Office arrested James Gilbert De La O Jr. “for communicating threats, assault on a female and false police report” and was released on a written promise to appear.

“This case is still active and detectives are still in the process of reviewing new evidence and interviewing individuals that were present during the incident. Further charges may be obtained once all the evidence is reviewed and all interviews have taken place,” the Carteret sheriff’s office said in a statement.

De La O was employed at the time of the incident as a deputy for the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office. He has resigned from the position and his last day was July 12, according to Onslow County.

The incident took place June 23 where the Bridge View development had been on pause for several months because the site contains numerous human remains, which were disturbed during construction. Likely from the before European contact, the Office of State Archaeology believes it to be “a highly significant archaeological site.”

After the ceremonial prayer, American Indian women, children and elders “faced intimidation and hate-induced brutalization during an unarmed, peaceful prayer to honor exposed and desecrated American Indian burial grounds at the Bridgeview housing development in Cedar Point,” 7 Directions of Service said Wednesday in a statement. The Indigenous-led environmental justice organization is based on Occaneechi-Saponi homelands in rural North Carolina.

Shortly after the incident, Carteret County released a statement that said the disturbance was between residents and a group from the Chapel Hill area and New York.

“Deputies arrived on scene and discovered a physical altercation had occurred and one of the residents from the Bridgeview community was stabbed in the arm with a small pocket knife, along with sustaining other minor injuries,” the June 25 release continues. “The person responsible for the stabbing fled the scene as deputies were arriving.”

Native American leaders associated with the ceremony have said from the start that the attendees were unarmed, having agreed on the tradition to forbid weapons during the prayer.

Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, cofounder of 7 Directions of Service, said earlier this month during one of a few press conferences that she is “outraged and speaking directly about the racism we are experiencing during and in the wake of the violence we experienced.”

Cavalier-Keck explained on July 3 that there was no protest during the prayer ceremony.

“An attack was made against American Indian women, children, and the elderly without provocation,” she said, adding that the dialogue “from the attackers constitutes ethnic intimidation and a hate crime,” and while those gathered were unarmed — no pocket knives were present and no stabbings occurred — the “attackers were armed and dangerous.”

She said that law enforcement had more than enough evidence to make an arrest, and is “delaying the process after issuing warrants for the victims without any delay, and announced this immediately in a press statement. Those warrants have now been recalled, but no press statement has been issued, which has contributed to a racist and biased narrative being perpetuated across media outlets.”

Members of 7 Directions of Service, 17 Rivers American Indian Movement Chapter of North Carolina and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, which has claimed the cultural artifacts and ancestral remains discovered at the Cedar Point site, coordinated and attended the June 23 prayer ceremony.

“We celebrate the win of our innocence being declared two weeks too late after the media has already painted a biased and racist imagery of our culture with some imaginary stabbing and knife-carrier and ultimately protecting nonindigenous dignity and culture,” Cavalier-Keck said during a press conference Wednesday about the charges against the former deputy.

“We do not accept this display of justice as it belittles our value and experience. We take it as a current reflection of the status quo and move from this point on for further healing, accountability and a collective understanding that this horror should have never happened in the first place, and it should never happen again,” Cavalier-Keck continued. “I ask you not to forget the real history nor turn a blind eye to all of that continues to happen. We must seek to eliminate the frequent violence that plagues nations, tribal nations, and bridge our divides, but we must also be warriors for the truth, because without truth, there can be no healing.”

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina Public Relations Officer Rahnàwakęw Donnie McDowell told Coastal Review on Thursday that the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina “continues to support the shift in the media tone and overall charges being placed in the right direction.”

The site on the mainland by the Emerald Isle Bridge began getting attention in recent months because it was associated with House Bill 385. The provision that would have changed the permitting process for environmentally and archaeologically significant lands was removed from the bill on the Senate floor June 26 and was sent back to the House, where it waits in committee.

Both 7 Directions of Service and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina spoke out against the provision, which could come back up in the General Assembly during the long session expected to begin in January.

Related: Legislature to revisit significant archaeological resources

“From our review of not only UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and our treaties, but also with NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and several state laws protecting Native American remains, artifacts and sites the Tuscarora Nation reserves the right to be consulted, informed, and provided the opportunity to repatriate the remains of our ancestors and their cultural belongings,” McDowell explained.

“We are reviewing NAGPRA and these state laws in order to better understand how our rights as Tuscaroras are continuing to be violated by the lack of consultation with the TNNC (Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina),” he continued. “Development continues with legislators having the intent to possibly reduce regulations and undermine protections for sites.”

Cavalier-Keck said Wednesday that she was asked why the site in Cedar Point is important.

“A burial site and village are the most important connections to our past, especially here in North Carolina, as we are first-contact tribes, and any tribe that steps up to protect burial sites and incorporates our past into our future is vital, and that is why I’m supporting the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, because they have stepped up to protect this burial site,” she said.

A video of the altercation was shown during the press conference Wednesday.

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina leaders said in a statement Thursday that the long-awaited video evidence “challenges the preconceived tendencies of non-Native media outlets to report before properly investigating all parties involved and general fact finding” and is one example of the oppression that Indigenous families such as the Tuscarora have experienced while fighting to remain a free, sovereign people since colonial contact.

“The Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina stands strong with our tribal citizens and other Native communities, and we will speak against violence of any kind in favor of our community’s tradition to gather in a peaceful, lawful manner to honor our ancestors,” leaders continued.

Chris Herndon of Cary is the new director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club.

The Raleigh-based nonprofit organization, which advocates for a clean, healthy environment and the well-being of all who live in it, made the announcement Wednesday.

Herndon, who has spent most of the past 12 years in executive leadership roles with the United Way, comes most recently from United Way of the Greater Triangle, where he was CEO. He also served as interim executive director of WakeUP Wake County.

Previously, he was chief marketing and engagement officer at United Way of Central Indiana in Indianapolis, and served on the United Way Worldwide Marketing Leadership Council.

The NC Sierra Club said Herndon, who moved to North Carolina in 2019, was a respected nonprofit leader in the Triangle.

“The work of the N.C. Chapter is more crucial than ever as climate change increasingly threatens our environment and communities. Our children and grandchildren’s futures depend on how effectively we meet this challenge,” Herndon said in a statement. “I’m eager to help protect marginalized communities from polluters in rural and urban areas, safeguard biodiversity and public lands, celebrate our connection to the natural world, and elect and hold accountable leaders at all levels of government who share these values.”

Herndon’s responsibilities include guiding staff and volunteers and working with Sierra Club national staff working in the state and region on environmental policies, priorities, and objectives set by the chapter’s elected volunteer leadership.

“The Executive Committee is glad to put our trust in Chris to steward this organization into its next era in collaboration with our volunteer leaders and staff,” Chapter Chair Katie Tomberlin said in the announcement. “The Sierra Club’s work is more essential than ever, and we’re happy to have a proven leader to bring new energy, ideas and commitment to our mission.”

Prior to beginning his nonprofit career, Herndon spent 16 years as a sports executive in Indianapolis.

Herndon currently chairs Cary’s Greenway Committee, is a member of the Cary Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Advisory Board and a member of the Dix Park Community Committee. He also serves as a board member for WakeUP Wake County.

“I couldn’t be more excited to serve the North Carolina community I love in this way,” Herndon said. “I’m especially eager to amplify the power of the N.C. Sierra Club’s passionate members to defend everyone’s right to a healthy world.”

The national Sierra Club, now more than 125 years old, works to “defend everyone’s right to a healthy world,” according to its website.

A nonprofit organization founded late last year honors the Secotan leader, Chief Wingina, who was beheaded by the English in June 1586.

Wingina was chief of the tribes that inhabited modern-day Roanoke Island and the mainland across the Albemarle and Croatan sounds. Wingina was first documented by the English during their initial contact in 1584, according to the “Secotan Alliance … and Beyond” website.

A respected regional leader in the Algonquian tribe, early on, Wingina and the tribe helped the English, but soon they realized that the colonists intended to take over the land. Wingina then began using the name Pemisapan out of regret over having invited the English to settle here.

He started working with other tribal leaders to drive the colony away from Roanoke, but the English had learned from an Algonquian hostage of Wingina’s plan to unite the tribes. As a result, he was murdered, one of the earliest documented in North America, according to state documents.

Gray Parsons of Frisco, a descendant of the Machapunga-Mattamuskeet people of the North Carolina inner banks, had the idea to form the nonprofit, “The Secotan Alliance … and beyond” after spending several years “wondering how to create a way to show proper historical respect to Chief Wingina and his Secotan Alliance people, who had been historically marginalized. And also, I wanted to share his traditional indigenous values in a modern-day world that, in my opinion, was sorely in need of it.”

Parsons, who grew up in Washington, graduated from East Carolina University in 1972 with a degree in parks, outdoor recreation and conservation. He spent his career in various fields, including human services, medical sales and marketing, and the organic and natural foods industry.

Now retired, Parsons, in addition to heading up the Secotan Alliance organization, is on the Friends of the Outer Banks History Center board of directors, a volunteer at the Frisco Native American Museum and Natural History Center, and is vice president of the Pitt-GAP chapter of Epsilon Chi Nu Inc., the first Native American fraternity in the U.S. He is the author of the book, “Hope on Hatterask,” published in 2013.

Parsons explained that he launched the nonprofit with the help of Joyce Bornfriend, director of the Frisco Native American Museum, which was approved for IRS 501(c)(3) status in late September 2023.

“Although I had founded and managed my own business for many years before retirement, I had never created nor managed a nonprofit. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without her help and support (the alliance) would likely still be a fantasy rather than a reality,” Parsons said.

Parsons said the focus of the organization is “the indigenous Earth ethic of balance and sustainability, both of which are reflected in the alliance’s dual mission statement.”

After getting the nonprofit started, Parsons has been directing his attention over the last several months to coordinating “In the Spirit of Wingina … and beyond,” the alliance’s inaugural event scheduled for May 30-31.

The symposium is two full days of discussion with professors, environmental groups and authors and is to take place at The College of the Albemarle’s Dare Campus in Manteo. There is no charge to attend but Parsons asks that those who want to attend reserve a seat ahead of time.

“We hope this program accomplishes the initial stages of our missions with a myriad of leaders and grassroots workers from the Outer Banks and Inner Banks … and beyond,” Parsons said, “And that they will be motivated to share what they learn over the packed schedule of this two-day event.”

A kick-off event is set for 4-6 p.m. May 29 at the Frisco Native American Museum with two of the speakers. Seating is limited.

Discussion on the first day of the session will focus on “the consequential (yet often marginalized) life of Chief Wingina/Pemisapan and his Secotan Alliance during early contact with English expeditioners, the English military and the effects of his death on the failed colonization attempt … and beyond,” according to the event webpage.

The second day is to transition from history to Wingina’s and the alliance’s longstanding Earth ethic and a traditional Indigenous approach to modern-day environmentalism. Several area and regional environmental organizations and indigenous people are expected to be on hand.

The symposium has been designed, Parsons explained, to “offer a unique indigenous and ‘indigen-us’ approach to reaching the everyday citizen in terms of modifying our collective behavior in protecting our Mother Earth.  We hope to learn and teach each other in that regard.”

Parsons said the symposium was made possible through grants from the Outer Banks Community Foundation, Dare Arts and a handful of people who are dedicated to making it happen.

Outer Banks History Center Executive Director Tammy Woodward will be joining Parsons as a moderator for the event.

Woodward explained that when Parsons started the nonprofit, he approached the center for feedback.

“When he decided to do this event, he was looking for volunteers to help with some of the duties,” she said, including announcing the speakers, and she volunteered to help. Also, by being director of the history center, she can help answer questions about what records are available locally.

“I think, us being a part of it also lends credibility because Gray’s nonprofit is fairly new. We believe in his mission and we support his highlighting this era of history,” she said. “I’m really excited about this symposium,” adding she’s looking forward to hearing the different perspectives.

The keynote speaker for the two-day discussion is Dr. Michael Leroy Oberg, distinguished professor of history at State University of New York Geneseo, and author of “The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand, Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians” published in 2010.

“Dr. Oberg’s book tells the story of Chief Wingina instead of subjugating him to a secondary and relatively inconsequential character in the often-told story of ‘The Lost Colony,’” Parsons said, explaining that Oberg did not ignore the events during that chaotic period regarding the role of the English colonists. 

“He simply told the story accurately with balance, including the perspective of both the indigenous population as well as the early civilian and military English expeditioners and colonists. And it was done within the constraints of the academic world as per appropriate citation and peer reviewed scrutiny,” Parsons continued, explaining that this is the only academically accepted work he’s aware of that gave equal time to both the English and Indigenous perspectives in that period.

“From that moment forward, Dr. Oberg became somewhat of a hero to me personally and thus the obvious choice as our keynote and primary speaker at our first event,” Parsons said.

Parsons said that Dr. Charles Ewen, Harriot College distinguished professor of Anthropology at East Carolina University, also is expected to speak May 30.  

Ewen will discuss methods and techniques of how archaeological artifacts are gathered, identified and pieced together in the coastal environment to help better understand parts of the various aspects of culture. 

Dr. Arwin Smallwood, Dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University, and descendant of the Tuscarora people of North Carolina, will speak on the relationship between the state’s Tuscarora and the Algonquin people of The Secotan Alliance before, during and after English contact.

Dr. Gabrielle Tayac is associate professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University, as well as its faculty adviser for the Native American Student Association. She is a member of the Piscataway Nation, consulting curator for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and a contributing author on “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and landscapes. Speaking Sovereignty: Powhatan’s Mantle.”

Parsons said Tayac will present “The Indigenous Atlantic: Ancestors Rising,” focusing on land and water ethics, drawing from both her formal and indigenous traditional education models to discuss examples and how they are still relevant today.

The panel planned for the afternoon of the first day is to include representatives from the indigenous tribes, museums and general indigenous diaspora in eastern North Carolina, including the Roanoke Hatterask Tribe, the Machapunga/Mattamuskeet Tribe, the Chowanoke Tribe, Frisco Native American Museum, The Piscataway Nation and other indigenous individuals, Parsons said.

Muddy Sneakers Outdoor Classroom Executive Director David Webb, award-winning author of “The Spanish Seminole” and lifelong environmental activist and director of environmental non-profits from Florida to New York state, will be on hand May 31.

The panel discussion for the second day is to include representatives of Sound Rivers, Peace Garden Project, Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, Frisco Native American Museum, North Carolina Coastal Federation, Hatteras Island Wildlife Rescue, North Carolina Oyster Trail, Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, Ban Balloon Release NC, and from indigenous groups and individuals.

Aio Sifu, Cherokee descendant, will perform with indigenous flute, storytelling and a Women’s Eastern Blanket Dance demo at 5 p.m. May 31.

Parsons said the hope is attendees “walk away knowing that Chief Wingina was the first indigenous leader on the continent to give his life in resistance to the English destruction of a beautiful indigenous culture and their natural resources, and that Chief Wingina’s Secotan Alliance Earth ethic functioned sustainably for thousands of years and merits strong consideration for mainstream adoption.”

With a sizable cargo ship docked Wednesday at the N.C. Port at Wilmington on the Cape Fear River in the background, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the launch of a federal program to improve air quality at U.S. ports.

Regan was joined by Gov. Roy Cooper, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo and North Carolina State Ports Authority Board of Directors Chair Susan Rabon at the morning press conference to announce the $3 billion Clean Ports program.

“Ports like this one right here in Wilmington are essential for commerce and are vital to our nation’s economic growth and supply chain infrastructure,” Regan said, adding that at the same time, many people residing near and around the nation’s ports are exposed to unhealthy air.

“So today, we’re proving once again,” Regan continued, that environmental protection and economic prosperity can go hand in hand. “And that’s why I’m excited to announce that EPA is launching our $3 billion Clean Ports Program.”

The funding through the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, “will advance environmental justice by reducing diesel pollution from U.S. ports in surrounding communities, while creating good-paying jobs,” according to the EPA.

Regan said the money will go to purchase zero-emissions port equipment and infrastructure upgrades, while supporting both climate and air pollution-reduction strategies at all U.S. Ports.

“This program will lay the groundwork for transformational change by encouraging a transition to zero-emissions operations and reducing diesel pollution in and around our poor communities,” he said.

Regan said the EPA is releasing two notices of funding opportunities. The first pot of money includes $2.8 billion to facilitate the transition to zero-emissions equipment and infrastructure to reduce emissions nationwide. The second is close to $150 million for climate and air quality planning activities at ports to help build capacity for the ongoing transition to zero-emission port operations.

The announcement is more than just an investment in the economy, Regan said, “it’s an investment in President Biden’s pledge and commitment to environmental justice.”

Through the president’s investments “we are ensuring that those who live near ports can finally breath cleaner, healthier air. We are reimagining clean technology, and revolutionizing our nation’s port infrastructure, while addressing climate and environmental justice concerns.”

Before Regan spoke, Rabon of the ports authority board said the facility in Wilmington, the deep-water port in Morehead City and the inland operation in Charlotte, combined to support more than 88,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the work at the authority contributes $660 million annually to local and state tax revenues.

“Businesses need access to the global markets where their products are sold, and where their resources are found,” she said. “The authority provides that access making North Carolina ports are a key factor in our state’s phenomenal economic growth.”

Rabon added that while the ports authority is focused on growing business, “we’re committed to doing so in an environmentally conscious manner that preserves this area we are fortunate enough to call home.”

Gov. Cooper, during his remarks, described the Biden administration’s infrastructure policies as “generational.”

“We’ve been waiting for them for decades and now they’re finally here,” he said of the federal funding for roads, bridges, airports, rail and public transportation, high-speed internet, clean water systems and clean energy jobs. “And of course, our ports, will improve our state for decades and generations to come.”

The funding announced Wednesday means a cleaner work environment for those working at ports, will help make the communities around the ports cleaner and “will help us further our goals of environmental justice,” Cooper said.

Regan said after the announcement that the administration wants to get the money out as quickly as possible. “I feel very strongly that one $3 billion is a lot of money. There’s enough to go around. We’re going to see strong applications all across the country.”

EPA officials said the Clean Ports Program will help advance the Justice40 Initiative, which has a goal for “40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments in climate, clean energy, and other areas flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”

The agency said it has strived to ensure that near-port community engagement and equity considerations are program priorities. That focus has included evaluating applications on the extent and quality of community engagement efforts.

The nearly $2.8 billion Zero-Emission Technology Deployment Competition will directly fund zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure to reduce mobile source emissions at U.S. ports, according to the EPA.

Eligible uses of the funding include human-operated and maintained zero-emission cargo handling equipment, harbor craft and other vessels, electric charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure, and a number of other technology investments. Applications are to be evaluated under multiple tiers in order to ensure that funds are distributed across ports of different sizes and types, and to ensure funding for ports serving Tribal communities, officials said.

The approximately $150 million Climate and Air Quality Planning Competition will fund climate and air quality planning activities at U.S. ports, including emissions inventories, strategy analysis, community engagement, and resiliency measure identification.

“Together, these opportunities will advance next-generation, clean technologies that will more safely and efficiently drive the movement of goods and passengers at our nation’s ports, a critical part of America’s supply chain infrastructure while reducing pollution and advancing environmental justice,” the EPA said in its announcement.

According to the Sierra Club, research has shown that diesel pollution contains more than 40 cancer-causing substances, including benzene and formaldehyde. The group cited links to asthma, heart disease and premature death. 

“We continue to see vast clean transportation benefits moving out of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ports are a lesser talked about topic within the transportation sector – cleaning them up is crucial work,” Katherine García, director of Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All campaign, said in a statement. “This EPA program builds on the Department of Transportation’s ports program with necessary zero-emission investments that will bring significant health and air quality benefits.”

Enviva, a wood pellet producer with a huge economic and environmental footprint in North Carolina, is teetering on the edge of financial collapse.

In a continuation of months of bad financial news for the multinational corporation, Fitch Ratings, a global credit-rating agency, last week downgraded Enviva Inc.’s default rating and unsecured debt rating, reflecting a missed interest payment on Jan. 16 of $24.4 million.

“This development follows worsening operating losses and Enviva’s announcement last fall of substantial doubt regarding its ability to continue as a going concern,” Fitch said in its Jan. 19 report. “Considerable uncertainty exists regarding Enviva’s ability to renegotiate uneconomic customer contracts entered into 4Q22 and the company’s related $300 million liability.”

Enviva is now in a 30-day grace period, the report said. If the interest is not “cured” next month, it said, the company is at risk of default and also is vulnerable to further rating downgrades. 

“Obviously, they are in dire straits,” Scot Quaranda, communications director with Dogwood Alliance, an Asheville-based environmental group and major critic of Enviva, said in a recent interview. “They bet on their own future in the futures market and they failed.”

But it’s not yet known what the impact of the Maryland-based company’s fiscal woes could be to the state and the rural communities where thousands of workers are employed.

Bryant Buck, executive director of the Mid-East Commission, which provides support to local governments in Hertford, Bertie, Martin, Beaufort and Pitt counties, said he had not heard that Enviva was having financial difficulty, but he said the potential of job cuts or operation downsizing is a concern.

“Any business loss in Hertford County certainly sparks my interest,” he said. “We want to do everything we can from our role in helping them. We really want to keep our economy going in all of our regions.”

An Enviva spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the company’s situation.

“At this time, we have no further comment beyond the information that is already publicly available on our IR website,” Maria Moreno, Enviva’s vice president of communications and public affairs, said in an emailed response to Coastal Review.

According to Enviva’s website, manufacturing plants in North Carolina, which are operated around the clock, seven days a week, are located in Ahoskie, Hertford County, where the permitted annual production capacity is 410,000 metric tons; in Garysburg, Northampton County, with 750,000 metric tons of permitted capacity per year; and in Faison, Sampson County, with 600,000 metrics tons permitted per year. Each of those sites store and ship the wood pellets from the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia.

An additional site in Hamlet, Richmond County, is permitted to produce 600,000 metric tons per year, but those pellets are stored and shipped from the Port of Wilmington.

Other Enviva plants in the Southeast are in Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia.

Elly Cosgrove, communications manager at North Carolina Ports, redirected questions about the business’s shipping to the company.

“Enviva has been a long-standing tenant at the Port of Wilmington and remains current on all their payments,” she said in an email response to Coastal Review. “We can only speak to the lease as we are the lease holder.”

As a result of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive issued in 2009, biomass — such as wood pellets — was classified as a renewable energy. That decision spurred rapid growth of the pellet industry in the U.S., largely in the Southeast.

Enviva describes itself as “the world’s largest producer of sustainable wood pellets, a renewable alternative to coal,” and a “global energy company specializing in sustainable wood bioenergy.” It also characterizes burning wood pellets as “a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”

But the global environmental community contends the industry is, if anything, a prime example of greenwashing, with its practice of clearcutting forests and creating air pollution.

“I can’t think of anything that harms nature more than cutting down trees and burning them,” William Moomaw, professor emeritus of international environmental policy at Tufts University, said in a July 2021 CNN article.

A November 2022 class action lawsuit against Enviva filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by stockholders accuses the company of misrepresenting the environmental impact of its business as well as its financial integrity.

“Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Enviva had misrepresented the environmental sustainability of its wood pellet production and procurement; (ii) Enviva had similarly overstated the true measure of cash flow generated by the Company’s platform; (iii) accordingly, Enviva had misrepresented its business model and the Company’s ability to achieve the level of growth that Defendants had represented to investors; and (iv) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.”

Despite the legal challenge, the company had around the same time announced plans to expand its footprint in the Southeast.

In 2022, Enviva applied to the state to expand production at its Ahoskie site by a third, to 630,000 tons a year.

Environmental justice advocates fought the proposal, saying that the facility was already polluting the air of the small community, which has a large population of Black residents.

In Feb. 2023, the state Department of Environmental Quality issued a modified permit to the facility that made expansion dependent on installation of new air pollution control devices to “substantially reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs. This equipment includes a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer.

Ahoskie, which was Enviva’s flagship site, has been operating since 2011. Over the years, the state has provided incentive funds, including grants, to several of the sites.

The most recent report Enviva filed in 2022 with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, a requirement of businesses that receive incentive funds, did not reveal any compliance issues, said communications director David Rhoades.

Still, the department is concerned, he said, with “any employer” and its workers in the state.

“We’re aware of the press reports and we monitor performance on a regular basis,” Rhoades said about Enviva.

Kevin Patterson, interim Hertford County manager, said that the county had not received a required notification of any layoffs at the Ahoskie plant, making it difficult to anticipate potential impacts to the community.

“Until we have an idea of what may or may not happen, it’s hard to know what a projection would be,” he said.

But for the time-being, Enviva’s standing, is on shaky ground.

According to a recent USA Today Network article, the company’s stock price has plummeted from about $87 a share in April 2022 to about 80 cents a share in January 2024. Quaranda, with Dogwood Alliance, said it’s possible that Enviva could completely shut down, or the company could find a way to renegotiate its contracts, among other adjustments.

“Without any kind of regulatory pressure to do things right, it’s hard to believe that they’ll not do whatever it takes to remain solvent,” he said.

But the industry has always been “a house of cards,” Quaranda said.

“It’s a false premise to cut down a bunch of trees, burn it, and call it renewable energy,” he said.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials are interested in ideas from low-income, disadvantaged communities and communities experiencing environmental justice concerns to help guide its application for the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant.

As part of the federal Inflation Reduction Act, the grant program, awarded through the Environmental Protection Agency, provides states, local governments, territories and tribes with funds to develop and implement plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants.

NCDEQ is the lead for the interagency North Carolina Climate Pollution Reduction Grant project. The state anticipates receiving $3 million this year for planning activities and is eligible to compete for the $4.6 billion that EPA will award starting next year, officials said.

As part of the program, the state is to develop two plans. The priority climate action plan is to identify the highest priority greenhouse gas reduction measures and determine the method for ensuring equitable implementation. The comprehensive climate action plan is to update and expand the state’s existing climate strategies to be inline with the most recent available science, modeling and best practices. 

NCDEQ officials are asking any individual or group to submit ideas on projects and greenhouse gas reduction measures to implement through the program. Responses will help the agency identify opportunities to collaborate on new or existing projects. To submit a project idea, fill out this form.

The department also is accepting comments and suggestions via email at cprg@deq.nc.gov and at the coming public information sessions in January. These sessions are in addition to three held earlier this year.

Attendees will hear about the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant and will help NCDEQ determine priorities for the application and funding if awarded. Participants will learn about the types of projects that qualify for the grant funding and will be asked to describe eligible projects that would be most useful in their communities.

The first session is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 4. Information is online on how to receive a reminder and to join the meeting, or use this link. The webinar number is 2434 444 8544 and the password is S5153pr7, or 75153777 from phones and video systems. To join by phone, dial 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303 and use access code 243 444 48544.

The next session is to take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 9. Attendees can register online to receive a meeting reminder and information on how to join, or use this link and webinar number 2438 976 9622 with password MMqmV5hrn77, or 66768547 from phones and video systems. to join by phone, use 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303 with access code 243 897 69622.

More information about the grant program and material from previous information sessions available online.

If you need this information in Spanish or another language, call 919-609-2189 or send an email to Guadalupe.Jimenez@deq.nc.gov.

Federal and state officials will discuss the upcoming cleanup of an area of the Navassa Superfund site during a community meeting Thursday night.

Work that is set to begin soon on removing contaminated soil within about a 16-acre area known as operable unit 2, or OU2, and hiring and training opportunities for residents and businesses will be among the topics to be discussed at the meeting.

Officials will also share information about the upcoming sale of about 87 acres of the property owned by the Multistate Trust, which, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, is hosting the meeting.

OU2 is part of a former wood-treatment site where, after closing operations in the mid-1970s, left a legacy of contamination of creosote on the land. Creosote is a gummy, tar-like substance used to treat wood utilized for railroad ties and utility poles.

The land was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010.

Treated and untreated wood was stored in areas of OU2. Nearly 3,000 cubic yards of soils contaminated with creosote in that unit will be dug up, removed from the site and temporarily stored within another unit of the site.

The work is expected to take three to four months to complete and, when finished, the land will be available for unrestricted use.

Stockpiled soils will either be reused or consolidated into the cleanup of OU4, according to a release.

The meeting will be held 6-7 p.m. in person and virtually. An in-person, drop-in session will be held immediately following the meeting at the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St.

To join online use this Zoom link or enter tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings. To join by phone call 301-715-8592. Use meeting ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 664564.

For additional information visit the Multistate Trust website, the EPA website or DEQ.

Federal officials want input from the public on how to equitably provide data, information, science and tools to diverse communities to help them prepare, adapt and plan for the effects of climate change.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has published in the Federal Register a request for information on how the agency can increase capacity and access to climate services for climate preparedness, resilience and adaptation planning in historically underserved communities, including Tribal and Indigenous communities. The agency also wants input on how it can better include Indigenous and local knowledge in its climate services.

Responses are due on or before Sept. 21 and may be submitted in English or Spanish.

A series of regional- and topic-based listening sessions to gather public comments began Thursday and continues through Sept. 14. Registration details and additional information about how to participate in the public listening sessions is available at  https://www.eventbrite.com/​cc/​equitable-climate-service-delivery-2404789.

The feedback will be used to develop a plan to make NOAA’s climate services more accessible, understandable, usable and inclusive of the social and economic impacts of climate change, officials said.

The plan will also address complex hazards and build capacity for and support users of all disciplines and backgrounds, particularly historically underserved communities and Tribal communities, by expanding science literacy and successfully applying climate services to science-based decisions about climate risk and resilience.

You may submit comments on this document by email to climate.input@noaa.gov. Include “Request for Information on Equitable Delivery of Climate Services” in the subject line of the email.

Attachments will be accepted in plain text, Microsoft Word, or Adobe PDF, or recorded formats only, not to exceed a file size of 25 MB. If comments are submitted via recording, they must be in .mpg, mpeg, or .wav file formats. All comments submitted via email in recorded format will be transcribed.

Comments may also be submitted in writing only by visiting www.regulations.gov/​, entering “Request for Information on Equitable Delivery of Climate Services” in the search box and clicking the “Comment” icon. Enter “N/A” in required fields if you wish to remain anonymous.

Submit written comments via U.S. Mail to Ella Clarke, Room 58010/HCHB, 1401 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20230. Include “Request for Information on Equitable Delivery of Climate Services” in the written response.

Comments submitted in Spanish will be translated to English for public posting.

Discover more coastal celebrations and programs at Earth Day 2023.

The short documentary, “Freedom Hill” about environmental racism in Princeville, and two short films produced by University of North Carolina Wilmington will be screened in recognition of Earth Day.

Hosted by Working Films’ Wilmington Screening Series, the event will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Cameron Art Museum, 3201 South 17th St., Wilmington.

Directed by Resita Cox, “Freedom Hill” is a short documentary described as “exploring the environmental racism washing away Princeville, North Carolina, a town of under 2,000 and the first town incorporated by freed, formerly enslaved Africans in America.”

The event will feature area leaders and educators focused on environmental justice including Dr. Britt Moore of UNC-Wilmington and Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the North Carolina NAACP. 

“Flow ILM” and “Confluence,” produced by UNCW, will be screened as well. The two short films highlight the work of artists and scientists exploring the relationships between organisms, environments, creativity and technology.

This is a community event with a $10 suggested donation, but attendees are encouraged to attend regardless of their ability to pay. Email info@workingfilms.org with questions and to request any special accommodations.

Working Films was founded in 1999 and is a national nonprofit organization based in Wilmington that leverages the power of documentary films to advance social justice and environmental protection. For more information, visit www.workingfilms.org.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan will join with other leaders and activists to discuss the origins of the environmental justice movement by way of the 1982 protests in Warren County during a special program in the North Carolina Museum of History.

The discussion, “Remembering Warren County: North Carolina and the Continuing Struggle for Environmental Justice” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the museum, 5 East Edenton St., Raleigh. Register online for tickets to attend the free event.

Toxic chemicals called PCBs were released under the cover of night along 250 miles of North Carolina roadways. In 1982, a small, predominately African American community in Warren County was designated as the landfill location to hold the PCB-contaminated soil resulting from the illegal dumping. In response to the state’s decision to place the landfill in Warren County, the NAACP and others staged a protest. More than 500 protesters were arrested. While the Warren County protest failed to prevent the siting of the disposal facility, it did provide a national start to the environmental justice movement, according the museum and energy.gov.

The panel is to include the following:

• Michael Regan is current Environmental Protection Agency administrator and former secretary for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. He is the first Black man and second person of color to lead the EPA. As NCDEQ secretary, he helped implement the state’s plan to address climate change and transition the state to a clean energy economy. He established North Carolina’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory board to better align social inequities, environmental protection and community empowerment.
• Dr. Ben Chavis was among the more than 500 people arrested for taking part in the nonviolent protests in Warren County. Chavis went on to serve as executive director and CEO of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. Under his leadership that the organization issued the 1987 report “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.”
• Eva Clayton, at the time of the dumping in Warren County, was chair of Warren County’s Board of Commissioners and worked to get funding and resources for the rural county. In 1992 she was elected to Congress where she became the first Black woman to represent North Carolina. During her term, she advocated for funding to detoxify the contaminated site.
• The Rev. Bill Kearney was born and raised in Warren County. He serves as an associate minister and faith and health ministry coordinator at Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church. In 2012, Kearney organized the Warren County Environmental Action Team, which maintains Warren County’s legacy of activism and community organizing as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.
• Vernice Miller-Travis was a researcher working for the civil rights division of the United Church of Christ in the New York City headquarters during the Warren County protests. She continued to research environmental injustice and environmental racism and in 1987 helped to publish a report by the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice called “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States.” She also attended the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and helped to adopt the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice.

The Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board is holding a special meeting on cumulative impacts at 6 p.m. March 16 in the Green Square Training Room, 217 West Jones St., Raleigh.

Cumulative Impacts are the totality of exposures to combinations of chemical stressors in the environment and nonchemical stressors like extreme weather events and their effects on health, well-being and quality of life outcomes. Cumulative impacts characterize the potential state of vulnerability or resilience of a community, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In already overburdened communities, disproportionate impacts can arise from unequal environmental conditions and exposure to multiple stressors.

The public may attend in-person or online.

To attend via WebEx, use https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=md8baf1466ca30556aee9bd7516e11e8a. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003. Meeting number is 2430 348 3224 and the password is EJEAB, or 35322 from phones.

A public comment period is planned to start at 7 p.m. To comment in-person or online, sign up on the online speaker form by noon March 16.

Article has been updated

State Department of Environmental Quality staff in charge of developing an online tool to help decision-makers address flooding in their communities took steps to include historically underrepresented and underserved voices in the planning processes, and a state advisory board is joining the effort to include more of those voices.

DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services held during the Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board quarterly meeting Feb. 9 in Raleigh and online the first public meeting about the Flood Resiliency Blueprint, which is “a statewide initiative to develop an online-decision support tool and associated planning to address flooding for communities in North Carolina’s river basins.”

Project lead Elizabeth Christenson asked for direction on how to create the blueprint through an “environmental justice lens.” After hearing the full presentation, board members decided to appoint a four-member subcommittee that will be involved in an advisory capacity moving ahead.

The North Carolina General Assembly allotted the division that works to restore and protect wetlands and waterways $20 million in 2021 to develop the blueprint, which officials say is the first for the state and represents the largest statewide flood mitigation investment in North Carolina’s history.

Christenson emphasized to the board that division staff understand how critical it is to incorporate historically marginalized groups and to use an environmental justice lens throughout a process, “not just at the beginning, and not just at the end.”

The Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

Christenson said the blueprint is going to include strategies specific to the state’s 17 river basins that end users can consult to help prioritize resiliency strategies and track progress over time. The Neuse River basin is the first that will be studied. It was chosen because of the amount of already existing data and a study taking place.

“We want this tool to visualize flood risk,” she said, and help understand the impacts different mitigation strategies can have in each basin, including nature-based and structural solutions.

Christenson, who also is a policy adviser for DEQ, requested the board suggest representatives or groups to help guide the blueprint, because the division is “trying to get a diversity of thought.” Staff also asked for ideas on public engagement such as where to hold workshops and public meetings, and provide any additional feedback to ensure staff understand how to prioritize historically marginalized communities throughout the entire blueprint development process.

Hope Morgan, global information systems specialist and project manager with AECOM Technical Services of North Carolina Inc. based in Raleigh, the consulting firm the division brought on in December, reiterated the request that board members join in the stakeholder process to make sure there’s “a say from an environmental justice perspective” on every angle of the project.

Environmental Justice board members suggested the division engage with other environmental justice groups, contact short-term and long-term disaster recovery groups, volunteer organizations, riverkeepers, stakeholders in other similar engagement processes, community elders and local leaders in unincorporated areas, before Chair Dr. Jim Johnson suggested a subcommittee.

Johnson said the subcommittee would be available to assist the division in an advisory capacity. “This is such a rich and important issue we’re not going to solve it all today,” he said, adding they should put the “smartest minds around the table.”

Heading up the committee will be La’Meshia Whittington, who will be joined by Veronica Carter, who is a board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, Naeema Muhammad and William Barber III.

Joseph Pitchford, Division of Mitigation Services and State Energy Office public information officer, explained in a follow-up email last week that the subcommittee will help advise DEQ staff in moving forward.

“We look forward to continued advice and input from the Board members over the course of the project,” he said. Adding, “Looking ahead, AECOM is in the process of finalizing its stakeholder engagement plan for DEQ approval. The plan will include various opportunities for stakeholder input, including public meetings.”

About the Blueprint

Pitchford said that the two major components of the project are an online decision-support tool and the blueprint process document.

“The online decision-support tool is intended to help users visualize flood risk for different conditions and choose from a suite of flood mitigations strategies. The process document is meant to detail methods of conducting resiliency planning at multiple scales, which can be applied anywhere in the state. This approach takes into account that North Carolina basins have different flood exposure, data and modeling needs,” he said.

Blueprint development is broken up into three phases.

The first phase began Dec. 28, when the division signed a contract with AECOM to design the stakeholder engagement process, create a draft blueprint, a mockup of the online decision-support tool, and the Neuse River Action Strategy, so they can test the tool using the pilot basin. Phase one is expected to be complete by Dec 1, 2023, he said.

Phase two, which will run parallel to phase one, is to see the online decision support tool be completed. Phase two is also expected to wrap up by December.

Phase three will see the online support tool be used for river basins statewide. This will include action strategies for certain targeted basins, which will also be used to test and validate the online support tool. This phase is expected to begin and end in 2024.

Why the Neuse River basin?

Two board members expressed their concern during the meeting about the Neuse River basin being selected as the pilot, because what may work in the Goldsboro area may not be applicable when developing other basin strategies, such as the one for the Cape Fear River basin.

Staff explained to the board that the Neuse River basin was selected because of the amount of already existing, accessible data, and there is currently a pilot natural infrastructure flood mitigation project. While each strategy will be basin specific, the process used to develop the Neuse River basin will help guide other river basin strategy development.

Pitchford expounded in the email that the focus on the Neuse River basin is because it is likely the most data-rich basin in the state and will likely serve as a best-case scenario for current decision support tool functionality. 

“While we are beginning in one basin, DEQ plans to learn from the Neuse Basin and validate the decision support tool in all the other basins in North Carolina in 2024, incorporating the unique needs of each basin along the way,” he said. “The Neuse River Basin serves as a pilot river basin to test assumptions, approaches, watershed models, scenario exploration tools, and other elements as the Flood Resiliency Blueprint is developed. The implementation of the draft Blueprint will result in the Neuse River Action Strategy in 2023 with state-wide basin-specific action strategies in 2024.”

AECOM’s role

The division signed a contract with AECOM in late December to begin work on the first of the three-phases of the blueprint, which includes creating a stakeholder engagement process and a mockup of the online flooding risk tool.

Pitchford said that AECOM, which was selected through the Department of Administration’s purchasing and contract process, is the principal vendor for the first phase of the blueprint project. The firm is expected to create the draft blueprint, the draft Neuse River Basin Action Strategy, and requirements needed to develop the online decision-support tool.

AECOM’s Morgan expressed to the board during the meeting that they are focusing on bringing to the conversation marginalized groups, experts and others and coordinating with federal, state and local governments, environmental groups, nonprofits and other organizations that have done work on flooding.

 “We want to talk to people that have been flooded and that understand what that flooding has done to their area and their ability to recover,” she said. They want to look at the historically marginalized communities that may not have been talked to in the past and include volunteer organizations that have spent time on the ground responding to these events. “We want to focus on the impacts from specific projects.”

Pitchford said the environmental justice board meeting provided “a great opportunity for input on the development of the stakeholder process.”

AECOM’s team for phase one includes ESP Associates, Inc. consulting firm with an office in Morrisville, Wildlands Engineering, Inc. water resources engineering firm based in Raleigh, Elite Disaster Consulting emergency management planners in Mint Hill, Geomatics Workshops continuing education provider based in Charlotte, Wilmington-based Insight Planning and Development LLC Inc. planning and grant management consultant services, Singhofen and Associates Inc. engineering firm in Florida, and Dr. Barbara Doll, a water protection and restoration specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Early stakeholder input

The North Carolina Inclusive Disaster Recovery Network wrapped up the presentation to the environmental justice board by sharing ideas they hope DEQ would consider as well as explore opportunities to partner on the blueprint planning process, and advocate for more equitable community engagement as a best practice across government, Kathryn Gaasch, program director, told the board.

The network is a group of public, private, nonprofit and faith-based organizations “seeking avenues for community voice and equitable access to resources” in the disaster recovery system.

Carol Caldwell, founder of the Columbus County DREAM Center community organization and member of the network, explained to the board that they have been working on developing a framework and needs they want to be addressed.

“We know that disasters do discriminate,” she began, “Flooding does not impact all people equally because of public policies that affect lives of especially Black, Indigenous and Latino communities. One of the questions we will be asking is what practices will ensure that the people and communities most impacted by flooding have the power and resources to adapt to increasing climate and uncertainty?”

She continued that the second point is that racial and economic disparities are as obvious in outcome as they are in engagement and planning processes. The question is, “What support do government officials and community advocates each need to collaborate on this shared vision of more resilient communities?”

Time didn’t allow for the network to go over selected recommendations for state government, which was detailed in the slideshow. These recommendations are to build upon any related planning or work being done to address issues of flooding, engage stakeholders that reflect the diversity of the community, and exercise patience and find consensus on a shared vision for the project with planning participants.

“The NC Inclusive Disaster Recovery Network is one of the many stakeholders that DEQ continues to engage as part of the Flood Resiliency Blueprint,” Pitchford said. DEQ strives to be inclusive of interested stakeholders in the blueprint development process including federal, state, county, municipal, and tribal governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial partners, as well as interested public parties across the state.

The Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board is expected to hear an introduction to the state’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint when it meets at 3 p.m. Thursday.

The public may attend the quarterly in-person business meeting in the Green Square Training Room, 217 West Jones St., or online via WebEx. The public can also listen by phone by calling 415-655-0003. Use meeting number 2426 578 7169 and webinar password, EJEAB, or 5322 from phones.

The Department of Environmental Quality Division of Mitigation Services was allocated in 2021 $20 million to develop the state’s first flood resiliency blueprint. The document is to serve as a set of guidelines and resources for groups of all kinds to improve flood resiliency and keep themselves and their communities safe, according to the DEQ website.

The board also is expected to hear from county level economic developers, an update on Executive Order 246 “North Carolina’s Transformation To A Clean, Equitable Economy,” signed in January 2022, and on lead service lines.

The full agenda and meeting materials are on the website.

The cumulative impacts subcommittee will meet before the board at 2 p.m.

There will be a public comment period starting at 5 p.m. To comment in-person or online, fill out the speaker signup form by noon Thursday.

It wasn’t lost on him the significance of the event when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan took the podium Friday during an observance in Raleigh for the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Regan said he wanted to take this moment in time to say the significance and the symbolism of this moment. “It is not lost on me. Here I humbly stand in the pulpit of a Southern Baptist Church with the privilege of honoring a young Baptist minister who would become one of the most gifted and influential leaders in human history,” Regan told the couple hundred seated in the First Baptist Church on Salisbury Street.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an acclaimed scholar, an exceptional orator, a prophetic visionary and a courageous leader. But fundamentally, fundamentally, he was the ultimate public servant,” Regan continued. “Dr. King spent his life fighting for racial and economic justice. And in doing so, he recognized that America in all of her wisdom, had yet to live up to her highest ideals.”

Regan was the guest speaker for the annual North Carolina state employees’ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. observance program and John R. Larkins Award Ceremony organized by The North Carolina Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission. The event was in-person and streamed on YouTube.  The state employee’s choir performed throughout the event.

The theme for the 2023 event is a quote from Dr. King, “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

During the ceremony, Felicia Culbreath- Setzer, regional operations director of the Department of Commerce, was presented the 2023 John R. Larkins Award, which is presented to a state employee who demonstrates extraordinary commitment to equality in the workplace and dedication to improving local communities through volunteerism and community service.

Additionally, Gov. Roy Cooper awarded Dr. Dumas Harshaw Jr., recently retired pastor of First Baptist Church on Wilmington Street, The Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the highest civilian honors in the state.

Regan, previous secretary for the state Department of Environmental Quality, said in King’s final act of resistance, traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to support sanitation workers protesting unsafe working conditions and low wages. Although the environmental justice movement began nearly two decades after King’s death, the core values of the movement are undeniably aligned with Dr. King’s teachings and his actions.

Regan explained that environmental justice is the fair treatment and the meaningful involvement of all people regardless of their race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, the implementation, enforcement of our environmental laws, regulations and policies.

“It’s really twofold. And it’s very simple. All people deserve access to clean air and clean water. And all people deserve to have the right to be informed and make decisions about the policies and practices that directly impact their health, their safety and the wellbeing of their children,” he said.

As EPA Administrator, he’s met people across the country for whom the future has not always been certain. It still isn’t.

“In fact, approximately 2.1 million low-income households in America have children under the age of 6 living in homes with lead exposure. These inequities don’t just harm the communities who are experiencing them, they harm all of us. They hold our nation back from reaching her highest ideals. They hold back our economy. They hold back our children from becoming who they’re meant to be. And they hold back the potential for a healthier, safer and more just future for every one of us,” he said. “It’s never been more clear that the fight for civil rights is inseparable from the fight for environmental, economic, health and racial justice. We simply cannot be for one without the other.”

Regan said it takes more than funding to ensure communities that have borne the burden of pollution receive the benefits of the federal government’s investments.

“It’s about changing how our government works and who our government work for. It’s about making sure that everyone has a seat at the table, especially communities who has been open historically shut out of the conversation,” Regan said.

“Folks, we’re at a pivotal time in history. We have a once in a generation opportunity to fix many of the nation’s most persistent and pervasive environmental and public health concerns. But if we are to transform a system that has neglected so many people in so many needs for so long, we ought to rethink how that system is structured and who truly benefits from it,” Regan continued. “Clean air and clean water are fundamental human rights. This isn’t it shouldn’t be about politics. And we owe it to Dr. King, and leaders like Dr. King, to advance this work and never lose sight of our commitment to helping others and bettering our own communities.”

Cooper, during his remarks, told the state employees gathered at the church that they provide important services.

“You really do keep things running on all levels. You help ensure that people have clean air and water work to keep our community safe and healthy. You help you sick and support quality education for children and adults,” he said.

Cooper said the theme of the event, the quote from King, was profound. King told that to marchers in 1965 in Montgomery, Alabama.

“Nearly 60 years later, Dr. King’s words guide us as we work to continue toward that goal. A society that’s at peace with itself and can live with its conscience. We aren’t there yet,” Cooper said. “To reach that goal, I believe we must embrace our diversity where we strive to make sure that there is equal opportunity for everybody. When we embrace our diversity, the best of each of us shine through.”

He added that we need to work to dismantle systemic racism and replace long-term inequities with long-term opportunity.

“If we ensure that every single child in North Carolina has a sound basic education like our North Carolina we connect everybody to high-speed internet, we make sure that people have safe and clean water. If we learn to appreciate and respect each other more. We work on being more kind and caring to each other,” he said. “I think we’re making progress on all of this if we continue to work together. Together we can create a society itself that can live with its conscience.”

Monday is the federal holiday that honors King and is often a day of service. For volunteer opportunities in North Carolina, visit VolunteerNC for a special list of Martin Luther King, Jr. service activities, including virtual and at-home tasks to assist nonprofits.

The quarterly business meeting of the Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will be in-person 3 p.m. Feb. 9 in the Green Square Training Room in Raleigh.

The agenda is to be made available on the state Department of Environmental Quality website before the meeting.

The public can attend the meeting in person or watch online via WebEx at https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=m659544a7b44802e971427035a131f971. The public may also call 415-655-0003 to listen. Use meeting number 2426 578 716 and password, 35322 from phones. 

There will be a public comment period starting at 5 p.m. Feb. 9. To comment in-person or online, complete the speaker sign-up form online by noon the day of the meeting.

Members of the board were selected from across North Carolina and represent the diverse cultures of the state. To learn more about the board members and additional meeting materials visit the DEQ website.

The Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality are to host this month the summit, “North Carolina Water and Equity: Addressing Water Infrastructure Needs and Funding in Disadvantaged Areas.”

The summit is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12, in the North Carolina Biotech Center in Research Triangle Park, 15 TW Alexander Drive, Durham. There is an in-person and virtual participation option.

Register online for the free event at https://environmentalhealthcollaborative.org/2022-summit-registration/. The agenda is available on the website.

Organizers said the one-day summit is to bring together representatives from state, federal and local government, academia and research, community groups and businesses to accomplish the following:

• Learn about priorities and concerns of communities and local governments on projects regarding providing service in disadvantaged areas, pertaining to funding and infrastructure.
• Develop resource documents and peer-to-peer networks to educate communities and local governments on next steps or considerations if interested in pursuing a project to provide service in disadvantaged areas.
• Provide guidance to DEQ in identifying where such projects are needed to communicate funding opportunities to communities and to local governments.

“The North Carolina General Assembly appropriated close to $2 billion from the state’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act for drinking water, wastewater and stormwater investments. In addition, the federal Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act will provide over $1 billion in funding for North Carolina to supplement existing State Revolving Fund programs,” according to organizers. “There are focused efforts to ensure that funding is made available to address the needs of disadvantaged, underserved communities. Stakeholders include community members, local, state and federal government, and technical service providers.”

The governor’s office and cabinet agencies are asking for public comment, input and recommendations to advance environmental justice.

The state is holding three community input sessions, the first of which is to be held virtually from 4-6 p.m. Dec. 14.

The outreach is a directive under Executive Order 246, North Carolina’s Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy, which Gov. Roy Cooper signed in January.

The Metropolitan Group will facilitate these conversations to identify and prioritize key issues and recommendations for potential future executive action. The Metropolitan Group is a social change advocacy organization based in Portland, Oregon.

The public may participate online or by phone.

To attend via Zoom, use https://metgroup.zoom.us/j/84159161675.

To attend by phone, call 1-971-247-1195 or 877-853-5257. Meeting ID is 841 5916 1675.

To provide comment, fill out the speaker sign-up form available online by 5 p.m. Dec. 13.

The Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board has scheduled an in-person special meeting on biomass and to address questions and concerns about the Enviva plant in Ahoskie and its air quality permit renewal.

The meeting is set for 6 p.m. Nov. 17 in Raleigh.

Enviva seeks to modify its plant to increase production by more than 30%.

The board, in a letter dated Sept. 27 to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser, had sought the special meeting on the current request for the major air quality permit renewal in economically depressed Hertford County. The permit is required under Title V of the federal Clean Air Act.

The public may attend in-person at Green Square Training Room, 217 West Jones St., Raleigh, or online via WebEx. The webinar number is 2439 743 9980 and the password is DEQEJENov, or 33735367 from phones. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 243 974 39980.  

The board is to take public comments during the meeting. To comment in-person or online, fill out the online speaker sign-up form by 5 p.m. Nov. 16.

To view a list of board members and additional meeting materials, visit https://deq.nc.gov/outreach-education/environmental-justice/secretarys-environmental-justice-equity-board.

East Carolina University and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality are among 32 recipients across the country that are to receive more than $9 million in pollution prevention, or P2, grants from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The grants allow states and tribes to provide businesses with technical assistance to prevent or reduce pollution before it is created, while also reducing costs, the EPA said in its announcement Thursday.

The grants are in addition to $12 million in P2 grants that were announced in September and made possible by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s $100 million program investment in the EPA P2 program.

“For more than 30 years, EPA’s P2 grants have helped businesses implement best practices to reduce dangerous pollution in communities, including those that are overburdened and vulnerable,” said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention Jennie Romer in a statement. “Preventing pollution before it starts is an important step in our work to deliver on President Biden’s ambitious environmental agenda, tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice.”

The EPA said many proposed projects center on communities with environmental justice concerns.

Both rounds of grants are part of the president’s initiative that aims to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, clean water, and other investments to disadvantaged communities. The agency anticipates most grants will successfully direct at least 40% of their environmental and human health benefits onto disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

The United States produces billions of pounds of pollution each year and spends billions of dollars per year controlling this pollution. Preventing pollution at the source, which the EPA said is also known as P2 or source reduction, rather than managing waste after it is produced is an important part of advancing a sustainable economic and environmental infrastructure. P2 can lessen exposure to toxic chemicals, conserve natural resources, and reduce financial costs for businesses, particularly costs associated with waste management, disposal and cleanup, the EPA said. These practices are essential for protecting health, improving environmental conditions in and around disadvantaged communities, and preserving natural resources like wetlands, groundwater sources, and other critical ecosystems.

Selected grantees are to, if awarded, document and share P2 best practices that they identify and develop through these grants, so that others can replicate these practices and outcomes. Each selected grantee will address at least one of six National Emphasis Areas, or NEAs, which were established to focus resources to achieve measurable results and to create opportunities to share information among P2 grantees and businesses affiliated with similar NEAs. Each selected grantee is to also develop at least one case study during the grant period on P2 practices that are new or not widely known or adopted, or where detailed information on the P2 practices could benefit other businesses or P2 technical assistance providers.

The agency anticipates that it will award the grants once all legal and administrative requirements are satisfied. Grants supported will be incrementally funded at the time grants are awarded.

During the Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board quarterly meeting Thursday, members will learn more about equitable access to healthy outdoor recreation.

The meeting is to start at 3 p.m. and will be in the Green Square Training Room, 217 West Jones St., Raleigh. The full agenda is available online.

Members of the public are invited to attend in-person or online.

To view the meeting via WebEx, visit https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/j.php?MTID=m04e9bbb132bb998da0913a9d92737b9e. To listen by phone call 415-655-0003. Use meeting number 2433 142 8755 and password 3532273.

The state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson will give the presentation, “Equitable Access to Healthy Outdoor Recreation: The Other Side of the Environmental Justice,” the the board members.

They will also hear more on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Environmental Justice Report, and from the Division of Water Infrastructure on a service line replacement initiative. There will also be a presentation on environmental justice engagement process for executive order 246, which commits the state to a clean energy economy and create economic opportunities, especially in underserved communities.

A public comment period is set for 5 to 6 p.m. To comment in-person or online, register by 10 a.m. Thursday at https://forms.office.com/g/wa3EQJLTBH.

Members of the board were selected from across North Carolina to represent the diverse cultures of the state. To view a full list of the board’s members and additional meeting materials visit https://deq.nc.gov/outreach-education/environmental-justice/secretarys-environmental-justice-equity-board.

A small, predominantly Black community protesting a contaminated landfill in Warren County 40 years ago this month is credited with sparking the environmental justice movement. 

Many who fought for themselves and their neighbors in Warren County, along with environmental justice and civil rights leaders gathered Saturday, Sept. 24, to hear Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan announce a new national office charged with advancing environmental justice and civil rights. 

Environmental justice means fair treatment, or that no group should carry a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies, and meaningful involvement of all regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies, according to the EPA.

The new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will oversee a $3 billion climate and environmental justice grant program created under the Inflation Reduction Act. The office is to be led by a Senate-confirmed assistant administrator yet to be nominated.

“I could not be prouder or more excited to announce today that EPA is creating a new national office charged with advancing environmental justice and civil rights,” Regan said Saturday. “We are elevating environmental justice and external civil rights to the highest levels of EPA, placing this critical work on equal structural footing with the Office of Air, Office of Water, and all of EPA’s other national program offices.”

Regan previously served as the state Department of Environmental Quality secretary before the Biden-Harris administration appointed him EPA administrator. 

The new office will dedicate more than 200 EPA staff to focus on environmental justice and civil rights. The staff will administer the environmental justice grants to “communities that have not had access, who have not had a seat at the table, who haven’t had the infrastructure in place to apply for these dollars, and who have been underserved for far too long,” Regan said. 

Activist Dollie B. Burwell, a leader in the protest 40 years ago in Warren County, addressed the crowd Saturday before Regan made his announcement. She said the community just concluded a commemoration of the birth of the environmental justice movement there. 

Raleigh-based Ward Transformer Co. paid a trucking company in the summer of 1978 to drive along rural North Carolina roads at night while discharging liquid contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, onto the shoulders of roads. PCBs are industrial products or chemicals. This Toxic Substance Control Act violation contaminated soil along 240 miles of roadside in 14 counties, according to the state archives. 

The state, responsible for the cleanup, bought land from a distressed Warren County farmer in December 1978 to build a landfill to bury the toxic waste. The rural county had the highest percentage of African American residents in the state and was one of the poorest. Though civil rights activists and residents began protesting the landfill — around 500 were arrested – the landfill was still put in place. This protest marked the first time that opponents of a hazardous waste facility were detained for civil disobedience.

Burwell said Saturday many courageous and dedicated women, men and children of all races joined in their struggle. They stayed committed until the landfill was cleaned up and detoxified by the federal government in 2004.

Burwell told Regan they were grateful Warren County was chosen to make the announcement. 

“You have acknowledged and recognized the work, the tremendous sacrifice and the legacy of Warren County citizens and the many leaders across this country that started the environmental justice movement and to continue to fight for environmental justice,” she said. “We hope that with this announcement and the policies that it will yield great fruit and that these communities and other communities throughout this nation will be able to accomplish more of their environmental justice goals such as culturally sensitive, environmental health studies.”

Professor La’Meshia Whittington, principal and CEO of Whittington & Staley Consulting Group, is deputy director for Advance Carolina and the North Carolina Black Alliance, co-convener of the NC Black & Brown Policy Network and member of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board.

“Today we honor the labor of the birth of the environmental justice movement that gave us a banner under which we could unify and amplify our collective struggles to push back against the intentional targeting of our communities by dirty corporations. The same corporations who target our neighborhoods nationally are the same corporations causing global warming across the world,” she said. “Honoring the legacy and current impact of those leading the struggle while still being in their struggle is critical to solve the issues and save our nation. And, in turn, save the world because environmental justice is a global movement from our beautiful coastlines, to the scenic mountains, the powerful, rural and urban communities of the United States South and across the nation.”

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, said it had been a long struggle and there remains a long way to go.

“We know that environmental injustice, environmental racism kills. Seven hundred people die every day in this country from poverty, 250,000 die every year from the effects of poverty as it relates to health care, the lack of wages and environmental injustice. We are being called to stop that form of policy murder,” he said. 

Barber said it was time to ensure equal protection under the law, by a person with the full power of the government and $3 billion to protect minority and low-wealth communities that have suffered too long from corporations thinking nobody would stop them. 

Gov. Roy Cooper applauded the effort. 

“For too long, our underserved communities have been disproportionately impacted by climate change and unfair environmental impacts. That’s why we’re focused on moving North Carolina toward a more equitable, clean energy future for all, and this new office will help our state and country get there even sooner,” he said in a statement.

The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights Office was created by merging the Office of Environmental Justice, External Civil Rights Compliance Office, and Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center, existing programs at the agency. 

Officials said the new office will improve and enhance the agency’s ability to infuse equity, civil rights, and environmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and programs; support the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies regardless of race, color, national origin, or income; engage communities with environmental justice concerns and increase support for community-led action through grants and technical assistance; and enforce federal civil rights laws that, together, prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, sex, disability or age by applicants for and recipients of federal financial assistance from EPA.

Provide services and expertise in alternative dispute resolution, environmental conflict resolution, consensus-building, and collaborative problem solving.

Regan closed his comments Saturday with, “My brothers and sisters, this is essential work. It’s the work I came to this administration to do, and it’s the work that all of you have been demanding for generations. So, together, that is what we will do. Let’s go.”

The Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will hold its quarterly business meeting at 3 p.m. Oct. 13 in Raleigh.

An agenda is to be provided closer to the meeting date, officials said.

The public can attend the meeting in-person at the Green Square Training Room, 217 West Jones St., or online via WebEx at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/j.php?MTID=m04e9bbb132bb998da0913a9d92737b9e.

The public can also call 415-655-0003 to listen. Use meeting number is 2433 142 8755 and password EJEABQ3, or 3532273 from phones.

There will be a public comment period at 5 p.m. To comment in-person or online, fill out the online speaker form by 10 a.m. Oct. 13.

Board members were selected from across North Carolina to represent the diverse cultures. To view a full list of the board’s members and additional meeting materials, visit the board’s website.

A talk on “Rachel Carson, Wood Pellets, and Environmental Justice” is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 29 at University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Dr. Bob Musil, president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council, is set to share Carson’s love of North Carolina and “how she would have been deeply opposed to the widespread clear-cutting of forests to produce wood pellets for overseas electricity production,” according to the organization.

The public is welcome to attend the free event in Morton Hall, room 100.

The Rachel Carson Council is a national environmental advocacy organization founded in 1965 to carry on the work and legacy of Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring.”

Musil is also expected to speak about the Rachel Carson Council, or RCC, its fellowship program for students and how to get involved. The RCC Fellowship Program was designed to provide students who have a passion for environmental education, organizing and advocacy and provide them financial support to carry out projects and campaigns on behalf of the council.

Contact the national office in Maryland for more information at 301-214-2400 or email office@rachelcarsoncouncil.org.

Several North Carolina environmental groups are backing Gov. Roy Cooper’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the legislature-appointed commission tasked with reviewing and approving rules adopted by state agencies.

The Southern Environmental Law Center recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Wake County Superior Court on behalf of the groups supporting the governor’s challenge to the North Carolina Rules Review Commission.

The governor’s office filed a lawsuit in the same court two years ago, arguing that the commission, which was created by and whose members are selected by the General Assembly, violates the state constitution’s Separation of Powers clause.

That clause mandates that the legislative, executive and supreme judicial powers of the state government “shall be forever separate and distinct from each other.”

The environmental groups supporting the governor’s challenge include Cape Fear River Watch, Carolina Wetlands Association, CleanAIRE NC, Democracy Green, Haw River Assembly, MountainTrue, North Carolina Black Alliance, Sound Rivers, West End Revitalization Association and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“The groups we represent in the amicus wanted to join to show how this matters in real life and demonstrate that this isn’t just a meaningless power struggle between the governor and the legislature. This is about things that affect real people,” said Kym Meyer, a senior attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center.

The case is pending before a three-judge panel of state Superior Court judges and a hearing has been set for Nov. 9.

Challenging absolute power

Whether the rule is one that a state agency has created about wetlands protections or cadmium exposure in the workplace, the Rules Review Commission determines which rules do and do not make it on the books.

“It’s not about something about a license plate,” Meyer said. “It’s about E. coli in your water or which wells we’re going to protect or climate change issues and so the stakes are really high and dramatically affect the interests of all the client groups who signed on who are working really hard to protect resources, but can only do so if government agencies are going to be able to do their job and enforce the law.”

In the decade before the General Assembly created the Rules Review Commission in 1986, legislators had formed the Administrative Rules Review Commission, a panel of nine legislators who could object to, but not veto, proposed rules.

Related: Rules Review Commission meets Sept. 15

The Rules Review Commission, a 10-member body for which the legislature’s appointees serve two years, remained an advisory board until the mid-1990s when a series of amendments were made to the North Carolina Administrative Procedure Act.

In 2003, rulemaking agencies were granted the right to file for court-issued judgments in cases where the commission vetoed proposed rules.

The structure of the Rules Review Commission has, for years, been subject to lengthy legal debates and its decisions have been challenged over the years.

In 2004, the Environmental Management Commission sued the Rules Review Commission for declining proposed stormwater rules opposed by real estate developers and homebuilders. A few years later, the General Assembly approved a compromise that included scaled-back requirements for protecting water quality.

In 2014, the North Carolina State Board of Education filed a lawsuit against the commission, arguing the board of education was not constitutionally bound to submit its policies to the Rules Review Commission.

Three years later, an appellate court overturned a lower court’s ruling in favor of the board of education.

Two of the three appellate court judges who reviewed the case determined the Rules Review Commission is authorized to review and approve the board’s policies.

The dissenting judge argued that the state constitution gives the state board of education, not the Rules Review Commission, the power to administer and supervise public education.

A roadblock in the process

The environmental groups, Meyer said, are starting to feel like the commission is putting a roadblock in the rule implementation process by either slowing it down, stopping it, or potentially leading to agencies shying away from creating rules.

A 2004 paper published in the North Carolina Law Review points out that unlike administrative agencies, the commission is not restricted from being contacted by lobbyists.

Powerful lobbying groups get a voice in the legislative process, one that includes votes that go before both the House and Senate and, if passed, are signed off by the governor.

“That’s how we make law,” Meyer said. “But the problem here is this isn’t about making law. This isn’t the legislative process. This is about how, once laws are on the books, how they’re actually enforced in real time and that’s the governor’s job.”

Environmental justice groups that have aligned with the governor’s challenge to the Rules Review Commission depend on the governor to be able to do that job, Meyer said.

“They don’t have the same level of voice in the legislative process that powerful, rich interests might have so you can see the more political all of these processes become the more problematic it is for marginalized communities,” she said.

The Andrea Harris Equity Task Force has been reestablished to continue addressing social, economic and health disparities in underserved and underrepresented communities.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order Wednesday. The executive order that had established the task force July 1, 2020, expired June 4 of this year.

The Cooper administration established the Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental, and Health Equity Task Force to address the social, environmental, economic, and health disparities in communities of color disproportionally impacted by COVID-19.

“A talented, educated and diverse workforce is one of North Carolina’s greatest strengths and it’s important for us to keep working to eliminate the barriers our communities of color have faced for too long,” Cooper said in a statement. “I’m grateful that the Andrea Harris Equity Task Force will continue the efforts to make our state a more fair and just state for all.”

Named in honor of the late civil rights activist, Andrea Harris, who dedicated her life to eliminating disparities in North Carolina, the task force targets core areas including access to healthcare, economic opportunities and business development, educational opportunity, environmental justice and inclusion, and patient engagement.

The task force established 21 policy recommendations across the five core areas of healthcare, business development, education, environmental justice and inclusion and engagement, the governor’s administration said. Nine of those recommendations have been fully implemented while the other 12 are in progress through the work of Task Force subcommittees and state agencies.

“Thanks to the work of the Task Force, we’ve made important gains and now we can continue the mission to further economic development, improve health and wellness, and advance equitable practices within state agencies,” Administration Secretary Pamela Cashwell said.

The task force also secured funding to help implement NCCARE360, a resource to connect North Carolinians with local health, housing, employment and transportation services, and helped secure funding to address environmental issues, like lead and asbestos, in public schools.

The task force advocated for more digital access across the state and partnered with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to develop a digital literacy curriculum and toolkit that is accessible to all families in their native language.

In alignment with Andrea Harris’s legacy, the task force supported historically underutilized businesses, encouraging state contractors to commit to spending at least 8% on historically underutilized businesses.

The Andrea Harris Equity Task Force is to be made up of members appointed by the governor who represent various state agencies and community organizations, including the following:

• Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Administration.
• Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for North Carolina Commerce.
• Digital Equity and Literacy Director for the North Carolina Department of Information Technology.
• Chief health equity officer for North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
• Executive director of the North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office.
• Office of Civil Rights director for North Carolina Department of Transportation.
• Office of Historically Black Colleges and Universities Outreach director for NCDOT.
• Hometown Strong.
• North Carolina Department of Administration Commission of Indian Affairs.
• Governor’s Advisory Council on Hispanic-Latino Affairs.
• North Carolina Council for Women Advisory Board.
• Historically Underutilized Business Advisory Council.
• North Carolina Department of Administration Commission on Inclusion.
• North Carolina Community College System or UNC System Office.
• North Carolina Historically Black College or University or a Minority Serving Institution.
• Four community organizations aligned with the mission of the Andrea Harris Equity Task Force.

RALEIGH — The Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. Aug. 11 in-person in the Archdale Ground Floor Hearing Room.

The board was put in place in May 2018 to assist the Department of Environmental Quality “in achieving and maintaining the fair and equal treatment and meaningful involvement of North Carolinians regardless of where they live, their race, religion or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The agenda for the Aug. 11 meeting is to be posted on the website, a DEQ representative told Coastal Review.

The public can attend in person or listen to the meeting online through WebEx. The meeting number is 2424 208 8665 and the password is NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 242 420 88665.

The cumulative impacts subcommittee is to meet an hour before the board meeting.

DEQ defines cumulative impacts as those “environmental impacts resulting from incremental effects of an activity when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future activities regardless of what entities undertaken such other actions.”

A public comment period is set for 5 p.m. Aug. 11. Those wishing to speak may sign up at the meeting.

NOAA Fisheries is asking for public comment until Aug. 19 and will host four webinars on its first-ever draft Equity and Environmental Justice Strategy.

The strategy is to provide guidance for incorporating and prioritizing equity and environmental justice in ongoing and future activities in support of NOAA Fisheries’ mission. NOAA Fisheries, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, is an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Department of Commerce.

“NOAA Fisheries is focused on serving all communities more equitably and effectively, and this strategy will provide the framework to do just that,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries and NOAA’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, in a statement.

“We are committed to advancing equity and environmental justice, including equal treatment, opportunities, and environmental benefits for all people and communities, while building on continuing efforts and partnerships with underserved and underrepresented communities,” she added.

In addition to written comments, which will be accepted until Aug. 19, comments will be accepted during the following scheduled webinars:

• Register for the 4 p.m. May 24 webinar
• Register for the 6 p.m. June 21 webinar
• Register for the 7 p.m. June 30 webinar
• Register for the 4 p.m. July 19 webinar

Through this call for public comment, officials seek help identifying the underserved communities and how to to reduce barriers to underserved communities. The agency is also asking for information on how to better incorporate equity and environmental justice into daily activities, and how to improve equity in agency programs and policies now and in the future. Feedback on evaluating whether the draft recommendations for action are on target is also requested.

The comments provided will inform NOAA Fisheries’ final strategy.

“While we are making progress in addressing equity and environmental justice, we know that we have much more work to do to embed EEJ into our day-to-day efforts,” said NOAA Fisheries Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, Sam Rauch, who also convened and led the agency’s EEJ Working Group. “By focusing on these goals and objectives we will provide more equitable stewardship of the nation’s ocean resources and their habitat.”

To achieve the agency’s initial equity and environmental justice goals, each of the agency’s national program offices and geographic regions will incorporate EEJ into a step-down implementation plan. These plans will be specific and responsive to the needs of underserved communities and allows for the input of underserved communities, according to NOAA Fisheries.

The North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board meets May 19 in Raleigh.

An agenda for the regular quarterly meeting had not been posted at time of publication.

The in-person meeting begins at 3 p.m. in Room 3 of the North Carolina State University McKimmon Center. The public can attend in person or stream the meeting online.

To attend online use WebEx or to listen by phone, call 415-655-0003. Use event number: 2423 590 4656 and password NCDEQ.

A public comment period is set to start at 5 p.m.

The public outreach subcommittee meets beforehand at 1 p.m. and the cumulative impacts subcommittee at 2 p.m.

The board has also scheduled a special meeting Tuesday on cumulative impacts. Cumulative impacts are the combined, incremental effects of human activity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Related: Special virtual meeting set for Environmental Justice Board

To view a full list of board members and additional meeting materials go to: https://deq.nc.gov/outreach-education/environmental-justice/secretarys-environmental-justice-equity-board.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials announced last week three steps they say will better protect communities from pollutants that are often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment or in our bodies.

The federal agency detailed plans to improve methods to detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in water, reduce PFAS discharges into the country’s waterways, and protect fish and aquatic ecosystems from PFAS. 

PFAS are a large group of man-made chemicals resistant to heat, oils, stains, grease and water that have been used in consumer products and industrial processes since the 1940s. Research shows that exposure to some PFAS may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.

Many in the state have been keeping close tabs on action being taken to stop PFAS pollution since news broke five years ago that the chemicals were detected in the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for many in the Wilmington area.

The Wilmington StarNews first reported in June 2017 that a North Carolina State University-led study had detected a compound called GenX and other PFAS in the Cape Fear River. Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility was found to be the source of the chemicals in the waterway.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, litigated a 2019 consent order requiring Chemours to stop at least 99% of PFAS pollution. During all this, EPA Administrator Michael Regan was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Regan put out a statement Thursday on the latest actions, which follow the administration’s plan announced last fall to combat PFAS pollution and complement the $10 billion in spending to address PFAS and emerging contaminants in the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation passed last year.

“EPA is using all available tools to address PFAS contamination as part of a broader, whole of government effort to protect communities across the country from these chemicals,” Regan said. “This is why we put a Strategic Roadmap in place, and why President Biden fought for billions in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to tackle this challenge. Today’s actions help protect the health of all Americans as we deliver on our commitment to research, restrict, and remediate PFAS.”

New testing method

PFAS and non-PFAS fluorinated compounds such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals are a common source of organofluorines, or molecules with a carbon-fluorine bond, found in wastewater, according to the EPA.

EPA’s Draft Method 1621 announced Thursday detects organofluorines, which do not often occur naturally. When used in conjunction with methods that target individual PFAS, the new method can broadly screen for the presence of PFAS at the parts-per-billion level in wastewater. It’s still in testing and officials intend to publish an updated version later this year. 

Dana Sargent, executive director with Cape Fear River Watch, responded to Coastal Review in an email Friday, saying that the new method would add to, but should not replace, the current method, mass spectrometry using targeted analysis. She said current the method alone only provides insight on a tiny subset of the PFAS known to be out there. 

“The nontargeted analysis the consent order required Chemours conduct showed 257 ‘unknown’ PFAS being discharged from this one facility, yet regular sampling by the state, utilities and others only provides concentrations for about 20-30 PFAS,” she said. “Neither the public nor our decision makers are getting an accurate view of the extent of the issue when relying solely on testing for specific PFAS. This new method will not provide specifics on which types of PFAS or how much of each is in a given sample, but will give us that big picture view to inform more detailed sampling.”

New permitting direction

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permitting program, created in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, helps address water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants to waters of the United States.

EPA officials propose to use existing NPDES authorities to reduce discharges at the source and obtain more comprehensive information through monitoring on sources of PFAS.

The agency on Thursday issued the memo, Addressing PFAS Discharges in EPA-Issued NPDES Permits and Expectations Where EPA is the Pretreatment Control Authority, which provides instructions for monitoring provisions, analytical methods, the use of pollution prevention, and best management practices to address discharges of PFAS. 

EPA also plans to issue new guidance to state permitting authorities to address PFAS in NPDES permits in a future action.

Sargent noted that the instructions for federally issued NPDES permits would not apply to permits issued by states, “So we look forward to even stronger recommendations from EPA to the states.”

Protecting aquatic life

EPA officials are also proposing the first Clean Water Act aquatic life criteria for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, to protect aquatic life from short-term and long-term toxic effects of these chemicals, which are two of the most studied PFAS.

The agency published Monday in the Federal Register the “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)” and “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS)” for a 30-day public comment period ending June 2. 

Following the comment period, the EPA intends to issue final PFOA and PFOS recommended criteria. States and Tribes may consider adopting the final criteria into their water quality standards or can adopt other scientifically defensible criteria that are based on local or site-specific conditions. 

In the Cape Fear area, advocates say many depend on subsistence fishing. They say standards for aquatic life are important for those who consume it.

Veronica Carter is a member of DEQ’s 16-member Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, Leland town council member and longtime board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. She is among those who have called for safeguards for people who consume fish they catch in the river. She said the potential exposure to contaminants is an environmental justice issue. 

It’s a source of protein for those who can’t afford to buy food, Carter says in a video made last summer for the Stop, Check, and Enjoy! campaign, a collaborative effort that encourages eating and preparing fish in ways to limit exposure to chemical contaminants found in those caught in the Cape Fear River. 

“It’s an environmental justice issue because it is not their fault that the river is impaired. We have polluted the environment, our Cape Fear River,” Carter says in the video. 

Carter said it’s great that there’s a new way to detect PFAS levels, but “what are we doing about getting rid of PFAS?”

“I don’t want to reduce, I want to eliminate,” she said.

‘Well past time’

Sargent said in an interview that there needs to be requirements and reminders by the EPA that state regulators adhere to the Clean Water Act and include technology-based effluent limits within their permits, rather than rely on best management practices after the fact. 

States should not be permitted to wait for a permit to expire, but should have the authority to revise current permits to stop the ongoing contamination by PFAS polluters across this country now, she said.

“Polluters have been given carte blanche to dump their toxic chemicals into our environment and our bodies for decades; it is well past time for our regulators to protect people and the environment instead of the corporate polluters,” she added.

The Southern Environmental Law Center’s Geoff Gisler, senior attorney who represented Cape Fear River Watch against Chemours in North Carolina, said in a statement Thursday that the EPA’s action is the beginning of a significant step forward in protecting communities from PFAS. 

The groups’ lawsuit resulted in a consent order with DEQ, Riverwatch and Chemours to stop the GenX and other PFAS pollution at its source.

Related: Chemours asks to build barrier wall to slow PFAS

“The agency recognizes that existing law requires all sources to disclose their pollution and that EPA has the responsibility to reduce or eliminate those discharges through the permitting process,” he said. “Now, the agency must put monitoring requirements and pollution controls into action. We encourage EPA to use its full authority under the Clean Water Act to eliminate PFAS contamination by modifying its permits as fast as possible.”  

Carter said one of her concerns is that low-income families downriver are paying for water they can’t drink and can’t afford to buy bottled water. Particularly school-aged children who are receiving free breakfast and lunch, “what do they do about water? The water fountains are closed off and they can’t afford to buy bottled water for the kids.”

“At least the EPA is talking about PFAS, and I give Regan credit for that. One of the things I said to him when he left DEQ was not to forget us, and he hasn’t,” Carter said. “It is going to take state law and permit changes to protect us better from pollution.”

She said action needs to come from the federal government as well.

“Pollution doesn’t recognize state boundaries.”

The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will hold a special, online meeting at 6 p.m. May 10 on the topic of cumulative impacts.

Cumulative impacts are the combined, incremental effects of human activity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The public can attend online through WebEx. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003. Use access code 2430 824 0075 and password is NCDEQ.A public comment period will be held during the meeting. To speak, sign up, use the online form by 4 p.m. May 10.

The quarterly business meeting for the advisory board is scheduled for May 19. Additional details are to be announced.

Members of the board were selected from across the state. To view a full list of members and additional meeting materials visit the webpage.

The state Department of Transportation has scheduled a virtual session to present to the public an overview of the North Carolina Clean Transportation Plan initiative, part of the governor’s broader push toward a clean energy economy.

The session begins at 10 a.m. Friday. Register online.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed Executive Order 246 “North Carolina’s Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy” in January of this year directing the state to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions, advance environmental justice and create good paying jobs for North Carolinians throughout the state.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has been tasked as part of the executive order to create a North Carolina Clean Transportation Plan by April 2023. The plan aims to collaborate with stakeholders to recommend strategies to reduce greenhouse gasses in the transportation sector, according to the state.

The webinar is to open with remarks by Cooper and state Transportation Secretary Eric Boyette, followed by department staff and others who are to give an overview of the Clean Transportation Plan process and introduce stakeholders to work groups the department has established to co-create plan recommendations.

Attendees are to be provided with different ways to engage in the Clean Transportation Plan process and offer input during the the process.

A community event to promote ways to reduce health risk from eating fish caught in the Cape Fear River is set for this weekend.

“Go Fish! Eating Safer from the Cape Fear River” is scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. March 27 at New Hanover County Arboretum, 6206 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.

The event is part of Cape Fear River Fish Consumption Month and the Stop Check Enjoy! outreach campaign, which was created to help people avoid contaminants by choosing to eat safer types of fish. Cape Fear River Watch, Duke University Superfund Research Center, North Carolina State Cooperative Extension and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, as well as other community partners organized the event.

There will be community speakers and outreach activities, lawn games, activities for children, Poor Piggys BBQ and T’Geaux Boys food trucks, and no-cost COVID-19 vaccines.

Related: Fish study’s findings trigger consumption advisory update

While many fish from the river because it is culturally important and provides a low-cost source of protein, Cape Fear River is listed as an impaired waterway by the Environmental Protection Agency and fish from the river may contain chemical contaminants that can cause harm to the health of those who eat them, particularly children, according to the EPA.

“The purpose of the event and the month as a whole is to educate the public about ways to reduce the health risks from eating fish from the Cape Fear River by choosing safer fish species and the preparation methods that reduce the amount of contaminants,” organizers said.

Simultaneous translation will be provided for Spanish speakers. Parking is on-site but limited, organizers ask attendees consider carpooling or using public transportation.

Contact contact Chiara Klein with Duke Superfund Research Center at 845-544-5535 or chiara.klein@duke.edu for more details.

Guest commentary

This is the first in a commentary series by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

North Carolina’s coastal communities have a front-row seat to many of the most visible signs of climate change. As sea level rise threatens our coastal communities, and as storms and flooding become more frequent and intense across the state, it’s clear climate change isn’t something that’s coming — it’s something that’s already here.

When North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed Executive Order 246 (EO246) on Jan. 7, he sent an important signal that North Carolina is sharpening its focus on addressing climate change and creating a more equitable future. The directives of EO246 align the state’s climate ambitions with what the international scientific consensus tells us is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and seeks to better address environmental inequities that have long plagued the state, many of which are exacerbated by climate change.

While these goals are a critical first step for North Carolina to do its part to address the causes and effects of climate change, achieving these targets requires swift, tangible action to secure a healthier and more equitable future for North Carolinians.

Executive Order 246 is not the governor’s first venture into the climate space. Executive Order 80 (EO80), signed in October 2018, was Gov. Cooper’s first order committing the state to important climate pollution goals: reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40% from 2005 levels by 2025.

Over three years later, EO246 builds upon the goals of EO80 by committing the state to reducing GHG emissions at least 50% from 2005 levels by 2030, and reaching net-zero GHG emissions as soon as possible, no later than 2050. The most recent order also adds complementary goals of getting 1.25 million zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) on the road by 2030, and for 50% of new vehicle sales to be ZEVs by the same year.

Raising the state’s ambition to tackle climate pollution economy-wide, EO246 sets the stage for action to complement the ongoing work to reduce pollution from the state’s electric power sector with the added focus on transportation. This expanded focus makes perfect sense, as the state’s recent GHG inventory affirms that electric power and transportation remain North Carolina’s top two sources of GHGs, together accounting for nearly 70% of the state’s total emissions. The GHG inventory demonstrates that there is much work to do to reduce the state’s current emissions levels in line with the goals for the new executive order. New policies and programs will need to be implemented quickly to accelerate pollution reductions and put the state firmly on a trajectory to reach these important goals. 

In addition to expanding upon emissions goals, EO246 aims to better incorporate environmental justice (EJ) and equity into the administration’s processes and decisions, striving to address disparate environmental and public health impacts among historically marginalized communities. Conversations regarding equity and climate are too often siloed, when in reality these issues deeply intersect, as communities of color, low-income and indigenous communities bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and are often on the frontlines of increasingly harmful climate impacts. EO246 provides a structure to consider these issues in tandem by directing cabinet agencies to consider environmental justice and equity in decision making related to climate change, resilience, and clean energy. 

To operationalize this goal, each agency is directed to designate an “EJ Lead” to spearhead these efforts, and to develop annual public participation plans, laying out how the agency will solicit and incorporate public input, particularly from frontline communities, into agency decisions. Agencies are also instructed to prioritize distribution of state and federal funds to invest in historically underserved communities and to advance health and economic equity. EO246 directs the convening of a third-party facilitated dialogue among state agencies and community leaders to ensure a trusted and holistic dialogue in order to identify opportunities to address the disproportionately harmful outcomes faced by impacted communities.

All of these proposals are an important step toward addressing environmental and public health challenges that will be exacerbated by the increasingly acute impacts of climate change. While these processes are important, the ultimate measure of success for EO246’s equity provisions will be the institutionalization of new behaviors, processes, and funding priorities to benefit impacted communities across all agencies – changing the way our state does business.  

Gov. Cooper has laid the foundation to leave a lasting impact on North Carolina communities through the goals and directives of EO80 and EO246. Now it’s time to make sure North Carolina gets there by listening to the most impacted communities, tracking progress and acknowledging shortcomings, and implementing new solutions to close the gap between where we are and where we are going.

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or the North Carolina Coastal Federation. Submissions may be edited for clarity.

North Carolinians can apply for up to $500,000 in grants to fund projects that improve and protect environment and natural resources.

Through Attorney General Josh Stein’s office, the Environmental Enhancement Grant program released Tuesday its request for proposals. Letters of intent are due on March 31 and completed proposals are due May 26.

A voluntary interest meeting for further information is set to be held remotely at 10 a.m. March 22. Email eeg@ncdoj.gov for more information or to reserve a spot at the meeting.

“The Environmental Enhancement Grant program has invested more than $38 million in nearly 200 projects that protect our natural resources and improve North Carolinians’ quality of life,” said Stein in a statement. “These projects are critical to cleaning the air we breathe and the water we drink. Many also help address environmental issues that harm disadvantaged communities. If you’re working on an environmental project that could benefit our state and its people, please consider applying for these grants.”

The EEG program funds three-year grant projects of up to $500,000 from nonprofit organizations, including academic and government institutions that improve air, water, and land quality in the state.

Several EEG awards were presented last year, many on the coast. The city of Jacksonville was awarded $175,000 to expand 12 of the existing New River Estuary Oyster Highway reef sites, construct 1,850 small patch reefs and add nearly 2.5 million oysters to improve biofiltration.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust also received $50,000 to acquire 348 acres of Hoggard’s Millpond Tract and transfer it to the town of Windsor to create a new public park and Bertie County Hive House received $74,350 to improve a 4-acre greenspace in Lewiston Woodville through cleaning, stormwater remediation, and planting.

Preference is given to projects in or benefiting underserved or overburdened communities, such as those with vulnerable populations or environmental justice concerns, according to Stein’s office. EEG funds have previously been used for projects including green jobs, wetland restoration, land acquisition, stormwater remediation, stream stabilization and buffer installations.

The EEG program was established in 2000 with funds from a 25-year agreement between then-Attorney General Michael Easley and Smithfield Foods to provide $2 million every year for environmental projects across the state. Since the program began, the Office of Attorney General has awarded more than $38 million to nearly 200 projects.

More information about the 2021 grant cycle is available online.

There are no invisible barriers, no protective borders that stop contaminated water and air traveling from poorer, predominately Black communities to more affluent, largely white towns and neighborhoods.

What happens in communities of color, which are disproportionately affected by polluters that discharge chemicals into waterways, spray them on the ground or emit them through smokestacks into the air, should sound the alarm for what’s to come for the larger region, said La’Meshia Whittington, a professor in Meredith College’s division of sociology, deputy director for Advance Carolina and campaigns director for the North Carolina Black Alliance.

Whittington was among a handful of panelists who spoke Sunday during a forum hosted at the University of North Carolina Wilmington by the People of Scientific and Equitable Achievement, or P.O.S.E.A., a student-led initiative to support inclusion, diversity and equity in the sciences. The organization was formed last year by students Ashantee Pickett and Makayla Oneil and sponsored by UNCW’s Center for Marine Science and MarineQuest, a marine science outreach program.

The public event, hosted in person and online, tackled issues of environmental justice and water quality in an area where drinking water sources have been plagued by industrial discharges of chemical compounds known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, hog lagoon and coal ash spills, and runoff from large animal feeding operations.

“You should be guaranteed affordable, safe water,” said Roger Shew, a geologist and earth and ocean sciences lecturer at UNCW. “It’s a fundamental, given right. The government has an obligation to protect our waters. Unfortunately, that’s not enough, as you know.”

Shew and other panelists discussed the history of how government, driven by economics, has worked on the side of industry as opposed to the people.

It’s a history, Whittington explained, of the institution of slavery, beginning with enslaved Africans forced to work plantations that phased into corporations that set up shop in predominately Black communities, paid low wages, and were allowed to discharge pollutants on the ground and into the waters and air within these communities.

Black communities that thrived were targeted, she said, through Jim Crow legislation.

Such is evidenced in places like Warren County, a rural, poor and largely Black county in the northeastern Piedmont region of the state, that, after its residents in 1982 protested the dumping of thousands of truckloads of soil contaminated with toxic PCBs within the county, gained national attention and became the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.

Just across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington sits another predominately Black community where, for decades, a thick, tar-like substance called creosote was stored in unlined ponds.

The former Kerr-McGee wood treatment plant, now a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, is just one instance of industrial pollution within the 14-square-mile town of Navassa.

There are also brownfield sites within the town, which has a population of about 2,100 to 2,200 residents, about 70% of whom are Black, according Navassa Mayor Eulis Willis.

Willis said he watched creosote bubble up from Sturgeon Creek as a North Carolina Department of Transportation crew worked in 2002 to replace the bridge that connects the town to neighboring Leland.

He talked about Navassa’s history and the town’s ties to the Gullah Geechee, descendants of West Africans enslaved on rice and indigo plantations along the south Atlantic Coast.

The land on which the former creosote plant was located was a rice plantation.

“Right now, it’s about, I’d probably say, halfway through,” Willis said of the EPA’s process to remediate the Superfund site.

Further up the Cape Fear River from Navassa, rural, poor, largely nonwhite communities have been dealing with a different type of industry – concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

CAFOs are large-scale industrial agricultural facilities that raise animals for meat, eggs or milk.

Larry Cahoon, UNCW professor of biology and marine biology and advocacy committee chair of Cape Fear River Watch’s board of directors, shared the history of how these large animal feeding operations landed in disadvantaged communities.

It’s a story that goes back to the 1930s, when tobacco was the state’s golden crop and the federal government established allotments in an effort to raise the price of tobacco.

County-level boards got to determine which farmers received an allotment.

“Which tobacco farmers do you think got allotments and which tobacco farmers did not?” Cahoon asked the audience. “Black tobacco farmers, and there had been some, were shut out across the board, and so the opportunity to make a lot of money was systemically denied to Black farmers.”

In the mid-2000s, as tobacco was being phased out, the farmers who had government allotments were given dibs on the burgeoning swine industry in North Carolina, he said.

Black farmers, once again, were kept out of the most lucrative farming, Cahoon said.

“That’s systemic racism at work,” he said.

CAFOs are disproportionately in communities with higher percentages of people of color and low-income residents. These large animal feeding operations are known to pollute ground and surface water and reduce air quality.

More than two decades ago, Cahoon and a colleague were hired to lend their expertise to Waterkeeper Alliance, which filed a civil suit against pork giant Smithfield Foods.

The lawsuit ultimately resulted in what is referred to as the Smithfield Agreement, a 2000 settlement between the company and the state attorney general where Smithfield and its subsidiaries agreed to pay up to $2 million each year for 25 years.

The money is placed into an account and distributed through the state’s Environmental Enhancement Grant, or EEG, Program to projects designed to enhance the environment.

Last fall, Cahoon and UNCW research professor Michael Mallin received an EEG of more than $90,000 to study water quality of wet detention ponds.

“The waters of the state actually belong to the people of the state,” he said. “Not a private corporation. Not the government. The government is supposed to act as stewards of those resources. They were the ones who are supposed to make sure our waters are fishable, swimmable and drinkable, and when they’re not that means the government hasn’t done its job.”

He said that government should be accountable for ensuring industries keep their waste from intruding on the properties and in the bodies of private residents.

“The fights that we’re fighting here involve the use of other people’s properties and bodies for waste and disposal,” Cahoon said. “I think what we need to do is come back to the notion that you keep your stuff on your property and don’t let it come off.””

Sunday’s forum was the third hosted by P.O.S.E.A.

The public is being asked to fill out the North Carolina Access Survey by March 4 on government access issues faced by communities that are underserved, overburdened and have historically been left out of the participatory process.

The purpose of the survey is to start a dialogue with members of the public and help state agency officials better understand the issues and challenges that the public faces when interacting with state agencies, and to identify ways to improve public access and enhance transparency of state government, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice Program.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed in January Executive Order No. 246, North Carolina’s Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy. “This Order includes several provisions that underscore the importance of environmental justice and equity as we make the transition a clean, equitable economy,” according to an email from his office about the survey.

Related: Governor recommits to a clean energy economy

The order directs each ”Cabinet agency to develop an agency public participation plan” based on stakeholder input. Though state agencies have until the first of June to develop plans, Cooper’s office determined it will be useful to develop a model plan each agency can use to create their own plans. The Regulatory Assistance Project is to develop the model.

The order also directs cabinet agencies to name an environmental justice and equity lead. Cabinet agency leads have been appointed and are listed on the Cabinet Agency Environmental Justice and Equity Leads website, which states the following duties of each EJ lead:

• Serve as the agency point person for environmental justice efforts.
• Inform development and implementation of the agency public participation plan described in Section 8 of the executive order. 
• Work with EJ leads in other agencies to share and coordinate related activities, best practices and relevant data.
• Identify, describe, and post on a readily available page of the agency’s website agency decisions that significantly impact or may significantly impact underserved communities.
• Increase awareness among agency leadership and staff of the history and current impacts of environmental, economic and racial injustice.
• Take additional actions as appropriate to further the directives of the order.

Millions in payments by Smithfield Foods to North Carolina can be routed to grants for environmental enhancement projects and are not civil penalties that must be designated for schools, the state’s high court ruled last week.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the North Carolina Court of Appeals acted prematurely when it allowed the New Hanover County Board of Education to raise on appeal a new claim that had not been argued in a lower court.

The 6-0 decision means money paid out from a 2000 settlement between the pork giant and then-Attorney General Mike Easley may continue to be funneled to the state’s Environmental Enhancement Grant, or EEG, program.

That program was established in 2001 by Gov. Roy Cooper, who was at that time attorney general, as a way to disburse funds collected under the Smithfield Agreement.

Under the terms of the agreement, Smithfield and its subsidiaries agreed to pay up to $2 million each year for 25 years to a savings account where the money is held until it is distributed by the attorney general to environmental enhancement projects.

Francis De Luca, former president of Civitas Institute, a Raleigh-based conservative policy organization, filed a complaint in Wake County Superior Court in fall 2016 alleging the payments made as part of the agreement were civil penalties and, per the state Constitution, the funds should go to county schools. De Luca added the New Hanover County Board of Education as a party plaintiff in early 2017.

De Luca eventually removed himself from the case, one that has played out like a back-and-forth tennis match of the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court.

“This is hopefully the last time that the courts have to hear arguments about the Environmental Enhancement Grant Program,” Blakely Hildebrand, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a telephone interview Monday.

The law center represented the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation and Sound Rivers Inc., which joined the case in 2017 in support of Attorney General Josh Stein.

Stein had moved the annual payments from a private bank account to the Office of State Treasurer out of abundance of caution before the Court of Appeals’ December 2020 ruling that the money had to be paid into the treasury or the general fund.

That ruling reversed the state Supreme Court’s April 2020 ruling in favor of the attorney general’s office and that the payments did not constitute penalties.

In the split decision, Judge Philip Berger Jr. and Judge John Tyson had ruled that N.C. General Statute 147-76.1, referred by some as the “gift statute,” applies to present and future funds paid under the agreement and that the law mandates those funds be deposited into the treasury.

Cooper signed that bill into law in 2019, some three years before the lawsuit was filed in Wake County Superior Court.

Dissenting Judge Wanda Bryant noted in a separate opinion that the appellate court’s ruling was premature and that the board of education’s claim should first be argued in a trial court.

The split decision entitled the parties to get another hearing before the Supreme Court.

Berger, an associate justice in the Supreme Court, did not participate in that court’s deliberations on the case.

Associate Justice Sam Ervin IV wrote that the board of education can choose to file a new lawsuit to argue where the money should be routed.

Paul “Skip” Stam, the plaintiff’s lead attorney, did not return a call seeking comment.

“We are very pleased with the outcome of this decision and we’re glad that this really important program can continue to operate for the next several years in a way that benefits communities and the environment in North Carolina,” Hildebrand said. “This program is really important to particularly the environment and also to the nonprofit organizations that do the hard work under this grant program.”

To date, the attorney general’s office has awarded nearly $37 million to more than 190 projects in the state. Those projects include wetland restoration, land acquisition, stormwater remediation, stream stabilization, and environmental education and research initiatives.

Since the program launched, 240 abandoned hog lagoons have been closed and more than 31,000 acres of land and wildlife habitats have been conserved or restored, according to the attorney general’s website.

The program awards $5,000 up to $500,000 in grants for a three-year project and grants are available only to nonprofit organizations, including academic institutions and government entities.

Last year, Stein awarded nearly $3 million to 27 grantees. More than $850,000 EEG projects were funded in eastern North Carolina last November.

A subcommittee of the Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental and Health Equity Task Force is hosting a listening session from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 24, to hear comments from the public on priorities for addressing environmental justice concerns across the state.

The Andrea Harris Task Force’s Environmental Justice and Inclusion Subcommittee is inviting the public to sign up to comment during the meeting by completing the online participant form by 4 p.m. Feb. 24. Each individual will be allowed three minutes to speak.

Attendees can participate online via WebEx or by phone.

A full list of topics for discussion is available on the Task Force website.

Meeting introductions will be offered in English and Spanish. Comments can be submitted in Spanish and will be translated after the session to ensure accuracy. 

To participate online, log into webinar No. 2435 790 4502 and use passcode BSv68AYfpE7.

To participate by phone, call 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303 and use access code 243 579 04502.

If unable to attend the listening session,comments may be submitted through March 17 in one of the following three ways:

• Complete the Andrea Harris Task Force public feedback form.
• Leave a voicemail at 919-707-8626.
• Mail correspondence to the NC Department of Administration, ATTN: Andrea Harris Task Force, 1301 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1301.

The task force, established under Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 143, was named in honor of the late civil rights activist, Andrea Harris, who dedicated her life to eliminating disparities in North Carolina, cofounding the nonprofit Institute of Minority Economic Development in Durham and serving on the state’s Advisory Council for Historically Underutilized Businesses. Its mission is to address the social, environmental, economic and health disparities in communities of color disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

The Task Force is comprised of five subcommittees, including Access to Healthcare, Economic Opportunities and Business Development, Educational Opportunity, Environmental Justice and Inclusion, and Patient Engagement.

Learn more about the Task Force including 2021 biannual report.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board has scheduled a virtual meeting for 3-5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28.

The agenda is expected to be posted to the board’s webpage by the end of this week, a state representative told Coastal Review Thursday.

The public can participate online or by phone. Internet access is not required to attend the meeting.

A public comment period will be from 5 to 6 p.m. Complete the online form by 2 p.m. Feb. 28 to sign up to speak.

To attend online, log on at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=eaa09bdabfdf553fd3237ee4ba97d578c. The meeting number is  2436 227 7768 and event password is NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 2436 227 7768.

Members of the board were selected from across North Carolina to represent the state’s diverse cultures. A full list of the board’s members and additional meeting materials are on the website.

Six eastern North Carolina environmental justice and community groups that sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 seeking EPA-required health studies in communities affected by dozens of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have revived a lawsuit originally filed during the Trump administration after the agency’s action on their petition fell short of their demands.

The groups, the Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, announced Thursday that they were reactivating their lawsuit against the EPA. The groups said the agency failed to grant their petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act seeking to require Chemours Co., the manufacturer of a compound known as GenX and based near Fayetteville, to conduct critical health studies on 54 substances that the groups say are putting hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents at risk.

In a statement, Bob Sussman, the petitioners’ counsel and a former senior EPA official, said that “We are returning to court to exercise our right under TSCA to challenge EPA’s disappointing refusal to hold Chemours accountable for studies that EPA had the clear authority to require. We are confident that the court will direct EPA to assure that Chemours pays for essential testing on chemicals that are in the drinking water and blood of hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.”    

The groups’ petition, filed Oct. 14, 2020, asked EPA to require that Chemours fund a comprehensive research program addressing residents’ concerns in communities along the Cape Fear River.

Related: Brunswick, New Hanover County chairs blast Chemours ads

The EPA on Dec. 28, 2021, announced it was granting the petition but stopped short of meeting the groups’ demands, agreeing to require limited testing on only seven of the 54 PFAS that it had announced in October would be conducted under its general PFAS testing strategy. The agency also refused to require an epidemiological study of contaminated communities or testing of PFAS mixtures present in drinking water and in residents’ blood, which the groups said were the most important studies in understanding how PFAS pollution has affected the health of exposed populations.

The groups say residents have been exposed for decades to numerous PFAS in their drinking water, air, food and soil because of pollution from the Chemours facility. 

“For decades, our communities have suffered silently from PFAS contaminated water. All the while, polluting corporations have continued to profit from our pain. Our dedicated team of community advocates, legal counsel, and scientists have provided EPA with the tools to clearly and swiftly act to save our communities. If EPA is unwilling to use these tools, we will look to our legal remedies to make sure the agency holds Chemours accountable ” said La’Meshia Whittington, NC Black Alliance, in a statement.

Researchers detected the compound GenX in the river downstream from Chemours nearly 10 years ago and subsequently in the river-drawn drinking water supply for the Wilmington area. State health officials in 2017 were notified of the contamination, which also included other related substances. As recently as last year, the state fined Chemours over air emissions of PFAS and required to take additional actions to address contamination, including that of private wells.

A spokesperson for Chemours declined Coastal Review’s request for comment for this report.

The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to investigate “the discriminatory impact of pollution and adverse health risks, including premature death, that industrial hog operations impose on Black and Latino communities in North Carolina,” the Southern Environmental Law Center announced Friday.

The civil rights complaint alleges the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality discriminated against Black, Latino and Native American residents of Duplin and Sampson counties on March 31, 2021, when the state agency issued three individual swine animal waste management system permits and one certificate of coverage, which authorizes the construction and operation of anaerobic digestion animal waste treatment systems to produce renewable energy, according to EPA Director of External Civil Rights Compliance Office and Office of General Counsel Lilian Dorka’s Jan. 13 response to the law center’s complaint.

The law center filed the complaint on behalf of the Duplin County Branch of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign.

“We are excited that the EPA decided to investigate this complaint. As a ‘watch dog’ for those most negatively impacted by the hog industry, we consider the investigation of this complaint as a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, we also understand that there is much more work to be done,” Duplin County NAACP Chapter President Robert Moore said in a statement.

The complaint alleged that the permits issued by NCDEQ allowing “four Smithfield-owned hog operations to use cesspits full of hog waste and sprayfields to produce energy, failed to protect the surrounding communities from air and water pollution. A disproportionate share of the hundreds of families who live around these hog operations are Black and Latino.”

The EPA committed to investigating whether NCDEQ discriminated on the basis of race and national origin against the residents of Duplin and Sampson counties by issuing the permits and whether the department complied with general nondiscrimination obligations.

“EPA’s decision to investigate the disproportionate impacts of these permits on North Carolina’s poor and communities of color is crucial in maintaining robust commitments to environmental justice in our state. Real solutions to our climate crisis must serve all communities, including the most vulnerable. We look forward to EPA’s findings,” said William Barber, III with the NC Poor People’s Campaign.

NCDEQ is currently developing a general permit for industrial hog operations to install lagoon covers and produce biogas, which the law center said would allow harmful projects with minimal scrutiny by the public.

“We are pleased that EPA will investigate how DEQ’s failure to require common-sense measures to limit pollution is impacting families in Duplin and Sampson counties,” said Blakely Hildebrand of the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement. “We hope that DEQ can quickly correct its course and protect communities near industrial hog operations as it develops a new general permit for hog operations that produce biogas.”

Sharon Martin, NCDEQ’s Public Affairs deputy secretary, told Coastal Review Friday that the state agency is reviewing the EPA letter.

“DEQ is committed to the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all North Carolinians and we have given significant priority to compliance with Title VI requirements, particularly with regard to animal waste permitting,” she said.

Roy Lee Lindsey, CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council, which represents the state’s pork industry, told Coastal Review that the farms in question were working toward environmental improvements and that the action indicates no discrimination.

“A previous civil rights complaint against DEQ was settled with no finding of discrimination with regard to the permitting of North Carolina hog farms. It is surprising that these four farms are now under attack for trying to make environmental improvements on their farms. We are confident that when the facts of this complaint are reviewed, the result will be the same and there will be no finding of discrimination,” Lindsey said in a statement. “By the EPA’s own declaration, all that is necessary for a complaint to be investigated is to file it in writing, to file it with a certain number of days, to allege there was discrimination, and to file it against an entity that received federal dollars. The letter itself acknowledges that it is not a finding of discrimination — merely that the complainant checked enough boxes to open an investigation.”

Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday renewed his commitment to a clean energy economy in North Carolina, announcing new emissions-reduction goals, a directive to move forward with the state’s plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, and create economic opportunities statewide, especially in underserved communities.

On Friday, Cooper signed Executive Order No. 246, “North Carolina’s Transformation to a Clean, Equitable Economy,” at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, according to his social media.

The order updates the state’s economy-wide carbon reduction emissions goals to align with climate science, reduce pollution, create good jobs and protect communities, his office said. The goals in Friday’s order build on 2018’s Executive Order 80 that addresses climate change, the order states.

“Transforming North Carolina toward a clean energy and more equitable economy will provide good jobs and a healthy environment for generations of families across our state. To achieve our goals we must be clear, intentional and determined,” Cooper said in a statement.

“We’ve made monumental progress by developing a clean energy plan tailored to our state’s unique challenges and opportunities and passing into law required carbon reduction goals for utility providers,” he continued. “This order will assess our progress reducing climate pollution, and direct ways to curb environmental injustices, increase clean transportation options, and build more resilient communities in North Carolina.”

The order signed Friday increases the statewide carbon reduction emissions goals from 40% by 2025, which were set in Executive Order 80, to a 50% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030. The order also sets as a goal achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, no later than 2050. The order directs the administration to find ways to reach this goal.

“These climate goals will deliver real environmental, economic and public health benefits for North Carolinians and this executive order includes additional steps to make sure those benefits reach every community in our state,” Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in a statement.

The order directs the administration to update the statewide greenhouse gas inventory to measure current levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The current inventory released in January 2019 contains greenhouse gases emitted or removed by key source categories from 1990 to 2017 and projects emissions from 2018 to 2030 based on forecasted changes in fuel use, land use, population, historical trends, and other factors.

“This Executive Order is the next step in North Carolina’s continued commitment to a clean and more equitable energy future. Our state must continue to lead in the fight against climate change and environmental injustice while building an economy that works for everyone and the steps outlined in this order are critical to achieving those goals,” Dionne Delli-Gatti, North Carolina clean energy director.

There is also a call in the order to increase registered zero-emission vehicles from $80,000 by 2025, set in 2018’s executive order 80, to at least 1.25 million by 2030. A new goal in Friday’s order is for 50% of sales of new vehicles in the state to be zero-emission by 2030.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is directed to develop a North Carolina Clean Transportation Plan for decarbonizing the transportation sector through reductions in vehicle miles traveled, an increase in zero-emission cars, trucks and buses, and other strategies.

“This Executive Order ensures our state is preparing for and supporting emerging technologies,” said Transportation Secretary J. Eric Boyette. “We are committed to working with our state and local partners to develop a clean transportation plan – one that will benefit all North Carolinians.”

The order directs cabinet agencies to consider environmental justice when taking actions related to climate change, resilience and clean energy, as well as prioritize environmental justice, clean economy and climate priorities in budget decisions. Cabinet agencies are encouraged to work with advocates and stakeholders to identify additional executive actions to advance an equitable clean economy.

Each cabinet agency is to develop a public participation plan to improve communication and transparency in government decision-making, particularly with underserved communities. Cabinet agencies also have been directed to select an environmental justice lead to serve as the point person for environmental justice efforts.

“The environmental justice provisions that are included in the Executive Order go a long way toward ensuring that the state can achieve the exemplary public health equity goals. I am pleased that it will increase the likelihood that all North Carolinians are able to live in vibrant communities and pursue employment in workplaces free of environmental risks,” said Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., the DEQ Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board chair.

The North Carolina Climate Change Interagency Council is to identify strategies to increase diversity in industries and occupations that address climate change in the state. The administration will work with the North Carolina Business Committee for Education and others to expand a clean energy youth apprenticeship programs with an emphasis on educational institutions that serve underrepresented communities.

Environmental Defense Fund’s North Carolina State Director David Kelly said in a statement Friday that the executive order is an important signal that the state is sharpening its focus on addressing climate change and creating a more equitable clean energy future.

“The measures in EO246 raise the ambition of the state’s climate goals to align with the latest science, take aim at curbing harmful pollution across the state’s transportation sector (the second-largest emitting sector behind power plants), and begins important work to directly address the needs of North Carolina communities historically overburdened by pollution,” he said. “For too long, conversations regarding equity and climate have been siloed, when in reality these issues deeply intersect as historically marginalized communities bear the disproportionate burden of pollution and are on the frontlines of increasingly damaging climate impacts. EO246 sets the stage to consider these issues in tandem, which is essential to making meaningful progress towards a more equitable, climate-safe future.”

Kelly concluded by saying, “Standing alongside our equity partners, we are eager to roll up our sleeves to help ensure that this executive order tangibly advances North Carolina toward a more equitable, cleaner future. We look forward to working with communities and the Cooper administration in the development of the plans outlined in EO246 while using existing tools to rapidly drive down carbon pollution across the transportation and electric-power sectors.”

Several representatives from the Southern Environmental Law Center provided statements, as well.

“For years, we’ve been advocating that the Cooper administration expand its focus on climate change to include the transportation sector, which is quickly becoming the number one source for heat-trapping emissions in North Carolina. We welcome the governor taking this step and look forward to working with the administration to create a meaningful clean transportation plan that sets out wide-ranging strategies to reduce emissions, and to do so equitably,” said Mary Maclean Asbill, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s North Carolina offices.

“The clean transportation plan will build on work already underway to tackle climate change at the North Carolina Department of Transportation put into place by previous agreements between the agency and SELC,” said Kym Hunter, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.  

“This executive order helps clarify that the impact of environmental harm on overburdened North Carolinians is pervasive and the sources and solutions must be identified and addressed across our state agencies,” said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, leader of SELC’s Environmental Justice Initiative. “If done aggressively and intentionally, the order’s directives on investing federal and state funds in these communities can be transformative.”  

SELC continues to urge Cooper to push forward with its commitment to reduce emissions from the energy sector, including by completing rulemaking on joining the proven Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, according to the release.

Electrification Coalition Senior Policy Manager Anne Blair said in a statement that “Executive Order 246 establishes that North Carolina will be a leader in the transition to a transportation system untethered from oil. And it sends yet another powerful signal to the market that the future of transportation is unquestionably electric.

“The Electrification Coalition applauds the Cooper Administration for taking action to expand its commitment to transportation electrification and bolster associated job opportunities in a way that proactively supports all North Carolina communities,” Blair said. “The goals laid out in EO 246 reflect the urgency with which we must address the economic, national security and public health challenges associated with our dependence on oil. We look forward to working with the administration on the implementation of these exciting new commitments.”

A coastal county government and two towns have been selected to participate in a state-administered federal grant program that will provide housing and public improvements for low- and moderate-income residents.

The North Carolina Department of Commerce selected 21 towns and counties across the state to receive U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant – Neighborhood Revitalization awards totaling $14.9 million. The program does not have a matching-fund requirement.

The grant offers the recipient the county or town to tailor a community development project to address the specific and most critical needs of its eligible residents. Funds can be used on infrastructure and public improvements such as streets, sidewalks and pedestrian ways, curbs and gutters, parks, playgrounds, greenways, water and sewer lines, flood and drainage improvements, and trees, as well as temporary housing for disaster victims.

Craven County and the towns of Windsor and Edenton are the coastal communities among those selected and will receive $750,000 each.

“It costs more now to buy or rent so it’s critical that we invest more in affordable housing,” said Gov. Roy Cooper in a statement. “These neighborhood revitalization grants will help us build stronger and more resilient communities across our state.”

The grant program offers a non-entitlement municipality or county the opportunity to tailor a community development project to address the specific and most critical needs of their community. Non-entitlement communities are incorporated municipalities under 50,000 persons and counties under 200,000 persons.

“Our most vulnerable communities are continuing to chart their path from this unprecedented pandemic,” said N.C. Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders. “This funding will reinforce their revitalization efforts and infuse their community with more resources to support their long-term recovery.”

Avery, Halifax, Mitchell and Wayne counties and the towns of Calypso, Chadbourn, Garysburg, Henderson, Lilesville, Lumberton, Morven, Murphy, Pink Hill, Sharpsburg and Tabor City also have been awarded $750,000. The towns of Hobgood will be awarded $600,000, Saratoga $593,000 and Speed $306,894.

HUD’s Community Development Block Grant funds are awarded to enhance the vitality of communities by providing adequate housing, suitable living environments, infrastructure development, and expanding economic opportunities, officials said. The state must ensure that at least 70% of these grant funds are used for activities and projects that serve persons of low- and moderate-income.

Updated Nov. 29 to include agenda

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will meet 3-5 p.m. Nov. 30 by teleconference.

The agenda is available on the website.

A public comment period will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. Nov. 30. Sign up using the online form by 2 p.m. that day.

The public can participate online or by phone. Attend the meeting online via WebEx. Use meeting number 2427 822 2770 and password NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 415-655-0003 and use Access code 2427 822 2770.

The board’s 16 members were selected from across North Carolina and represent the diverse cultures of the state.

The Environmental Protection Agency is accepting grant applications for environmental education and research on health impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations.

The EPA is calling for grant applications from those eligible to support environmental education projects that promote environmental awareness and stewardship and help provide people with the skills to take responsible actions to protect the environment.

The Environmental Education Grants Program provides financial support for projects that design, demonstrate, and/or disseminate environmental education practices, methods or techniques. EPA has distributed between $2 and $3.5 million in grant funding per year, supporting more than 3,800 grants since 1992.

The 2021 Environmental Education grant competition closes Dec. 6. More details are at https://www.epa.gov/education/grants. 

As part of its Science to Achieve Results program, the EPA also is seeking applications proposing transdisciplinary research with approaches that explore and analyze environmental problems at the intersection of climate change, environmental justice and vulnerable populations and/or lifestages.

Proposed projects should address all of the following research questions:

1. What may be the most influential community-, population- or lifestage-specific vulnerabilities caused by ongoing climate change that would elevate exposure to pollutants or contaminants and further exacerbate the health effects from exposure to pollutants or contaminants in underserved communities?
2. What are the cumulative health impacts of climate change related stressors on vulnerable groups or susceptible lifestages in underserved communities?
3. How can community-based scientific research results be translated and/or applied to provide effective solutions to reduce climate change impacts on human health in underserved communities?

Learn how to apply at https://www.epa.gov/research-grants/cumulative-health-impacts-intersection-climate-change-environmental-justice-and. The closing date is Nov. 16.

The state Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice Program announced the grant opportunities.

The Environmental Protection Agency is holding biweekly calls to discuss and receive feedback on aspects of environmental justice.

The next National Environmental Justice Community Engagement Call is Oct. 12. Register through the link. To see the calendar for upcoming calls, register for upcoming calls, and view meeting materials for past calls, visit the website.

By increasing the community engagement calls from quarterly to biweekly, EPA says it intends to encourage an open dialogue with environmental justice leaders and advocates. These meetings are an opportunity update the public on environmental justice work and resources, but also to listen and learn from communities, partners and stakeholders, according to EPA officials.

“The voice of communities is what centers and drives our efforts to advance environmental justice at EPA,” said Office of Environmental Justice Director Matthew Tejada, in a statement. “Our mission to protect the health and environments of everyone in the United States can only be achieved if we listen to and engage with communities who have not received the same level of protection. Given the historic mandate of the Biden-Harris Administration and Administrator Regan’s leadership, these calls are a direct line for EPA to hear from communities.”

The calls are part of the agency’s commitment to Justice40, an initiative announced by President Joe Biden, to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities, according to the EPA.

Follow the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice on Twitter @EPAEnvJustice and subscribe to the EPA’s EJ listserv by sending a blank email to join-epa-ej@lists.epa.gov.

The public is invited to review and comment on a proposed redistricting plan for New Bern.

Redistricting became necessary after data from the 2020 U.S. Census showed unbalanced growth among the city’s wards, a common problem as cities and towns expand, according to the city.

The proposed changes can be viewed online.  A survey is included at the bottom of the page for feedback.

A public hearing on the proposed redistricting plan is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday at city hall during the board of aldermen meeting. 

Updated census information is published by the federal government every 10 years. In North Carolina, general statutes require municipalities with districts, or wards, from which public officials are elected, to look at population numbers to determine if there are imbalances within those districts, city officials said. With New Bern’s growth over the last decade, the city’s wards require adjustment. The goal with redistricting is to proportionately balance the population with consideration given to community contiguity and racial equity.

“New Bern continues to grow, particularly to its northwest and south,” said Mayor Dana Outlaw in a statement. “While we welcome that growth, from time to time it means we must redraw our wards. These changes could impact your voice in the next election and your representation within the Governing Board, so we encourage the public to participate in the redistricting process.”

The board of aldermen worked with leadership and staff to create a draft map of proposed changes, with a 10% population differential, according to the city. 

GIS staff designed the map and presented the changes during the Sept. 14 board meeting. Under the current proposal, every ward would see some changes and around 1,700 people will be affected. 

Once the public has an opportunity to review and provide feedback on the maps, the board of aldermen is expected to vote on a resolution to adopt them. The final maps are to be be drawn and the Craven County Board of Elections and all affected registered voters are to be notified of those changes.

Printed maps and handheld paper copies can be viewed at the following four locations:

• West New Bern Recreation Center, 1225 Pinetree Drive, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
• Customer & Payment Services, 606 Fort Totten Drive, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday.
• City Hall, 300 Pollock St., 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday
• Craven-Pamlico Regional Library, 400 Johnson St. 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2-6 p.m. Sunday.

An advisory panel to the state environmental secretary has scheduled a listening session to get public feedback on proposed biogas operations in North Carolina communities.

The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board has set the virtual listening session for 6 p.m. Oct. 12 . The public may participate online or by phone.

The listening session follows a discussion during the board’s quarterly meeting in August.

Biogas is fuel produced by fermenting organic waste or capturing methane from manure.

In August, the board heard a presentation that noted that, during the last five years, the Environmental Protection Agency had expressed “grave concern” about the disproportionate adverse effects of biogas on communities of color in the state.

The increased numbers of frequent and severe rain events, including hurricanes Matthew and Florence, which were two 1,000-year storms, has led to widespread flooding and the structural failure of hog waste lagoons, according to the presentation. Public health researchers added to the large body of research showing residents living near industrial hog operations have higher rates of deadly diseases.

“The board members wanted to provide an opportunity for community members to speak, comment and share their thoughts,” Laura Leonard, public information officer with NCDEQ, told Coastal Review regarding the Oct. 12 listening session.

To attend via WebEx, go to: https://bit.ly/3hWvlCE, use meeting number 2430 414 3674 and event password. NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 2430 414 3674. To sign up to provide comments, email ej@ncdenr.gov by 2 p.m. Oct. 12.   

The board’s 17 members were selected from across North Carolina and represent the diverse cultures of the state. To view a full list of the Board’s members go to: https://deq.nc.gov/outreach-education/environmental-justice/secretarys-environmental-justice-equity-board.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, originally scheduled to meet in person next week will instead meet via teleconference.

The16-member board’s meeting is to be held remotely to minimize the spread of COVID-19. An agenda is to be posted on the Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board’s website when ready.

Members of the public are welcome to listen in online or by phone during the meeting scheduled for 3 to 5 p.m. Aug. 23.

Visit the Environmental Justice webpage for the link to attend the meeting online. Use meeting number 161 550 3309 and event password NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 161 550 3309.

A public comment period will be from 5 to 6 p.m. To sign up to comment, email ej@ncdenr.gov by 2 p.m. Aug. 23.

To help families with language barriers and to make safety and emergency information more accessible, Enlace Latino NC has launched Prepárate NC, a guide in Spanish with resources for the hurricane season.

Prepárate NC’s was designed to provide practical and educational tools in Spanish to help mitigate the risks that Latino families face from the impact of hurricanes. The tools in the guide can be used during a hurricane but also for before for risk mitigation and after for recovery.

Enlace Latino NC is the first Spanish-language nonprofit news organization in the state, according to the organization.

“Access to accurate and timely information on hurricane planning in our native language is crucial to mitigating risks and recovering more quickly,” said Paola Jaramillo, co-founder and executive director of Enlace Latino NC.

“In the face of a natural disaster, for Latino immigrants who speak Spanish as their first language, having clear information can mean, in many cases, the difference between life and death; especially in rural North Carolina, ”Jaramillo said.

More than 1 million Latinos live in North Carolina, making up about 10% of the state’s population. Enlace Latino NC spoke with more than 40 Hispanic families and rural and agricultural workers affected by the last hurricanes in the state to create the guide.

“As we were told, most counties in eastern North Carolina do not provide emergency alerts in Spanish, and it is difficult to access information in languages ​​other than English. Many people have been prevented from evacuating on time for these reasons. Others did not know how to protect themselves from inclement weather,” said Walter Gómez, co-founder, and CEO of Enlace Latino NC.

Organizers said they relied on information from official documents from federal and state entities, interviewed authorities and community leaders with experience in assisting during natural disasters.

Historian and educator Victoria Smalls has been named executive director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a four-state National Heritage Area under the National Park Service that extends from southern North Carolina to northern Florida.

Smalls, who will begin July 26 her position as executive director, is a public historian, educator, arts advocate and cultural preservationist from St. Helena Island, South Carolina, and was most recently a ranger with the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in Beaufort, South Carolina, according to the commission.

“I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to advance the great work of the Commission, where I can serve the Corridor in a focused capacity, as an advocate and connector, promoting the magnificent richness of the culture, sharing the beauty of the people, and helping to support and uplift our communities,” Smalls said.

Smalls represented South Carolina on the 13-member commission from 2016-20. As commissioner, she assisted in identifying and promoting the preservation of historic sites, structures, buildings and culture of the African American experience.

“I am absolutely ecstatic that we are able to place someone as capable as Ms. Smalls at the helm of our organization. She is eminently qualified, uniquely prepared, and profoundly representative of the community,” said Dr. Dionne Hoskins-Brown of Savannah, Georgia, who chairs the commission and is leaving the role of acting director as Smalls assumes leadership.

Established in 2006 by Congress, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor recognizes and preserves the cultural treasures of Gullah Geechee people, direct descendants of enslaved people brought primarily from Africa’s rice-producing regions who were forced to work for almost two centuries on coastal plantations from southern North Carolina to northern Florida.

In 2013, the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service approved the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Management Plan in an effort to support the recognition of important contributions made by Gullah Geechee people, their history, traditions and origins. Small’s first responsibility as director will be to guide the corridor through its reauthorization process this year.

A lifelong member and descendent of the Gullah Geechee community, Smalls began her career in 2012 as the director of history, art, and culture and director of the York W. Bailey Museum at the Penn Center in Beaufort County, South Carolina, one of the country’s first schools for formerly enslaved people on St. Helena Island.

She is a Riley Fellow with Furman University’s Riley institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative, and has worked with the International African American Museum as program manager, the Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Diaspora Studies at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, as a cultural consultant.

Smalls is also a studio artist and arts educator who enjoys painting cultural pieces that represent her family and community, with a visual representation currently being exhibited at the Art League of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, “The Contemplation Series.”

The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will hold its quarterly meeting 3-5 p.m. May 24 online.

The meeting agenda is being finalized.

The public is invited to listen to the meeting online or by phone.

A public comment period will be from 5-6p.m. To sign up to provide comments, please email ej@ncdenr.gov by 2 p.m. on May 24.

To attend via WebEx, visit https:/ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=e6f3268b02278c225dd3158e0110387c7 . Meeting number is 161 017 1323 and event password is NCDEQ. To listen by phone, 415-655-0003. Use access code 161 017 1323.

The Board’s 16 members were selected from across North Carolina and represent the diverse cultures of the state. To view a full list of the Board’s members visit the website.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board has set a special meeting noon April 26 to consider how heavy- to medium-duty zero-emission vehicles can benefit disadvantaged communities.

The public is invited to listen to the meeting online or by phone. Go online to attend via WebEx, use meeting number 185 426 5298 and event password, NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 185 426 5298.

The board heard a presentation during its last quarterly meeting about the the Multi-State Medium- and Heavy-Duty Zero Emission Vehicle Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, providing potential health benefits for communities with higher levels of air pollution and heavy truck traffic. Heavy- to medium-duty zero-emission vehicles include large pickup trucks, vans, delivery trucks, box trucks, school and transit buses and long-haul delivery trucks.

The board is expected to discuss responses to the questions posed during that MOU presentation regarding transportation needs and specific concerns of North Carolina’s underserved communities.

North Carolina joins California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington in signing the a memorandum of understanding to support the deployment of medium- and heavy-duty zero-emission vehicles through involvement in a multi-state task force.

The states will also seek to accelerate the deployment of these vehicles to benefit disadvantaged communities and explore opportunities to coordinate and partner with key stakeholders, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The board’s 16 members were selected from across North Carolina to represent the state’s diverse cultures.

This is the second installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — Craig Allen’s memory is a little hazy on the finer details of the coastal storm that pushed the waters of Scotts Creek into his grandmother’s backyard in James City.

He can’t pinpoint the precise year and time the hurricane rolled in – sometime in the early 1970s when he was in elementary school. He doesn’t recall the storm’s name.

But he vividly remembers that it was the first time in his life water flowed over the banks of Scotts Creek and crept alarmingly close to his grandmother’s house on Kennedy Drive.

“Every year since then it’s getting worse,” Allen said. “There’s some trees in the water now that when I was a kid they weren’t in the (Neuse) river.”

Allen also recalls that during Hurricane Florence in September 2018, residents had to be rescued by boat when Scotts Creek flooded the neighborhood.

James City, a community on the peninsula at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse rivers in Craven County, is in a floodplain.

That designation is part of why this community, which has a storied Black history, is one of several throughout North Carolina that has been identified by the state as a “potential” environmental justice community.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or NCDEQ, has created maps that identify potentially underserved populations, ones that meet certain racial and economic criteria.

The state’s June 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan identifies these communities as either having a population that consists of more than 50% nonwhites or a population of nonwhites of at least 10% higher than the county or state share. And, those with a population that experiences a poverty rate over 20% and households with poverty at least 5% higher than the county or state share.

The maps are designed to be a tool for local governments and organizations to use, if they choose, as a means in helping for the future, explained Renee Kramer, NCDEQ’s Title VI and environmental justice coordinator.

“Of course, there’s not one right or wrong way to use the mapping system,” Kramer said. “We really felt like we could help communities to provide a tool that has this data so that community members and, or, local governments can see what is in their community right now and help plan and envision what they want their community to be in the future. This is a screening tool. It’s not the end-all, be-all.”

The maps were created through a culmination of information pulled from various government agencies then layered to illustrate a community’s compounding vulnerabilities.

“You can’t really plan for these real-life scenarios without taking into consideration the reality of the folks living on the ground.”

Renee Kramer, Environmental Justice Coordinator, NCDEQ

The first layer is collected from across NCDEQ’s divisions identifying where and which type of government-issued permits, such as air quality and wastewater permits, exist. The second layer establishes socioeconomic and demographic characteristics collected from the Census Bureau. And, the third piece includes a community’s health characteristics gathered from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and county health departments.

“You can’t really plan for these real-life scenarios without taking into consideration the reality of the folks living on the ground,” Kramer said.

What is the transportation availability in that community? What’s the average income? Are there a high number of non-English speaking residents within that population?

“One thing that we have added from our data version 1.0 that is currently out is the flood layer,” Kramer said. “I think that would be a very powerful layer to consider to turn on if you’re talking about climate change and resiliency.”

James City is a prime example of a community with compounding vulnerabilities in our changing climate. It is a historically Black settlement that lies within a floodplain.

A section entitled “Climate and Environmental Justice” in the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan states, “Barriers to property ownership have resulted in a number of climate resilience concerns specific to African American homeowners and historic African American communities. A disproportionate share of African Americans live in low-lying areas in the Southeast, which are more susceptible to drainage and flooding problems.”

Located across the Trent River from New Bern, U.S. 70 now divides this unincorporated community named in honor of the Rev. Horace James, a Union Army chaplain who was charged with managing the Trent River Settlement, a haven for former slaves and their families during the Civil War in 1863.

“In 1863 if any African American could make it to that camp they were considered free,” Allen said. “As long as we stayed there, we had a right to stay there.”

By 1865, nearly 3,000 Black men, women and children lived in the settlement. During Reconstruction, James City transformed into an independent community of free Black people.

Roughly 10 years after the settlement was created, the land’s white owners began hiking rent of Black residents in an effort to evict them from the property. The owners turned down an offer of $2,000 to buy the land.

In 1892, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the property owners in a lawsuit brought on by Black residents.

The ruling prompted some Black families to pack up and move. Others, however, were determined to stay.

For Allen, James City embodies a sense of place, pride and resilience in the face of overwhelming. Community leaders are in talks to incorporate.

“To go back, it’s home,” said Allen, who lives in New Bern. “Home is home regardless of what people say. It’s funny that it’s called a flood zone and other neighborhoods are called waterfront. If all the Black people moved out right now then it would be a resort community because it’s surrounded by water.”

Chapter 4 of the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan pointedly discusses the connection Black property owners have to historically Black communities.

“Given the barriers to property ownership among African Americans, land often holds particularly high historical and cultural value for Black households. In some cases, land has been in the same family for many generations. The decision to consider a buyout, if offered one by a state or local program, is particularly fraught for these homeowners.”

Naeema Muhammad is organizing director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network and a member of the NCDEQ Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board.

She knows firsthand the challenges residents of environmental justice communities face.

“It’s about the sentimental and emotional ties and values that people are connected to in their homes and why should I have to give up my home and my family connection to my land to satisfy somebody else,” Muhammad said. “You will hear people around the state say, ‘Well why don’t they just move?’ If it was that easy then maybe people would. You hear their stories and you hear the passion that they’re speaking from. You see and hear their connection to the places they’re at. You know, everything is not always about money. It’s about the emotional ties that they have.”

Elsie Herring does not want to leave the land that’s been in her family for generations.

She’s living on a portion of the land her grandfather purchased in Duplin County in the late 1800s.

He bought the first 150-acre tract in 1891. Before the turn of the century, he had purchased three more tracts. All told, he owned more than 60 acres.

“This has been home for my family since then,” Herring said.

She and her 14 siblings were born in a house the family built in 1921.

By the time she was a teenager nearing high school graduation, jobs in and around the homestead were scarce for Blacks, she said.

She moved to New York where she lived and worked 27 years before returning to Duplin County in 1993 to care for her then-ailing mother and a brother.

The return home has been bittersweet because, for more than two decades, Herring, 72, has been fighting the pork industry.

She is part of a number of nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork industry in recent years.

In the case in which she was involved, an appellate court ruled in favor of the families — mostly Black land owners in rural areas of eastern North Carolina — where industrial hog farms operate.

Herring said she and her family have suffered years of intimidation and threats and dealing with the indescribable smell of hog waste sprayed onto fields next to, and oftentimes directly, on her mother’s land and house.

She alleges that her family’s land deeds were illegally changed for the benefit of the pork industry.

She witnessed hundreds of dead hog carcasses washed out by Hurricane Floyd in September 1999 and remembers the stench of death.

“There were dead pigs everywhere,” Herring said. “They even brought an incinerator down the road to burn the carcasses and that made it even worse. I’m very concerned about climate change. After Floyd there was always the threat of another hurricane coming by worse than Floyd. (Hurricane) Matthew was bad, but none of them were like (Hurricane) Florence.”

“My mother lived on this land for 99 years and she said the water had never been an issue coming up that high.”

Elsie Herring, Duplin County resident

Hurricane Florence’s record-breaking rainfall in September 2018 flooded Rock Fish Creek to the point the family wondered if they would have to evacuate their home.

“My mother lived on this land for 99 years and she said the water had never been an issue coming up that high,” Herring said. “It was an excessive amount of water. We had a strange feeling for the first time that we may need to leave for higher ground. What happens when another one comes? These (hog) facilities are still sitting there. These lagoons are still sitting there. They’re still just sitting there in a floodplain. We’re already dealing with enough pollution. Not only are we dealing with the pigs and their waste, we’re dealing with the chicken houses. Those two combinations right there are a recipe for disaster.”

She remains hopeful, despite a new fight, this one against a proposed facility in Duplin County that would capture biogas from hog waste lagoons at 19 industrial hog operations in that county and neighboring Sampson County.

The project would cap open-air lagoons to capture biogas, which would be transported through some 30 miles of pipeline to an upgrading facility, then injected into an existing natural gas pipeline.

Herring is one of a number of critics of the project who argue it does not address significant air pollution from the 19 operations that would be included or possible groundwater contamination.

“It’s not being treated,” she said. “It’s just being converted. We already have enough poisonous gas in our environment.”

Muhammad said communities like Herrings, overburdened with environmental hazards, are “like ticking time bombs” in a changing climate.

“These environmental justice communities are really just in harm’s way and it grows each hour because we can see how the weather can be 90 degrees in the morning and drop to 40 and 50 at night,” she said. “Any overflow of rain creates a major problem for these communities. One of the things we’ve seen during flooding (from hurricanes), you had a tremendous number of people who didn’t have a way to get out of harm’s way. They didn’t have cars. They didn’t have public transportation.”

“I read that plan and I thought, ‘You’re saying all this, but you’re still issuing bad permits.’”

Naeema Muhammad, Director, NC Environmental Justice Network

She has read the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. She’s familiar with Chapter 4.

“I read that plan and I thought, ‘You’re saying all this, but you’re still issuing bad permits,’” Muhammad said.

“We have a long way to go. There have been some gains made, but not a tremendous amount. It’s not because of the will of the people. It’s because our local, state and federal governments don’t have the will to ring in these dirty industries,” she said. “If you are serious about protecting these communities, why are you going to keep dumping these same things in these places. You’re saying you’re going to do better and try to protect these communities but you’re not showing that. It’s wordy stuff that sounds good on paper. We’re not giving up that’s for sure.”

Neither is Elsie Herring.

“I would love to see change in my lifetime, but I don’t believe anything the industry says,” she said. “You can’t let man’s behavior take your joy away because if you do you may as well be dead. There’s no time to get tired when your job’s not complete and this job is not complete because the industry is a bad neighbor. This land means everything to me. We lived off this land. We were born and raised here. It’s a beautiful place. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to stay on it until I die.”

Next in the series: Resilience as opportunity

The North Carolina Governor’s Highway Safety Program is highlighting the need to protect Black lives behind the wheel during Black History Month and the rest of the year.

“When Black inventor Garrett Morgan patented the first traffic signal in 1923, no one knew how many souls would be saved as a result of his vision,” said Mark Ezzell, director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Program. “Preventing senseless death was the goal then, and today we can uphold the vision of preserving more lives by empowering drivers with information that can save lives for generations.”

In February and the months ahead, the highway safety program’s leadership will engage in virtual talking sessions with representatives and influencers across the state, who will present ideas and gain feedback on how to best work together to help improve the survival rates of Black families on state roadways. Those ideas will include ways to increase the education and empowerment of minority drivers and riders.

The first talking session, available on Facebook Watch, was recorded Feb. 18 with the North Carolina Black Elected Municipal Officials who discussed highway safety. Several representatives are from the coast including the organization’s Second Vice President Quentin Jackson who serves as Hertford’s mayor pro tem, and Spring Lake Council Member Sona Cooper, the organization’s secretary. District 1 representatives include Mayor Frederick Yates of Winfall and Elizabeth City Council Member Darius Horton. Navassa Mayor Eulis Willis represents District 3.

“NCDMV has a network of seven million registered drivers, and our commitment to engaging and informing each one remains firm,” said Commissioner Torre Jessup who leads the state Division of Motor Vehicles in a statement. “We are now more than ever dedicated to working with NCGHSP to promote safe-driving initiatives around the state; including but not limited to increasing representation in areas of safety outreach through social media, and educational collateral outreach.”

Visit ghsp.nc.gov , like @NCGHSP on Facebook, @NC_GHSP on Twitter and Instagram, for more talking sessions as they’re released.

“As North Carolina’s minority population increases, it is essential to monitor trends surrounding motor vehicle traffic fatalities by race and ethnicity,” said Tiffany Wright, spokesperson, AAA – The Auto Club Group in the Carolinas, whose mission it is to advocate for better travel with a focus on safety.

“While evaluating transportation data, it’s clear that members of the traveling public most at risk, need and deserve as many resources as possible to help slow and ultimately stop the needless loss of life on our roadways. We hope to support NCGHSP’s core mission by increasing minority traveler educational resources and continuing discussions surrounding possible legislative improvements that will reduce increased risk to African American travelers,” Wright added.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for Black Americans from birth through age 14 years, and the second leading cause of death for ages 15 through 24. Primary safety problems within this focus group continue to be unbelted travel, impaired driving and speeding.

Greensboro Transportation Planning Engineer Lydia McIntyre, an Executive Committee for Highway Safety member, said in a news release that while there’s myriad health, social and cultural issues that put minorities — Black, Latino, Native American, Asian and others — at increased danger, buckling up, traveling sober and going the speed limit can greatly reduce fatalities behind the wheel within the community.

“We look forward to continuing to work with NCGHSP to reach these populations directly and help curb once and for all preventable roadway deaths across North Carolina,” she said.

“We need all drivers to focus on saving themselves, their loved ones, and their neighbors and friends. Wearing your seat belt, driving sober and traveling at a safe speed is your best defense against death and injury and that’s the standard for all North Carolinians,” said Ezzell.

The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will meet online from 3-5 p.m. Monday for a panel discussion on public participation, engagement and outreach.

The panel discussion, which will be moderated by Veronica Carter, will include Ricardo Nazario-Colón, Chair, Governor’s Advisory Board on Hispanic/Latino Affairs; Dr. Gracie Galloway, president, Asian American and Pacific Islanders Caucus of the NCDP; Sharon Goodson, executive director of the N.C. Community Action Association and the Southeastern Association of Community Action Agencies; Louise Mack, president and CEO, Prosperity Unlimited, Inc.; and Talley Wells, executive director, North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities.

The agenda also includes a presentation on an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. Transportation is the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and, after light-duty vehicles, medium- and heavy-duty trucks are the next largest source of transportation sector.

The Multi-State Medium- and Heavy-Duty Zero Emission Vehicle Memorandum of Understanding is an agreement among states to work together to foster a self-sustaining market for zero emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. North Carolina joins  California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York,  Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington signed the MOU to support the deployment of medium- and heavy-duty ZEVs through a Multi-State ZEV Task Force.

To attend the meeting online, visit https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=e35ca75b04ee38ca16b431c4475db5e00. The meeting number is  178 020 1965 and the event password is NCDEQ. The meeting can also be accessed by calling 415-655-0003 and using access code 178 020 1965. A public comment period will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. To sign up to provide comments, email ej@ncdenr.gov by 2 p.m. Monday.

The board’s 16 members were selected from across North Carolina and represent the diverse cultures of the state.

A Spanish version of the Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, website, featuring the most popular resources from the English version, is available in Spanish for the first time.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday the new website that gives Spanish-speaking communities across the United States and in Puerto Rico access to information about chemical releases and other waste management in their communities. The website also expands access to environmental information and makes TRI data easier to access.

The new content includes basic resources explaining what data are available and how to access them, examples of how individuals and organizations have used TRI data, and guidance for using TRI for research and analysis.

Also available is the Spanish version of the 2019 TRI National Analysis released last month, which offers analysis and trends in releases, waste management practices, and pollution prevention activities that occurred during calendar year 2019.

The TRI Program plans to continue adding content to the Spanish TRI website to support more informed decision-making by communities, companies, government agencies and others.

Por primera vez los recursos más populares de la versión en inglés del sitio web ahora estarán disponibles en español. El contenido ahora disponible incluye:

• Recursos básicos explicando cuáles datos están disponibles y cómo accederlos.
• Ejemplos de cómo los individuos y las organizaciones han usado los datos del TRI.
• Directrices para usar el TRI para la investigación y el análisis.

Además, hoy está disponible la versión en español del Análisis Nacional del TRI de 2019 publicado el mes pasado que ofrece análisis y tendencias sobre las emisiones, prácticas de manejo de desperdicios y actividades de prevención de contaminación que ocurrieron durante el año calendario de 2019.

El programa del TRI planea continuar añadiendo más contenido al sitio web del TRI en español para apoyar la toma de decisiones informadas que realizan las comunidades, compañías, agencias gubernamentales y otros.

Ver la versión en español del sitio web del Inventario de Emisiones Tóxicas.

The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board will meet 3-5 p.m. Feb. 22 by teleconference for a panel discussion on public outreach and engagement as well as hear updates from DEQ staff.

The public is invited to listen to the meeting online at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=e35ca75b04ee38ca16b431c4475db5e00. The meeting number is 178 020 1965 and password is NCDEQ. Call 415-655-0003 to listen by phone and use access code 178 020 1965.

To sign up to speak during public comment period slated for 5-6 p.m. email ej@ncdenr.gov by 2 p.m. Feb. 22.

The 16 members of the board were selected to represent the diverse cultures of the state. More information on the board and its members can be found on the DEQ website.

This story has been updated

President Joe Biden signed Wednesday a sweeping executive order that addresses climate change, environmental justice and when possible, pauses new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters.

The order, which elevates climate considerations as an element of U.S. foreign policy and national security, directs the Department of Interior to launch a review of all existing leasing and permitting practices related to fossil fuel development on public lands and waters and identify steps to double renewable energy production from offshore wind by 2030.

The targeted pause does not impact existing operations or permits for valid, existing leases, which are continuing to be reviewed and approved. The order does not restrict energy activities on private or state lands, or lands that the country holds in trust or restricted status for Tribes or individual Indians, according to the Department of the Interior.

Conservation and environmental groups praised the move.

“Oceana applauds the president’s bold action to halt new offshore oil and gas leasing. More drilling means more climate pollution that we simply cannot afford. Climate change is already wreaking havoc on our lives and livelihoods and it’s a relief to see President Biden putting solutions to the climate crisis first,” said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, in a statement. “President Biden’s actions are a win for the health of our ocean, our economy and our climate. We look forward to working with the Biden-Harris administration to permanently move away from dirty and dangerous offshore drilling toward clean, renewable energy sources like offshore wind.”

Oceana released an analysis this week that shows ending new leasing for offshore oil and gas could prevent over 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and more than $720 billion in damage to people, property and the environment.

The president’s executive order also directs federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and promote opportunities for innovation, commercialization and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure.

Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, called the move a step forward in protecting parks and public lands, tackling climate change and fixing the “broken” oil and gas leasing system.

“Additional steps, such as well-reasoned regulations and policies, will be needed to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions and have a measurable effect at slowing the well-documented impacts of climate change on park resources,” Francis said.

The Southern Environmental Law Center in a statement said that while this is a positive step, the move falls short of expectations that the Biden administration will enact long-lasting or permanent protections for the Atlantic Ocean and the hundreds of municipal economies that depend on it.

“Any step that shields the Atlantic Ocean from risky offshore drilling is a step in the right direction. However, what coastal communities need are much larger strides that will protect the Atlantic coast permanently. We are committed to working with coastal communities and the Biden administration to realize that goal,” Senior Attorney Sierra Weaver, leader of the organization’s Coast and Wetlands Team, said.

Advocates of offshore drilling said the president’s action would hurt the American economy and merely shift production to other countries, such as Russia.

National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito said in a statement that the decision to establish a one-year moratorium of new oil and gas leasing puts America on a path toward increased imports from foreign nations that have been characterized as “pollution havens.”

“Any pause of American energy opportunities will do untold harm towards American economic, energy and environmental progress. Reducing American offshore oil and gas development means lost jobs, increased greenhouse gas emissions and less funding for outdoor parks and recreation activities for urban, underprivileged communities. There is no shortage of negative consequences from this leasing pause,” he said.

Environmental justice

To prioritize environmental justice, the order directs federal agencies to develop programs, policies and activities to address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.

The order creates a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council and a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to address current and historical environmental injustices, including strengthening environmental justice monitoring and enforcement through new or strengthened offices at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services.

The order creates a government-wide Justice40 Initiative with the goal of delivering 40% of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities and tracks performance toward that goal through the establishment of an environmental justice scorecard.

The order initiates development of a Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool, building off EPA’s EJSCREEN, to identify disadvantaged communities, support the Justice40 Initiative, and inform equitable decision making across the federal government.

Conservation, agriculture

The order also sets a goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and oceans by 2030 and directs the agriculture secretary to collect input from farmers, ranchers and other stakeholders on how to use federal programs that encourage using climate-smart agricultural practices.

It creates a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative, an avenue for a new generation of Americans to work in conservation and restoring public lands and waters, increase reforestation and carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.

“What better way to put millions of Americans to work and build back better than by restoring our forests, grasslands, wetlands, and coastal areas to bolster resilience, sequester carbon, and recover imperiled wildlife populations through a revitalized 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps and a commitment to restore 30% of our lands and waters by 2030?” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, in a statement.

Foreign policy, national security

The order establishes climate considerations as an element of U.S. foreign policy and national security. It calls for the U.S. to be a leader in implementing and building on the Paris Agreement’s objectives and begins the process of developing the country’s emission-reduction target under the Paris Agreement.

The president is set to host a climate summit on Earth Day, April 22, and the United States will reconvene the Major Economies Forum that President Obama created in 2009.

Also, the president created a new position, special presidential envoy for climate, which will have a seat on the National Security Council, to work toward integration of climate considerations across a range of international forums.

The order directs the director of National Intelligence to prepare an estimate on the security implications of climate change, the State Department to prepare a package to the Senate for the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol phasing down hydrofluorocarbons — potent greenhouse gases — and all agencies to develop strategies for integrating climate considerations into international work.

The order establishes the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, led by the first national climate adviser and deputy national climate adviser, to coordinate and implement the president’s domestic climate agenda.

The order creates a National Climate Task Force with representatives of 21 federal agencies and departments and establishes an Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. It directs federal agencies to coordinate investments and other efforts to assist coal, oil and natural gas, and power plant communities.

The order also directs federal agencies to use carbon pollution-free electricity and clean, zero-emission vehicles and develop resilience plans.

Steve Melink, ForbesBooks author of “Fusion Capitalism: A Clean Energy Vision For Conservatives,” and founder/CEO of the Ohio-based Melink Corp. which looks at renewable energy solutions for the commercial building industry, told Coastal Review Online that it’s clear with each executive order that the Biden administration is working to address climate change and create a clean energy economy of the future.

“President Biden is putting the climate crisis front and center in U.S. domestic and foreign policy considerations,” Melink said.

Updated 1 p.m. Wednesday to include comments from John Locke Foundation

A new report by an independent, nonpartisan policy institute urges North Carolina’s leaders to reduce the impact of climate change while addressing systemic racism and environmental justice.

The Center for American Progress, or CAP, a progressive think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., released the report, “Building a Just Climate Future for North Carolina,” Wednesday. It also looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic has “highlighted the interconnection between systemic racism and injustice and environmental, public health, and economic disparities.”

Coastal Review Online received an embargoed draft of the report Tuesday.

Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow for energy and environment, and Rita Cliffton, a research associate on the climate and energy policy team, both with the Center for American Progress, wrote the report.

“In our report, we found that, like many other states, systemic and historic disparities in North Carolina, driven by discriminatory zoning, housing discrimination, the longstanding practice of concentrating sources of pollution in low-income communities and communities of color, among other unjust policies, have exacerbated the risks and impacts of more extreme weather, flooding, heat waves and other climate change impact in these communities,” Kelly said Tuesday in an interview.

“The report aims to help North Carolinians and their leaders better serve all communities, especially EJ (environmental justice) communities, by highlighting how systemic racism and environmental injustice — which create the conditions for poverty, economic instability, concentrations of pollution, and excessive use of force by police  — elevate the risk of and exposure to deadly threats, like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to end racism and injustice in all forms,” Kelly said.

The report finds that North Carolina’s communities most at risk in a changing climate also face the greatest barriers to securing the financing needed to protect homes and strengthen critical infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and community centers, Kelly said.

“EJ communities suffering from environmental racism in North Carolina also face disproportionate rates of energy poverty and lack access to air conditioning, a growing threat in a warming climate,” she said.

Kelly explained that the report provides six ways state leaders must take action: create standards for building clean and resilient infrastructure and housing, prioritize equitable housing policies and just community development, accelerate cleanup of toxic sites and flood mitigation, provide equitable access to clean and affordable energy, support a just transition to clean energy, and foster inclusive and equitable public engagement.

The report details these steps to “protect the health and well-being of all North Carolinians and build safe and resilient communities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing climate crisis.”

Kelly added that among the specific recommendations, the report says the state should do the following:

• Provide funds to the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency to finance construction of new safe and affordable housing units that are both energy efficient and resilient to climate change risks.
• Expand investments in rental assistance and affordable housing development, increase data collection on homelessness risks and prioritize hazard and disaster risk-reduction investments in frontline communities before and after weather disasters.
• Prioritize and expedite cleanup of toxic sites — Superfund or otherwise — near residential areas, watersheds and coastal areas at risk of flooding due to increased storms and sea level rise.
• Prioritize energy efficiency retrofits in low-income communities to lower energy bills and improve air quality.
• Increase access to sustainable and affordable energy options by creating a statewide green energy bank that would prioritize investments in low-income communities and communities of color.

Donald van der Vaart, a senior fellow for the John Locke Foundation, told Coastal Review Online Wednesday that the foundation doesn’t support these “overarching strategies that do more to uproot our energy landscape, ultimately leading to higher energy costs that aren’t helpful for the environment, and are hurting the poorest among us. Generally speaking, we would advocate things that would lower prices, that would include the develop of natural gas and extend the lifetime of nuclear plants.”

The report refers to studies and papers by scientists initiated by Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80, “North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy,” signed in October 2018.

The governor’s executive order called for a statewide Clean Energy Plan, released October 2019 by the state Department of Environmental Quality, to reach a 40% reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

The CAP report also cites the findings in a statewide assessment of current and future climate change impacts by the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies scientists. “The North Carolina Climate Science Report” released in March warns that climate change will affect North Carolina’s public health, economy and environment.

In June, the state rolled out its North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, which looks at the state’s vulnerability to climate change and ways to become more resilient.

The plan recommends developing a state climate justice report as part of future North Carolina resilience plans to prioritize actions that “address the unjust reality that low-income communities and communities of color are often the most vulnerable to climate change.” Such communities often lack the ability to prepare for or recover from extreme weather, exposure to heavy concentrations of pollution, outdated infrastructure and homes in need of repair, according to the CAP report.

“We are pleased that groups like the Center for American Progress are advocating for resilience and using resources such as the North Carolina Science Report that have been developed under Governor Cooper’s leadership. In fact, many of the report’s findings and recommendations cite the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan, which is exciting to see since that document involved extensive interagency collaboration,” North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency Deputy Chief Resilience Officer Amanda Martin told Coastal Review Tuesday.

Martin continued that greater social equity is a serious prerequisite for resilience.

“North Carolina can’t call itself resilient if only some of its residents have the ability to bounce back after a disaster or other kind of stressor – we need everyone on board. So, without infinite resources, it’s important for us to focus on areas of greatest need, even as we recognize that disasters impact people of all backgrounds. NCORR’s approach is to prioritize serving low- and moderate-income hurricane survivors, and to invest in recovery and mitigation in ways that support the long-term prospects of all North Carolina communities in a changing climate,” she said.

Kelly said state leaders need to confront systemic racism and environmental injustice to protect the well-being of all state residents. The pandemic has also underscored disparities.

“The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the interconnection between systemic racism and injustice and environmental, public health, and economic disparities. People of color — especially Black, Native American, and Latinx people — are contracting and dying from COVID-19 at far higher rates than their white counterparts,” according to the report.

Public health researchers found that residents in polluted neighborhoods are more likely to experience the worst effects of COVID-19, and death rates from the disease have been highest in communities of color, Native American communities in particular, who are often exposed to the highest levels of pollution.

“These same communities are also the most vulnerable to emergencies and disasters, including those fueled by climate change,” according to the report.

The pandemic also has caused “skyrocketing unemployment” that is predicted to increase poverty rates and widen racial disparities.

“In addition to health and environmental injustices, people of color are often subject to discriminatory and lethal treatment by police and the criminal justice system,” according to the report. “In essence, the pandemic, the protests, and climate change have laid bare that long-standing public policies and practices — which create the conditions for poverty, economic instability, concentrations of pollution, and excessive use of force by police — elevate the risk of and exposure to deadly threats and the need to end racism and injustice in all forms.”

Martin with NCORR said its timely that the report ties COVID-19 in with the state’s climate future.

“We see two big connections between the pandemic and climate resilience, both concerning the needs of our most vulnerable residents. The first is that we can – and must — apply lessons learned from disaster recovery to the COVID-19 response and recovery. For example, improvements that the state has made in program design, public outreach and the speed of disaster recovery program delivery after receiving federal funds are all applicable to COVID-19 response and recovery,” Martin said.

Martin added that another major connection is that the COVID-19 crisis, just like hurricanes and flooding, reveals the depth of social needs that must be incorporated into resilience planning, policy and programming.

“For people in precarious housing situations, it doesn’t matter if the crisis is pandemic-related job loss or a flood that ruins your car so you can’t drive to work. Too many people are living one paycheck away from homelessness, and the system we have in place to cope with housing needs – the organizations, developers, resources, knowledge and relationships – is the same system whether the threat is COVID-19 or a hurricane,” she said.

The report also notes Cooper’s Executive Order 143 that established the Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental and Health Equity Task Force, which was named for the cofounder of the N.C. Institute of Minority Economic Development.

The 2019 Clean Energy Plan and Executive Order 143 both highlight the need for public engagement to ensure that the executive branch and other state leaders support inclusive policies that advance equity and environmental justice and climate justice, or CJ, according to the report, which also mentions the North Carolina Secretary of Environmental Quality Michael Regan’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board implemented in 2018 to advise NCDEQ on issues related to environmental justice.

“Despite this progress, the state still lacks a state statutory commitment to fully address climate change and structural environmental racism,” the report’s authors found.

Veronica Carter is a member of the DEQ Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board. She is also a member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review Online.

She said the report’s recommendations on racial equity warrant consideration, especially among those who advocate for environmental causes – an advocacy group that often lacks racial diversity.

“We need to do a little self-examining and realize that we as activists and environmentalists have not paid enough attention to environmental and climate justice communities,” Carter said.

Carter pointed to places in eastern North Carolina that are still recovering from storms years ago, including hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, as examples of communities considered both environmental justice and climate justice communities.

“If you look at the communities in Columbus County where they are still struggling to recover from Matthew, these are predominantly EJ communities,” Carter said.

In Brunswick County, Carter said, many of those still repairing damage from Florence are in minority and low-income communities.

“We have a number of households (in Brunswick County) that are still trying to recover from Florence and it’s because their houses were not in the best of shape before Florence, because they lived in EJ, in CJ communities. And if you go back to the history of segregation and redlining in North Carolina, many of our EJ and CJ communities are in places nobody else wanted to live because they were prone to flooding,” Carter said.

She said climate change’s effects, including more frequent flooding and stronger storms are often most devastating in communities of color. “They’re sitting ducks,” Carter said.

The CAP report urges state leaders responding to the COVID-19 pandemic to also plan for and address other pressing public health and safety threats such as those posed in the The North Carolina Climate Science Report “of more intense heat waves, more powerful storms, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts that threaten the health and livelihoods of North Carolinians well into the future.”

“By recommending policies to address environmental racism and improve the health, safety and climate resilience in EJ communities in the state, we hope to support and accelerate state action to tackle climate change while advancing economic, racial, and environmental justice in communities across North Carolina,” Kelly said.

Martin said NCORR welcomes input from stakeholders and external groups on how to “achieve a stronger, more equitable, more resilient North Carolina. Like all recommendations that come our way, we review them with a careful eye for new perspectives, innovative analyses and recommendations on how to increase the resilience of all residents and communities in the state.” Contact the NCORR office at 833-ASK-RBNC, 833-275-7262 or Ask-RBNC@rebuild.nc.gov.

CHARLOTTE – The state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board is to discuss during its next meeting May 22 Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80 and hear a presentation on Charlotte’s efforts to implement its energy transition resolutions.

The fourth meeting of the board is set for 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the University of North Carolina Charlotte in the Harris Alumni Center at Johnson Glen Tate Hall Conference Room, 8630 Alumni Way. Parking is available in Parking Lot 27.

There also will be an opportunity for public comments from 6 to 7 p.m., following the meeting, according to the agenda.

The board’s 16 members were selected from across the state to represent North Carolina’s diverse cultures.

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• Meeting Agenda and board members