Take Action
It takes an active community to form good environmental policies on all levels of government and safeguard against projects or policies that will ultimately do more harm than good for the Tar-Pamlico River and those who reside in its watershed. Check back frequently to see what you can do to maintain a high quality of life for all citizens residing and visiting the Tar-Pamlico River watershed.
June 14, 2009: Monitoring to Protect Our Waters
Dotting the eastern North Carolina landscape are more than 3000 waste lagoons, or storage pits, where hog and poultry operations store raw urine and feces until conditions present themselves for the operators to spray the waste onto fields. Most of these fields are transected with drainage ditches that directly connect to public trust waters. Even during the best of climatic conditions, animal waste high in nutrients and fecal bacteria can make their way into streams and rivers via surface or shallow subsurface runoff. Some sprayfields are underline by drain tiles, or artificial drainage systems, which discharge directly into ditches and then to waterways.
Now the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has agreed with NC Waterkeepers that industrial animal operations should be required to monitor waterways running through their waste sprayfields. Such water quality monitoring will be a highly effective and reasonable way for the state and the industry to determine if current practices are protective of the state’s water resources. All other industries must monitortheir waste discharge to insure that our waters are protective. It is past time for this industry to be held to similar standards.
June 4, 2009 : Protect your voice and our coast! (From NC Conservation Network)
Under current law, coastal projects need to get approvals under the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA). A subset of large, complex projects with the potential for substantial impacts trigger State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA), which requires more detailed environmental analysis before the CAMA process officially begins.
S778, if enacted, would exempt all CAMA projects from SEPA, eliminating vital opportunities for you and other concerned citizens to influence the very biggest development decisions made along our coast. Specifically, S778 would eliminate SEPA pre-review, which includes: explanation of the need for a project, analysis of alternatives, and written assessments of likely environmental impacts and potential mitigation. Without that information, it is much harder for concerned citizens to offer effective comments during the CAMA permit process.
Senate Bill 778 doesn’t get rid of an overlap – it undermines public comment in major decisions shaping the future of our coast. Take action today!
June 2009: Keep Our Beaches Public & Natural: Protect our beaches from hardened structures
(from NC Conservation Council and NC Coastal Federation)
The bill, which already passed the N.C. Senate, may come up as early as tomorrow before the House Environment Committee. Please contact members of the committee and ask them to oppose this grave threat to our beaches. If your legislator isn't on the committee, ask him to tell his colleagues to vote against the bill. Don't worry. Our Action Alert system will direct the right message to the legislator based on your zip code.
Paraphrasing that famed philosopher Yogi Berra, the bill is like déjà vu all over again. For the third year in a row, the N.C. General Assembly is considering a bill that would punch a hole in North Carolina's long-standing ban on hardened structures that keeps our beaches public and natural. We need your help today if North Carolina's public's beaches are to be protected for tomorrow.
The natural beauty and economic value of North Carolina's public beaches and inlets exists today in large measure because our state leaders long ago adopted a conservative management policy that bans the use of hardened structures-seawalls, jetties and groins of any kind-from our coast.
We agree there needs to be a plan for property threatened by coastal erosion --but tell the legislators that S832 is not it. Take Action today!
May 2009
Tell national leaders to support EPA's compromise proposal that protects the environment during mine expansion
PCS Phosphate’s current mine expansion proposal in Beaufort County would be the largest single destruction of wetlands in North Carolina’s history, causing irreversible harm to tourism and fishing in the immediate area and downstream along the state’s beautiful coastline. It jeopardizes the irreplaceable ecosystem of Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, one of the most productive American fisheries, which generates thousands of jobs and over $1 billion annually. Read more and take action!