DILLSBORO–I find the Dillsboro Dam controversy a little boggling, and I’m not alone.
It isn’t the fundamentals of the argument between Duke Energy and supporters of keeping the dam that are hard to grasp — although Duke’s relicensing agreement is complex — but more particularly how the Dillsboro situation fits in to the much larger picture of “big” hydroelectric power versus “little” hydro, and how the two are influenced by our insatiable hunger for energy.
I admit a general mistrust of Duke. I also admit that from an environmental standpoint, I’ve long fallen into the less-dams-the-better camp, but without doing much homework on the subject. My friends who have done their homework are more-or-less split over the Dillsboro Dam issue. And therein lies the boggle.
Along comes the invaluable Orion Magazine, with an article in its May/June issue that is well-written well-researched and about time — at least for those of us who are trying to figure Dillsboro out.
A few excerpts from Ginger Strand’s piece The Poetry of Power:
Few things are as beautiful as falling water. That beauty has been making power for thousands of years—first mechanically, with waterwheels, and then electrically, with turbines and generators. Generator, from the Latin generare, to produce, is a misleading word. No device can produce energy; it must convert it from something else. The burning of coal converts millions of years’ worth of stored sunlight into heat. A hydroelectric plant converts the kinetic energy of falling water into electricity.
(snip)
There’s just something about a dam. Dave Brower fought to obstruct them. Edward Abbey dreamed of exploding them. Derrick Jensen dreams of exploding them still. John McPhee wrote that for environmentalists, the Devil’s world is ringed with moats of oil and DDT, but its absolute epicenter holds a dam. The treacherous wizard Saruman in The Lord of the Rings powers his evil orc factory with a dammed river. “Free the river!” cry the Ents: big explosion, triumph of good. Nothing says eco-warrior like killing a dam.
(snip)
John Seebach, director of American Rivers’s Hydropower Reform Initiative:
“The footprint of all these little dams adds up and chokes up a watershed,” he says. “A big plant provides a lot more power.” That extra capacity means big plants are more profitable. And more profit means they can afford to mitigate the harm they do to the river with measures like fish hatcheries and smelt barging.
He concedes that, done right, small hydro plants can preserve riparian habitat and provide for fish passage. But for John, “done right” is the hitch. Doing it right requires money, and John just isn’t sure the economics add up. As projects get smaller, their price per kilowatt-hour ramps up. Private producers and communities may like the idea of small hydro, but as costs increase, John worries they’ll be tempted to relax environmental standards. That temptation might only grow as more and more states institute renewable portfolio standards—minimum percentages of power that utilities must generate with renewables.
Cost is a highly rational way to make decisions. Big dams may not be ideal, but they’re efficient. Small dams do less harm, but their economic benefits may not outweigh the harm they do. One thing this assumes, of course, is that there’s no relationship between our centralized power grid and our profligate use of power. But it isn’t easy to connect the action of running your microwave to the burning of a hunk of coal two counties away.
(snip)
Lori Barg, principal of Community Hydro, a small hydro consulting firm:
Lori talks a lot about “distributed power”: generating power at thousands of small sites, in a variety of renewable ways, rather than at huge centralized plants. Such a system would not only favor low-impact, greener power, but it would be less “brittle,” meaning less subject to cascading failures when one big plant goes down. It would reduce transmission losses, too, because the shorter the distance power has to travel, the less is lost in the process.
“We’re losing one or two times as much power as we’re using in the end,” Lori says. “If you want to start looking at the economics, is a kilowatt-hour generated in Boston the same as a kilowatt-hour generated in Peterborough, when you have so many losses along the way? It’s like having a leaky bucket.”
SYLVA–The lauded expansion of Sylva’s Jackson Paper Manufacturing Company has come to a halt.
Stonewall Packaging, LLC, launched in spring of 2009, has announced it will close its doors.
The century old Jackson Paper plant that dominates downtown Sylva is not affected by the closing — Stonewall Packaging, located in a renovated facility further out Scotts Creek, will close, eliminating 43 jobs.
Jackson Paper makes corrugating medium — the zig-zag paper inside the walls of cardboard. Stonewall Packaging used the medium to produce complete cardboard.
Company representatives say that a major purchaser of their product backed out, leaving them no choice but to close.
Facebook users who hope to make their personal information private should be prepared to spend a lot of time pressing a lot of buttons. To opt out of full disclosure of most information, it is necessary to click through more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require choosing among a total of more than 170 options.
Diners crowd Guadalupé Café during A Taste of Downtown Sylva 2009
SYLVA–The Downtown Sylva Association has announced the lineup for its annual Taste of Downtown Sylva culinary walking tour.
The tour, set for June 26, features the following restaurants: Papou’s Wine Shop and Bar, Lulu’s on Main, Signature Brew Coffee Company, Eric’s Fresh Fish Market, Bill’s Back Street Take-Out, Spring St. Café, Restaurant 553, My Place, Ironstone Grill, Heinzelmannchen Brewery, Annie’s Naturally Bakery, and Mill and Main.
Ticket availability is limited.
Tickets can be pre-purchased for $15 (adults) and $7 (youth ages 12 and under) and will be available at participating merchants starting June 4th. Tickets may also be purchased at these downtown events: Sylva After Dark on Main Street on June 4th and Concerts on the Creek at the Bridge Park on June 11th (cash or check only).
Remaining tickets, if available, will be sold the day of the event beginning at 1pm next to Signature Brew Coffee Company and at Papou’s Wine Shop and Bar.
All proceeds benefit the Downtown Sylva Association.
Taste of Downtown Sylva ticket holders may enter drawings during the tour to win gift certificates from participating merchants.
CHEROKEE–The Cherokee Preservation Foundation, funded by gaming revenues produced by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, began making economic development grants in 2002. Since then, it has awarded 487 grants totaling nearly $40 million. Every dollar of the Foundation’s support has been matched by $1.41 in secured grants or other funding or in-kind resources, making the foundation’s total contribution to the region more than $95 million.
The Foundation’s focus is on project, planning and capacity initiatives that will enhance the Cherokee culture, facilitate economic development and job opportunities, and improve the environment. We are helping the EBCI and its neighbors address challenges that include the loss of jobs from manufacturing plant closures, potential environmental degradation due to increased traffic and localized growth in specific areas, the deteriorating growth of small and medium businesses in the region, and a decline in visits from tourists to Cherokee cultural events and institutions.
Yesterday the Foundation released a film detailing its efforts. View the film below …
KITUWAH–A controversy over Duke Energy’s plans to build a relay station in Kituwah valley near Bryson City has reached the boiling point.
The relay station, serviced by multiple 100-foot towers, is being constructed on a parcel of land that Duke owns near the Kituwah Mound – one of the most sacred spots of the Cherokee.
The Cherokee and various citizens’ groups protested, and in March the Swain County Board of Commissioners halted construction by means of a moratorium.
The controversy is now playing out before the North Carolina Utilities Commission, with Duke Energy telling the commission this week that the region is threatened by outages and blackouts if the station isn’t completed.
The Cherokee had expected Duke to acquiesce, but Duke seems prepared to make a stand on the Kituwah site.
Russell Townsend, the tribe’s historical preservation officer, doubts that the tribe will accept a decision to complete construction quietly.
“There will be trouble,” Townsend told John Murawski of the Raleigh News and Observer. “I can’t imagine if Duke proceeds to build there that the tribe would just say, ‘That’s a shame,’ and move along.”
Commenters to the N&O story have pointed out that electricity production is by definition obtrusive, and that the Cherokee gaming industry is one of the region’s biggest users of power. Others point out that the issue is transmission, rather than production, and that electricity has to be transmitted no matter how it is produced.
Up-to-date coverage on this week’s hearings is available from the News and Observer here, here and here.
Earlier coverage of the controversy appeared in the Smoky Mountain Newshere,here and here.
LEICESTER-Once, in a field near Franklin, Jonathan Hearne was hit by lightning. Or rather, lightning struck the tool he was using to shear wool off a sheep. The bolt then jumped from the shears to his knees, and with a burst of flame “blew the bottoms off his feet” and killed the sheep.
Jonathan Hearne is a sheep-shearer. His days aren’t this hard as a rule, but it’s pretty tough work, and it doesn’t pay too well unless you work fast.
He owns property between Newfound and Leicester – at the eastern end of Haywood County – that his parents bought in 1966, and he works that land, but he makes his principal living traveling seven southeastern states and visiting farms to shear their flocks.
Like many of us, Hearne had no real idea that this is where life would lead him. “I never dreamed thirty-three years ago, when I was first doing this for a living, that I’d be shearing sheep thirty-three years later,” he says with a laugh. But he adds that he loves it.
A native of Pennsylvania, Hearne learned his trade from an old-time Iowan. Traveling shearers often take on helpers – apprentices, more or less, – that travel with them. That’s how Hearne learned. Then, in 1976, he came to the mountains.
His parents, who had been dairy farmers in Pennsylvania from 1938 until 1966, preceded him by a decade.
“I heard stories about a fellow in Fines Creek that could shear 100 sheep a day,” Hearne recalls. “I thought ‘there’s never been a bigger lie told in these mountains’, but then I saw him shear and I thought ‘OK, that’s different’”.
As he honed his skills, Hearne eventually doubled — nearly tripled — that number.
Now he travels with his son, Ben, a graduate of Earlham College, and they carry on what is becoming a family tradition. The shearing circuit is by no means high living, but they have a good time.
“We’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places,” says Hearne. “Sometimes we camp out, sometimes we’re invited in. Because we’re sheep shearers, we’re obviously not in it for the money, so we’re generally trusted. We’re welcomed as someone who can do something that people really appreciate. And the people we meet are good. As a general rule, scoundrels don’t keep sheep.”
The economy of keeping sheep for wool is, at this point, poor. In the 1980’s the per pound price of wool started to fall, by the late 90’s it was desperately low – around 3 cents per pound. That was the beginning of the end. Three decades ago, Hearne says, wool sold for around one dollar per pound.
“Wool from your general cross-bred sheep isn’t worth much,” he says.
The main reason that many people keep flocks these days, he adds, is so they can maintain their land’s “agricultural” designation, which has tax advantages.
Every town worth its grinds needs a coffee magnate, and now Sylva has one.
John Bubacz, owner of Signature Brew Coffee Company and Bubacz’s Underground on Main Street has purchased the competition — Shot in the Dark Cafe — from Lucy Silverman and Justin Goble.
Silverman and Goble were recently married, and she has taken work in Durham. Goble’s departure will be felt on both ends of Main Street, as he is also a workhorse reporter for the Sylva Herald newspaper.
Bubacz, who roasts his own joe at Signature Brew, will reopen Thursday, January 21.
“I’ll move my coffee roaster up there in due time,” says Bubacz, “but we’ll immediately offer fresh pastries, organic fair trade coffee and espresso, snacks and grab-and-go lunch. We will be open 7am-6pm Monday-Thursday with weekend hours TBA.”
Bubacz opened Wha Cha Want Bodega on the WCU campus in 2001, and combined that business with Sylva’s Juice Junkie in 2002. He moved the whole shebang to its current location at the Underground in 2006.
Once, about ten years ago, I was having lunch at a Sylva restaurant called the Spring Street Cafe.
From my table I caught a quick glimpse down an unlikely sightline — framed just so by some plants and interior drapes, down a hallway, and through a cracked door — of a baker’s table. On the table was a wedding cake, and the cake was being carefully decorated by two hands. The hands were all I could see.
The owner of those baker’s hands would one day become my wife, and we would come to own a house across the street from the cafe, where we live today with our three girls.
Spring Street, which has been closed for nearly a year, will soon open again under the ownership of former employee Emily Elders, a Cullowhee native. One of her ideas for an advertisement is a group shot of kids that have sprung from the many friends that have surrounded the cafe for the past ten years. (It better be a big ad).
All along, Spring Street Cafe has held a particular niche in Sylva’s lively-for-a-small-town restaurant scene.
First, in the nineties, it was City Lights Cafe, a small eatery attached to the bookstore upstairs, and under the proprietorship of Joyce and Allen Moore.
About a decade ago it was expanded into it’s full service self by Faye Holliday, whose culinary flair traces at least a little of its lineage to Asheville’s Hector Diaz, owner of the eclectic and popular eateries Salsa’s, Zambra and others.
Holliday and her unusually loyal (for food service) crew built a strong following through wild explorations of fresh local and world cuisines, and Tuesday night old time jam sessions and Sunday brunches were de rigueur among a certain Sylva social set.
Faye’s slow food influence can now be felt in a number of kitchens in the southern mountains.
Holliday sold the place to Lisa Agee a few years back, and Agee, whose desserts were quite a calling card, closed her business last spring, a victim of the economic malaise.
Enter Ms. Elders. As a single mom, a student and director of the Jackson County Greenways Project, you’d think she might have enough on her plate to worry about what’s on everybody else’s, but she’s game. She and a band of volunteers have been sprucing the place up in preparation for a January 26 opening.
“I’m very much inspired by Faye’s ideals,” Elders says. “We’ll be as local and as organic as we can be. My goal right away is to keep price points down, and bring back a lot of the items people remember and love.”
Elders has assembled a crew of former employees and a front-of-the-house manager that’ll be familiar to Sylva folks: Michael Redmon has been a longtime employee of Annie’s Bakery.
Several of the specifics that fans of the place remember will return, sushi Wednesdays and Sunday brunch among them. In addition, Elders and new City Lights Bookstore owner Chris Wilcox hope to develop a more symbiotic relationship than the two businesses have shared before. The cafe’s hours will be much closer to those of the bookstore, and the bookstore will open on Sunday afternoons.
Spring Street will hit the ground running, events-wise. Elders will host a Chamber of Commerce business after hours on January 28th, and will open for business the next day.
Book-signings and an art opening are already on the schedule for February.
SYLVA–City Lights Bookstore, a retail anchor in downtown Sylva since the early eighties, is changing hands.
Owners Joyce and Allen Moore are selling the store to longtime employee Chris Wilcox, effective January 1.
Moore informed her customers of the change in a letter written on Monday, in which she wrote, in part:
As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world.
The Moores bought the store from local author Gary Carden in 1986, and moved it from Main Street to its current location at the corner of Spring St. and East Jackson St. a few years later.
In her letter, Moore also wrote:
Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes. Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself. It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.
Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you. It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.
2009-12-18: Fans and foes of a controversial youth dance club in Sylva aired their thoughts before the Sylva Town Board Thursday. Opponents of “Club Offspring” provided a petition asking the board to investigate the business and to consider closing it. Proponents said the controversy is overblown, and provided a petition of their own. Either way, said Mayor Maurice Moody, we have no evidence that any laws have been broken, but we’ll keep an eye on it.
The dust-up arose after the club, which doesn’t serve alcohol or admit patrons over the age of 24, circulated a flyer that invited teens to come to the venue “as wasted as you want”.
Asheville television WLOS spent the day in Sylva — seeming a little more breathless than the story deserved — and aired images from the club’s MySpace page that showed scantily-dressed teens. One club-goer’s response, in so many words, was that when you dance for hours at a time you need a way to cool off.
A teen and young adult party club doing business in Sylva has raised the ire of parents by circulating sketchy flyers that urge kids to “come as wasted as they want” to the venue, located near the intersection of NC 107 and Business 23 downtown.
“Club Offspring”, which does not serve alcohol, advertises that it allows “no adults”.
The flyers, which made their way into the local high school, also made their way into the hands of a local parent, Brian Bartel, who went to Asheville television WLOS with the story and is circulating a petition that he plans to present to the Sylva town board on Thursday. The petition asks the town to shut the club down.
It’s unlikely that the board will have legal standing to do so, whether or not it has the inclination.
Bryson City pub owner cited in underage drinking death
The Asheville Citizen-Times Josh Boatwright writes that Charles Hutchinson, owner of Mickey’s Pub in downtown Bryson City, served numerous drinks to an underage patron on May 17, and that that patron left and promptly drove into a nearby building, killing himself.
Hutchinson faces a criminal citation and the suspension of his liquor license.
MURPHY–Dwight Otwell, staff writer for the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, reported recently about efforts made by mountain farmers to diversify and to profit from niche crops.
Agriculture has dwindled rapidly in the mountains, where farmers face not only the standard competition from industrial farming, but the added challenge of a lack of flat land.
Otwell’s lead:
Farmers who make their entire livelihood from working the land are almost a relic from the past in Cherokee County.
As the number of large farms has steadily dwindled, a new type of farmer has emerged, one who can forge a living from an acre or two growing for a specialty market.
He goes on to interview a vintner, a dairy farmer and vegetable farmers, all of whom are using innovative methods to make their famrs work.
Another excerpt:
A new type of market is using the Internet to sell products to high-end restaurants or consumers. The main market for this area is Atlanta.
The idea is that a chef gets the fresh produce he wants the next day, Wood said. The chef knows the farm the produce comes from and he trusts it. A person with as little as a half acre of land willing to grow specialty crops can make $20,000 to $30,000 an acre.
REGIONAL–Asheville blogger Ashvegas laments the news that the Hendersonville newspaper, the Times-News (a New York Times paper), will soon move to its new offices in a shopping center.
Right there between Goodys and the Shoe Show, we imagine. Oh, wait, Goodys is history.
Here’s Ashvegas’s lead:
Yes, here’s the announcement we’ve been expecting: the Hendersonville Times-News is moving its downsized operation into smaller space in a shopping center. Over the past couple of years, the New York Times-owned newspaper has reduced staff, moved the printing of the newspaper to South Carolina and made other cost-cutting measures.
SYLVA–The holidays are here and so is the spirit of giving!
The Downtown Sylva Association is partnering with The Community Table for a Food Drive from December 1st-23st. Visit some of your favorite downtown hotspots to make a donation that will make a difference at the same time.
Papou’s Wine Shop & Bar, Annie’s Bakery, Yesterday’s Tree, Lulu’s on Main, Friends of the Library, Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Bubacz’s Underground, Heinzelmannchen Brewery will have a box identified for your donation at their location.
Check our website, www.downtownsylva.org, as this list of merchants will grow in the coming days.
It’s hard to think of much that would bring more life to a quiet building than a dance academy, and that’s just what’s coming to Sylva’s old post office, located on Landis St., and closed since spring.
Triple Threat Performing Arts Academy is moving from its current location adjacent NAPA Auto Parts on the Asheville Highway into the old post office. Renovations there are ongoing, and owner Valerie Tissue hopes to crank up in March. Downtown merchants will take note; the academy has over 230 students, whose parents and assorted caretakers have a lot of time on their hands between drop-off and pick-up.
Spring St. Cafe to reopen
Spring St. Cafe would celebrate its ten-year anniversary in March — if it were open. And apparently it might be, as owner Faye Holliday and space-owners Joyce and Allen Moore are close to reaching terms with an interested party …
Downtown wayfinding system
Downtown merchants — particularly the ones who aren’t directly on Main St. — have long complained about the lack of a standardized signage system for the downtown area. Many have resorted to various sandwich boards placed here and there, bringing about the occasional visit from the sign ordinance folks. Town Manager Adrienne Isenhour has been working this year to implement the needed system, and her efforts got a boost this week with a $9,000 municipal grant from county government.
Downtown Sylva Association; another successful parade
From the DSA: Downtown Sylva celebrated its annual Christmas parade Saturday with a great turn out and amazing floats that showed the time, effort, and talent that went into making such a special presentation. Wilmot Baptist Church won “Best in Show” and $200. Honorable mention was a tie and goes to Yesterday’s Tree and Heritage Christian Academy.
Downtown windows and businesses were judged during the Holiday Open House this year. Judges walked around downtown to view the numerous beautifully decorated windows. First place went to Annie’s Naturally Bakery and $100. The Nichols House came in second and Jackson General in third. Thank you to all the merchants for participating in this contest and we look forward to seeing more beautiful windows next year!
STATEWIDE-The Raleigh News and Observer reports that the state of North Carolina will urge 78,000 state residents whose unemployment benefits recently expired to re-apply for extended benefits recently approved by congress.
An excerpt:
The N.C. Security Employment Commission is preparing to send out the letters this month as it begins administering the extension, which increases benefits by up to 20weeks. Congress boosted maximum jobless benefits five weeks ago from 79 weeks to 99 weeks in the midst of the nation’s most severe economic recession in decades.
STATEWIDE–A former North Carolina Department of Transportation official from the eastern end of the state was sentenced to over three years in prison yesterday for taking kickbacks from an excavation company.
Dalton Alligood Jr., a former district engineer for the DOT, received 10% in cash from contracts funneled to the company between 2004 and 2006.
Governor Beverly Perdue has stated her intention to be tougher on corruption at the DOT at all levels.
STATEWIDE–The North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved a 7 percent rate hike for Duke Energy customers.
The hike will increase Duke’s annual revenue by $315.2 million. Duke originally sought a $488 million increase in rates, but the Commission staff had argued that a $183 million increase for Duke would be sufficient. The final amount represents a compromise.
The rate hike will be phased in, with Duke customers seeing an initial 3.27% hike next month.The balance will come in January of 2011.
The hike is controversial, in part, because Duke plans to use part of the revenue to pay for its new Cliffside Steam Station, a large, coal-driven plant west of Charlotte. Cliffside is opposed energetically by environmentalists.
REGIONAL–The Asheville Citizen-Times has announced the launch of WNC LINC, a “partnership with five Western North Carolina Web-based news and information groups as part of a new initiative to enhance local news coverage and seek out innovative ways to collaborate among organizations.”
The Southern Highland Reader is part of the WNC LINC effort, along with AskAsheville.com (www.askasheville.com), the Artful Parent (artfulparent.typepad.com), the Montford Neighborhood Association and UNC Asheville.
