MURPHY–An elementary and middle school in the Murphy area could be the first in the region to implement an extensive solar power array if the Cherokee County school board gives the green light.
The 4,300 panel array would cut power costs at St. Martins Elementary and Middle School by 85% over 20 years, with a total cost avoidance of over $1 million, according to school superintendent Stephen Lane.
The system would be paid for by green energy tax credits issued by Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corp.
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.
NATIONAL–The New York Timespublished an extensive feature about drinking water this week, with a focus on outdated regulations and a great deal of extra information.
Here’s the lead from the Times’s Charles Duhigg:
The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks — and still be legal.
Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.
But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000.
The Times story package includes access to the Environmental Working Group’s national drinking water database, from which readers can easily find test results on water systems across our region. Examine whether contaminants in your water supply met two standards: the legal limits established by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the typically stricter health guidelines.
GSMNP-The Knoxville News-Sentinel reported over the weekend about cautious optimism on the part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials about their efforts to curtail the invasion of the hemlock woolly adelgid.
An excerpt:
“The work to preserve Eastern hemlock trees and forests in 2009 progressed and showed successes despite increased decline and obvious mortality of trees throughout the park,” the report states.
“‘Cautiously optimistic’ is a good term for it,” said park spokesman Bob Miller.
A three-pronged strategy, using a combination of predatory beetles, foliar treatments and systemic treatments, is being followed to destroy hemlock woolly adelgids on the trees.
Because of cost, accessibility issues and priorities given to most-visited areas, the treatment area is limited in scope and includes about 132,000 hemlocks in the park.
He says “If you follow these rules, you will be purchasing and eating real, whole food most of the time.”
1. Don’t buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Like anything orange that isn’t salmon, a carrot or an orange.
2. Avoid products containing ingredients that can’t be found in an ordinary pantry. Even better, avoid anything that has more than five ingredients. Better still, if you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, you don’t want to eat them.
3. Don’t buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients. And NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! Not even a little.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay away from the middle–that’s where most processed food is shelved.
5. If it came from a plant, buy it (and eat a lot of it). If it was made in a plant, pass it by.
6. If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, put it down. You’ll be more satisfied if you eat a little bit of the real thing.
7. Avoid food that is pretending to be something that it is not. This includes soy-based mock meats.
8. Food making health claims on the package is not food you want to buy. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
9. Avoid food that is advertised on television. And remember, if it is delivered through the window of a car, it is not food.
10. Get out of the supermarket. Look to farmer’s markets for the majority of your food and snacks.
Pollan collected more rules from readers of the New York Times Magazine, which can be read here.
SYLVA–Last year, when automobile gas prices were through the roof, CSX railroad began running obvious ads, making a point the industry could’ve been making all along: it makes more sense to pull a couple of hundred trailers with two or three engines than a couple of hundred trailers with a couple of hundred engines.
Well, no kidding. That’s true no matter how pricey gas becomes.
CSX’s tagline – “our trains can move a ton of freight 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel” – has become a fighting slogan for the entire industry lately, as the prevailing economic and environmental winds begin to signal a railroad renaissance.
Financier Warren Buffet’s purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad recently drove the point home. Said Adam Hochberg on National Public Radio: “Buffett’s $44 billion acquisition, via his company Berkshire Hathaway, is one of a number of signs that freight railroads are in resurgence. While they may have been thought of as passé in the 1960s and 1970s, they’re now playing a vital role in the transportation system.”
Lobbyists for the asphalt and trucking companies, who for so long thought railroads were kaput, still make the argument that logistically, trucks work better.
“You can’t back a freight train up to the Harris Teeter,” one industry rep told Business North Carolina not long ago.
But some industry analysts believe that almost any regulations created to fight emissions will favor railroads, and that logistical issues with moving goods on the local level are easily overcome – in fact, are already overcome in some cases by the use of containers that can then be moved to flatbed trucks.
Closer to home, the topic reminds me of a sidewalk conversation I had in Sylva when gas was at it’s peak. “Before long,” my friend told me, “we’ll be able to ride a train to Asheville.”
I’m not sure I’m buying that – the cost of the necessary trestle work between Sylva and Waynesville alone would raise even Buffet’s eyebrows – but it is safe to assume that freight trains (which are allowed to run on ricketier tracks than passenger trains) aren’t going anywhere soon, even from our area.
A representative from Norfolk Southern Railway told me as much not long ago, saying that the line between Asheville and Sylva, which Norfolk Southern owns, is a money maker. The expansion of Jackson Paper Manufacturing in Sylva can only help.
As for true passenger rail, though, most of its advances will be focused on the cities.
Still, mountain residents can catch Amtrak in Toccoa Falls, GA, or Greenville, SC and ride the Southern Crescent southwest toward New Orleans or northeast toward Washington, through the Piedmont and to all points beyond.
Proponents of the long-fought-for return of passenger rail to Asheville are still at it, so that Amtrak spur — which would run up the mountain from the Piedmont — is still a possibility. (The two links in the previous sentence are from the Asheville Citizen-Times, here’s a Twitter report from MountainXpress from a recent Asheville Rail Corridor meeting).
And plans for the long-considered magnetic levitation train between Atlanta and Chattanooga and perhaps on to Nashville just got an infusion of federal cash. Maglev trains, used widely in Japan and Europe, achieve speeds of some 300 mph, mainly by not touching the ground.
NATIONAL–Slate Magazine’s “Green Lantern” provides “illuminating answers to environmental questions” in a Q-n-A format.
The current question? “I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I’ve heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what’s the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?”
Here’s an excerpt from the Lantern’s answer:
Certain crops require loads of phosphate fertilizer, for example, which is mined from the ground and can eventually cause stream-choking algal growth. Other fruits and veggies are grown with heavy doses of pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that can pollute waterways and cause reproductive problems in animals. So how do you know which crops are best to eat? Here’s the Lantern’s rule of thumb: Try to keep your more extravagant fruit cravings in check, but don’t sweat the low-impact calories that come with your carbs.
REGIONAL–The Southern Appalachian Bear Study Group, a group of biologists from Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia who study black bear populations, think that the current population of bears across the Southern Appalachians is the highest on record.
An excerpt from Morgan Simmons’ story in the Knoxville News Sentinel:
The latest UT studies put the black bear population in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at around 1,500, or about two bears for every square mile of the park.
The number of bears taken by legal hunting in Tennessee has increased dramatically since 1982, when the harvest was only 21 bears. In 1997, hunters harvested a record 370 bears. Many biologists thought the population had peaked that year, but then came the 2008-09 hunting season, when Tennessee hunters harvested 446 black bears for yet another record.
[Research ecologist] Frank Van Manen said that while the region may be biologically capable of supporting even more bears, it’s clear that in some areas, the population has reached its cultural capacity as determined by people’s willingness to tolerate bears visiting their bird feeders or breaking into their homes.
REGIONAL–I’ve always been leery of fall color predictions.
Dr. Kathy Mathews
Whatever secret influences that trigger leaf colors seem as mysterious now as they were a century ago, before it occurred to people to travel around for the autumn show. Now, though, various biology teachers and meteorologists are expected to hold forth at length — under the critical eyes of tourism professionals, lest they predict a “down” year — about the possibilities for the oncoming season.
Dr. Dan Pitillo held down the prognostication fort at Western Carolina for many years. After his retirement Dr. Kathy Mathews was pushed into the limelight.
For most stories, reporters, leads written, expect Mathews to give up a firm talking point or two, maybe three and then they mail the story in. But in a recent issue of the Franklin Press, Colin McCandless worked up an interesting piece.
Here’s an excerpt:
Experts make estimates of peak color viewing times based on a number of variables, including time of first frost, arrival of cooler temperatures, elevation and tree species diversity.
Mathews said if the area sees cooling temperatures with sunlight and less rain and clear skies than that will improve the chances of a really brilliant fall color season.
She added that there is still plenty of time for that since we don’t usually experience the first frost until mid-October.
“It’s both the cooling down of temperatures and the bright sunlight that make the trees really put out a lot of anthocyanins (a red pigment).
The good news is that the trees are definitely going to have yellows and oranges (carotenoid pigments) as they’re produced year round and are not dependent on weather. “They’re accessory photosynthesis pigments,” Mathews said. “So if we don’t have as brilliant of reds, we will have yellows and oranges showing up.”
“A globalized food system, archaic food safety laws, and the rise of large-scale production and processing have combined to create a perfect storm of unsafe food,’’ the C.S.P.I. writes. “Unfortunately, the hazards now come from all areas of the food supply: not only high-risk products, like meat and dairy, but also the must-eat components of a healthy diet, like fruits and vegetables.’’
Of course, these items will make you sick right now.Items that’ll make you sick on down the road come at it from a different angle, and the Center has some thoughts about those foods, too. They think we should tax the hell out of soda pop, for example.
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center, says this: “Soda is dirt cheap and promotes expensive and debilitating diseases, which in turn run up healthcare costs at all levels of government.”
North Carolina’s air quality this summer was the best it’s been in more than three decades — the combined result of environmental laws, balmy weather and the recession.
The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources said Monday that the state had just six “code orange” days in which ground-level ozone levels exceeded federal clean air standards. That’s the lowest number since some local governments began tracking air quality in the state in the early 1970s. In the summer of 2008, the state had 36 days of unhealthy ozone levels, and 66 the year before that.
The primary reason for the decline in ozone levels is lower emissions from coal-fired power plants and automobiles, according to DENR. The state’s Clean Smokestacks Act of 2002 required the state’s 14 coal-burning plants to cut ozone-forming emissions by three-fourths by 2012. Coal is used to generate more than half the state’s electricity.
FRANKLIN–From Bea Sanford and Bonnie Peggs at Angel Medical Center in Franklin:
Now that Angel Medical Center has paid off the Hologic digital mammography system through the generous support of many individuals and organizations, we have our sights set on purchasing the Hologic stereotactic breast biopsy machine.
When an individual is notified of a positive finding in the mammogram, a surgeon performs a biopsy of the affected tissue to see if the cells are cancerous. Currently, a mobile unit arrives at the hospital every other week with the equipment necessary to perform this biopsy. Recognizing that two weeks can be an eternity for someone who has received the news of a positive finding, the trustees of Angel Medical Center have decided to purchase our own stereotactic breast biopsy equipment. Surgeries can be scheduled immediately and our patients will no longer experience the anxiety waiting for the mobile unit.
Over the past year, I have spoken to a number of breast cancer survivors and learned that breast cancer affects numerous women and men in Macon County. We are planning to create a Center of Excellence with comprehensive care offering a range of state-of-the-art services to our residents and visitors. We are excited about the breast health center becoming a reality, where our patients will receive unsurpassed care and comfort when they come to our community hospital for their health care needs.
Some of the features of our breast health center include a multi-specialty team of surgeons, nurses, oncologists, and radiologists whose approach is to coordinate the best treatment options available to cancer patients, ongoing monitoring and improvement of care, access to cancer-related information, education and support, and a cancer registry that collects data on type and stages of cancer and treatment results. Our overarching goal is to provide quality care close to home.
The Foundation for Angel Medical Center has several events planned to engage the community in fundraising with the proceeds to benefit the breast health center. The Oktoberfest scheduled for October 10 from 6:30 pm until 10:00 pm will take place at Mill Creek Country Club. If you have ever been to Munich for Oktoberfest, our event will take you back to those fun-filled days and nights. Tickets are $50 each and include authentic German food, two beers or two glasses of wine, an exciting Silent Auction and lots of FUN!
If you have the urge to see the world or just tool around our beautiful continent, you can take chances on a $1,500 travel voucher. Tickets are $25 each or 5 for $100.
If you missed the Bras for the Cause Walkathon, you still have the opportunity to see the creative bras that were worn by 85 men and women in July. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and a number of businesses in Macon County are partnering with Angel Medical Center to honor and memorialize those who have been affected by this menacing disease. Participating merchants will display a Bra for the Cause, accept donations for the breast health center, and sell the Bras for the Cause calendar for $10 each with the proceeds going to the breast health center.
Tickets and calendars will be available at Angel Medical Center, the Franklin Chamber of Commerce, and from any Foundation Board member. For more information on how you can make support the breast health center, call Bea Sanford at 349-6887 or email bsanford@angelmed.org
Angel Medical Center part of pilot project for Carolina Mammography Registry
Angel Medical Center received a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to be used to purchase tablet PCs and provide training for our employees who will be participating in the Carolina Mammography Registry project. The remaining funds necessary to implement this project have been generously donated by Gay Todsen. Angel Medical Center is using the Carolina Mammography Registry to track mammography data required for annual inspections by the State of North Carolina and the FDA.
Initially funded in 1994 by the Department of Defense, the Carolina Mammography Registry is a population-based mammography and cancer surveillance project. Data collected includes patient demographics, health history, mammography screening and pathology results. The Carolina Mammography Registry approached Angel Medical Center with the opportunity to digitize the paper forms that mammography techs currently use to review the patient’s history and to record the mammography findings as reported by the radiologist. The tablet PCs will be used by Angel’s Radiology Department to gather information directly from patients prior to their mammography screening. The information collected from various health providers by the Carolina Mammography Registry helps scientists spot trends related to breast cancer and serves as a resource for researchers who are interested in studying the outcomes of community-based mammography screening in North Carolina. The Carolina Mammography Registry is located at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
With the installation of the Hologic digital mammography system, Angel Medical Center has seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of women who are requesting the digital mammograms because of the clarity of the images and the reduced radiation exposure. Angel Medical Center is proud to make a difference in the lives of women throughout North Carolina by providing data for research.
STATEWIDE–The Triangle Business Journal wrote last week that a new study from Raleigh-based advocacy group Environment North Carolina notes a marked increase in solar power generating capacity in the state.
The lead:
North Carolina’s installed solar energy generating capacity grew more than six-fold in 2008, to 4.7 megawatts from 0.7 megawatts, according to a new study by Raleigh-based Environment North Carolina
Another excerpt:
If the growth contunes, the group also says, the North Carolina “can install enough solar power over the next two decades to supply 2 percent of the state’s electricity by 2020 and 14 percent by 2030.”
REGIONAL–Mountain Xpress columnist and blogger Anne “Edgy Mama” Fitten Glenn holds forth on the health benefits of beer in her most recent Xpress column here.
An excerpt:
Out of 1,700 women participating in the study (average age was 48), those considered moderate beer drinkers had the highest bone density.
At this news, I jumped up and danced a little happy dance, during which I spilled some of my medicinal Scottish ale. I love beer and luckily, I live in Beer City, USA, where I could drink a different locally crafted beer every day for a month without quaffing the same brew twice. Hurrah!
The researchers, from the University of Extremadura in Caceres, Spain, found that regular drinkers tended to have better bone density than those who never consumed beer. While they only tested women, I assume this holds true for the male persuasion as well. Men get osteoporosis too, especially as they age.
CULLOWHEE–David Henderson, a professor of environmental ethics at WCU, went to bat for light bulb choice in the Washington Post yesterday, arguing that forced use of compact fluorescent bulbs isn’t such a bright way to achieve green progress.
The story has generated over 100 reader comments.
Here’s an excerpt:
The environmental benefits of using only compact fluorescent bulbs are indirect — and less than what could be realized by changing standards governing, for example, coal use. Consider: The benefit of “reducing inefficiency” depends on where the energy is coming from. Improving efficiency without eliminating a harmful source may just free energy that is then used elsewhere. If there is no net reduction in energy use, where is the benefit? Direct regulation of harmful activities, such as putting firm limits on carbon emissions, is more likely to achieve the desired environmental result. (And this would only indirectly influence my bedroom decor.) A great deal of the wasted energy in lighting comes from excessive nighttime lighting in public spaces, which is an excellent issue for government to address. Banning traditional light bulbs as used in private homes seems an effort in the name of environmental protection that has very little payoff.
REGIONAL--I had an adversarial relationship with elementary school, so late summer is evocative for me.
For example, the particular small of school bus exhaust — especially on cool, foggy mornings — takes me back three decades real quick, dredging up a sense of adventure and dread.
Likewise, the song of the late-summer katydid heralds fall about as clearly as anything I can think of. My family spent summertime weekends at a cabin with a loud old water pump whose drum beat was in perfect time with the katydid chorus, and told me I’d be back in the classroom soon, worrying about bathroom breaks.
Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn has katydids on her mind, too. Here’s her post.
ROBBINSVILLE–Former Madison County state legislator Herbert Hyde once said he got into politics for the same reason he mows his grass: to protect children from snakes.
Well, sadly, times are a’changin’ — at least according to some Robbinsvillians, who say the government is to blame for this year’s upward trend in timber rattler sightings and bites. The feds, they say (President Obama himself, no doubt), have been releasing extra snakes into the woods to protect them from extinction.
Snake (l), Feds.
Graham Star editor James Budd wrote about it last month. Here’s an excerpt:
“It’s a lie,” [State biologist Mike] Carraway said. “It’s an absolute lie.”
Carraway used to be stationed in Andrews and served Graham County in the early ‘80s.
He heard the same rumors back then.
“Some people even say we used a helicopter to drop them,” Carraway said.
Shot down by the wildlife folks, I then focused on the U.S. Forest Service …
Read Budd’s piece here, which he wraps up by noting that rattlesnakes are nowhere near endangered.
DURHAM–With a very lucky shot, Duke University scientists have captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of a huge jolt of lightning that flowed 40 miles upward from the top of an offshore tropical storm.
These rarely seen, highly charged meteorological events are known as gigantic jets, and they flash up to the lower levels of space, or ionosphere. While they do not occur every time there is lightning, they are substantially larger than their downward striking cousins.
Images of gigantic jets have only been recorded on five occasions since 2001. The Duke team caught a one-second view and magnetic field measurements that are now giving scientists a much clearer understanding of these rare events.
The gigantic jet was recorded during Tropical Storm Cristobal, which skirted the North Carolina coast in July 2008. The camera that caught it was near Duke University in Durham, more than 150 miles inland.
“Despite poor viewing conditions as a result of a full moon and a hazy atmosphere, we were able to clearly capture the gigantic jet,” said study leader Steven Cummer, Jeffrey N. Vinik associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Cummer’s report appears online in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“Our measurements show that gigantic jets are capable of transferring a substantial electrical charge to the lower ionosphere,” Cummer said. “They are essentially upward lightning from thunderclouds that deliver charge just like conventional cloud-to-ground lightning. What struck us was the size of this event.”
It appears from the Duke measurements that the amount of electricity discharged by conventional lightning and gigantic jets is comparable, Cummer said.
But the gigantic jets travel farther and faster than conventional lightning because thinner air between the clouds and ionosphere provides less resistance. Whereas a conventional lightning bolt follows a six-inch channel and travels about 4.5 miles down to earth, the gigantic jet recorded by the Duke team contained multiple channels and traveled about 40 miles upward.
“Given that reservoirs of electric charge in thunderstorms are the sources for both lightning and gigantic jets, and that both events involve contact between these reservoirs and a very large conducting surface, it is not surprising that their charge transfers are comparable,” he said.
Scientists do not know what conditions or what types of storms are conducive to gigantic jet formation.
It has been difficult in the past to obtain images of gigantic jets because they occur so quickly that cameras have to be trained on them at the precise moment they occur.
Cummer caught the gigantic jet almost by accident. The equipment had been set to capture another phenomenon known as sprites, which were first photographed in 1989. They are electrical discharges that occur above storm clouds and are colored red or blue, with jellyfish-like tendrils hanging down.
He maintains a low-light video camera trained to the sky and programmed to start recording when specific meteorological conditions occur. At the same time, other equipment constantly measures radio emissions in the same sector to capture electrical events. A special GPS system ensures that the readings from all the equipment are synchronized.
Cummer is planning to install a low-light, high-speed camera to capture gigantic jet images in color, which could provide additional information about chemical processes and temperatures inside the phenomenon.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Other Duke team members were Jingbo Li, Feng Han, Gaopeng Lu and Nicolas Jaugey. Walter Lyons and Thomas Nelson from FMA Research, Fort Collins, Colo., also participated.
