The Southern Highland Reader

Art comes in many forms and the newest addition to Southwestern Community College’s Oconaluftee Institute of Cultural Arts is actually old. It’s a letterpress that will be used to print books in the Cherokee syllabary.

“We are bringing back the Cherokee history in true art form,” said Luzene Hill, OICA progam outreach coordinator.

Years ago the Eastern Band published a newspaper called Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi, or the Cherokee Phoenix. This first Native American newspaper was printed on a hot-type letterpress in which each word is put together by hand, combining individual metal letters or characters.

Through a $68,846 grant from Cherokee Preservation Foundation and a $47,792 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, OICA will purchase a metal press and develop a print-making studio at its facilities on Bingo Loop Road in Cherokee.

“It opens up a whole new craft of Book Art for us, including print making, hand papermaking and hand bookbinding,” said Hill. “For our students Book Art will blend fine arts with crafts.”

Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, recognized that conveying ideas in language was powerful so he spent 12 years developing the Cherokee syllabary, completing it in 1821. Each character represents a syllable, instead of one sound, thus the name syllabary.  As in the Phoenix newspaper, the power of the Cherokee language rises through the printed word on the page, transforming from thoughts to art, Hill explained.

“You already feel the power  of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too,” said Hill. “To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”

“You already feel the power  of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too. To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”

As students learn to produce first the paper and then the books, they will also learn skills such as precision, technique, spacing and artistic layout composition, said Hill, who is consulting with noted instructor Frank Brannon. Brannon, who runs his own letterpress studio SpeakEasy Press in Dillsboro, earned his master of fine arts in Book Arts at the University of Alabama and has recently taught Letterpress at the Penland School of Crafts and Papermaking and Printing at the John C. Campbell Folk School.

“One of Frank’s specialties is the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper,” said Hill. “He has explored and published copies from the original hand impressions of type from the Phoenix, found in a 1954 excavation of the New Echota historic site. He hand printed and hand bound the publications for exhibition.”

“The Phoenix was a bi-lingual weekly newspaper printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English and one of its biggest subscribers was the British Library,” said Brannon, who also teaches at Book Works in Asheville. “Most folks don’t know that the paper was distributed in Europe, too. The first issue was published Feb. 21, 1828, using the 85 character Cherokee syllabary completed by Sequoyah just seven years earlier,” he said.

The first paper that the Phoenix was printed on came from Knoxville by wagon and it took two weeks to arrive, according to Brannon. The last issue was published in 1834, shortly before the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

“Students will learn the Cherokee history right along with the history of the letterpress,” said Hill.

The Cherokee language will also be incorporated into the course since the books can be published in the Cherokee syllabary, she added.

DILLSBORO–The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling that the Dillsboro Dam should be removed.

From an Asheville Citizen-Times staff report:

The court today denied Jackson County’s petition for review of FERC’s July 2007 order allowing Duke Energy to remove the historic dam.

Read more here, from Lynn Hotaling at the Sylva Herald.

DILLSBORO–This story, in which Constance Richards writes up Barry Kennon’s tiki bar party spot outside his house on the Tuckasegee near Dillsboro, first ran in the August edition of swanky WNC Magazine.

It’s been posted online since, so, given that party journalism pieces are few and far between in the mountains, it obviously needed sharing.

Kennon, a championship kayaker, modeled his tiki bar after one he knew in Costa Rica, and built it around his boat takeout.

Here’s an excerpt:

As more decorations go up, including tiki totems and palm leaves, Dieter Kuhn, Sylva’s resident brewmeister and owner of Heinzelmännchen Brewery, takes the B.Y.O.B. standard to a master’s level and taps a keg of his seasonal Hoppy Gnome. The set-up crew continues their work with golden pints in hand.

“If you only eat your own food and drink your own beer, you’re selling yourself short,” says Kuhn. “We have so many great venues in this little area—people really come together and like to share what they have to offer.”

In the kitchen, [former Spring St. Cafe chef Karl] Engelmann is crisping slices of fresh ciabatta bread and sesame-covered filone from Annie’s Naturally Bakery in the oven, which will be served with a panoply of cheeses. For the early guests, he sends out a platter of thick triangles of farmstead cheeses from Yellow Branch Pottery & Cheese, globes of Dark Cove goat cheese covered in chopped chives, and crudités.

Moving on to the trout, he blends pork sausage from Nantahala Meats and Poultry in Franklin, chopped croutons, garlic, and herbs, and spoons the mixture into the whole trout before wrapping each with bright green banana leaves and tying them with string. “This will literally steam the fish, keep the moisture in, and enhance the flavors,” Engelmann says. He has another trick in mind, too. Shells from the boiled peanuts he’s serving with the Cobb salad will go into the grill flames to add a nutty flavor.

Read the whole story here.

CULLOWHEE–When outfitter Burt Kornegay, owner of Slickrock Expeditions, got an email from a friend inviting him to a save-the-Dillsboro-Dam shindig, he fired off a pithy response. Naturally, it was immediately shared all around the interwebs, where by complete happenstance it filtered all the way down to me.

Here it is, with his permission:

First, the note from his friend:

Yo, read all about it….

Saturday night there is a benefit in support of saving the Dillsboro Dam. So, all you anti-establishment, anti-Duke Power people come on down and catch the 7:30 set of singer-songwriter Barbara Duncan. If you’ve not heard her, you owe it to yourself to check this out and to have a few beers in the process, not to mention to support a good cause. So, let’s make Sat. eve. a party night and fill up Guadalupe (that also serves great food).

Hope to see you there …

Then, Burt’s response:

Hey, Partner, Hold on there!

Why do you say that fighting to keep the Dillsboro dam is “a good cause”?  Because doing so spites bad ole Duke?  Let’s not forget that the dam plugs up and drowns the Tuckaseegee River, halting the travel of river creatures and backing up an unnatural mile-long trough of deadwater behind it. Also, from a human perspective now, the dam stands in the way of creating a real, honest-to-goodness “river park” in Dillsboro.  By honest-to-goodness river park, I mean a park with a river that actually flows, like at East LaPorte (probably the most popular public place in our county).  A real river park would make a pleasurable place for all of us to go, and it would be good for businesses in Dillsboro too.  Hundreds of old concrete plugs like the Dillsboro dam are coming down all across the US,  cheered on by river-loving and civic-minded people just like yourself, and I say, Right On!

As for your rebel claim that it is “anti-establishment” to fight for the dam, because doing so is anti-Duke, I say, wasn’t the dam built by the county’s moneyed “establishment” in the first place, back when other segments of the local “establishment” were as busy as beavers gnawing out railroad lines, felling the virgin forest, and turning the Tuckaseegee into flowing mud?  I mean, what could be more “establishment” than a dam?  (Well, perhaps a skyscraper or aircraft carrier.)  And what could be more “establishment” than to align yourself with the likes of county manager Ken “Dam or Die” Westmoreland, who doesn’t mind taxing us to the tune of more than a quarter-million-$ to pay lawyers, in his attempts to do  .  . . what?  Why, to milk still more $ from Duke! When it comes to the Dillsboro dam, the “anti-” lies in taking it down.

Kornegay’s longtime Jackson County business has been the focus of some media features lately. Here and here from the Smoky Mountain News, for example. The Sylva Herald has also written him up (you can search that story at their paid archives, here).

Recent news from the legal struggle over the dam from the Sylva Herald here (link will expire in one week), and from the Smoky Mountain News here.

SYLVA–Sylva’s WRGC radio has obtained a copy of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission document released yesterday that re-states the agency’s belief that Jackson County leadership is in the wrong in its attempts to condemn the Dillsboro Dam.

WRGC reporter Eric Moore quotes from the document:

“An attempt by a state or subdivision of a state to condemn project lands, works, or facilities in order to build a park is clearly preempted [by the Federal Power Act]. The county’s effort to undercut the Commission’s exclusive jurisdiction and to circumvent the Congressionally-mandated judicial review process in order to overturn our orders through state court proceedings is inappropriate.”

View WRGC’s report here.

Recent news from the legal struggle over the dam from the Sylva Herald here (link will expire in one week).

SYLVA–Editorially, the Sylva Herald newspaper has been openly disdainful of the Jackson County Commissioners’ ongoing battle with Duke Energy over the fate of the century-old Dillsboro Dam.

It editorializes on the subject this week. Here’s an excerpt:

Recently we taxpayers have been asked to bear quite a burden for our county’s leaders. First they forced through revaluation right before the housing market crashed. Now we’re paying taxes based on land values that are much inflated over current market value. They then turned around and instituted a pay study by the Mercer Group that resulted in major raises for several county employees. The amount of some of those raises nearly equals the average yearly salary for Jackson County residents. Yet the taxpayers haven’t gotten a single “thank you” for footing the bill.

The editorial is available here for a short while, then afterwards at the Herald’s paid archive.

DILLSBORO–Duke Energy on Monday asked appeals court judge Zoro Guice to block Jackson County’s efforts to condemn the 96-year-old Dillsboro Dam.

Duke Energy seeks to remove the dam to mitigate other hydro electric projects in the region, as part of a settlement reached over five years ago.

Jackson County commissioners feel the county was shortchanged in the settlement, and want to keep the dam and build a park nearby.

Read more from Jon Ostendorf at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

DILLSBORO–Dillsboro invites folks to experience Christmas spirit in early December as this walkabout mountain town glows in holiday splendor for the 26th annual Dillsboro Festival of Lights & Luminaries.

The four-night festival, which takes place Dec. 4-5 and Dec. 11-12, begins each evening at dusk when merchant “elves” illuminate the streets with 2,500 white paper bag luminaries. The merchants also flip the switches on strands of tiny white lights trimming the town’s buildings, many of which date to the 1800s.

Once the town is aglow, carolers fill the streets with music, musicians stroll the sidewalks playing Christmas favorites, and Santa visits with children in the town hall.

Shopkeepers add to the festivities by staying open late and serving holiday treats with hot cider and cocoa.

“If you’re having trouble getting into the holiday spirit, this festival will do wonders,” says Julie Spiro of the Jackson County Tourism Authority. “We’re often told that visiting the luminaries festival is like stepping into a Christmas painting.”

There’s no admission charge for the Festival of Lights & Luminaries, and lodging is plentiful with more than half of Jackson’s County guest rooms located in Dillsboro or within 15 minutes.

For information, go to www.visitdillsboro.org, or call the Jackson County Visitors Center at (800) 962-1911.

The Western North Carolina Pottery Festival returns for its fifth year on Saturday, Nov. 7, with an expanded lineup and a special clay “Olympics” competition.

Event organizers continue to be surprised by the popularity achieved by the festival in a short period of time. With dozens of well-known applicants from across the nation, the number of juried potters has been expanded to 42 this year. Last year’s show had 36 exhibitors.

Dillsboro, NC

The 2009 festival includes potters from 13 states, including Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, New York and New Jersey, as well as North Carolina and surrounding states. The featured potter is Trent Berning of California.

“There are name potters in the show we never expected to have, and we had to turn away 30 potters, so there is competition to get in,” said organizer Joe Frank McKee of Dillsboro’s Tree House Pottery. “It’s become a premier event. We have potters from every type of clay medium.”

Berning, of Berning Clay Gallery in Fallbrook, Calif., has a master’s degree in ceramics from the University of Tennessee and is an instructor at two colleges. He is known for creating large pots featuring slip decoration, which uses fine clay in a variety of colors blended into liquid form and applied to pots.

Another artist of note is Richard Aerni of Rochester, NY. Aerni, a potter for 30 years, specializes in single-fired, wood-ash glazed functional stoneware. His work is sold in galleries across the country and is on display at the Smithsonian Institute.

New this year is the clay Olympics challenge from 1-3 p.m. Friday at Tree House Pottery. The competition is sponsored by Shimpo, a pottery equipment company, and includes 20 potters attempting to create the tallest cylinder and widest bowl in 10 minutes.

Saturday’s festival hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. Admission is $2 per person and includes a ticket for a day-long raffle. Children under 12 are admitted free.

“All the smiling faces in Jackson County and the people supporting the WNC Pottery Festival make this a special event,” said McKee. “Our potters like interacting with people and are willing to share information. They’re not just here for money, they’re here to share their craft.”

DILLSBORO–Vietnam veterans and those who lost a loved one in the war will have an opportunity to remember their fallen heroes when the Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall comes to Dillsboro’s Monteith Park, Oct. 15-19.

The wall is a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It has traveled to hundreds of sites across the county since 1984, and will be on display 24 hours a day while in Dillsboro.

On the Vietnam Veterans Moving Wall are the names of 58,253 soldiers who gave their lives, including about 1,300 unaccounted for and considered missing in action. Thousands visit the moving wall each year to see the names and pay tribute to those who served.

Veteran John Devitt conceived the idea of a traveling wall upon visiting the memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1982. He teamed with veterans Norris Shears and Gerry Hayer to create this moving tribute to their fellow soldiers.

It was first displayed in Tyler, Texas, in October of 1984. Now there are two replicas which travel throughout the country each year from April through November.

Dillsboro’s effort to host the wall was spearheaded by local veteran Allen Fields, who owns a small music gift shop and recording studio called A House Beside the Road.

For more information, call the Jackson County Visitors Center at (800) 962-1911, or visit www.MountainLovers.com.

DILLSBORO–Western Carolina’s Jill Ingram writes here for The Reporter that Western Carolina University’s art department will partner with the Jackson County Green Energy Park in Dillsboro to provide studio space for the study of energy-intensive artwork like glassblowing and metalworking.

Writes Ingram:

The university and the Green Energy Park are in the process of formalizing a collaboration agreement that will include graduate assistantships and classroom instruction based at the park, Tichich said. The park’s resources can help the School of Art and Design develop as “a fine arts center of a four-state area,” Tichich said.

Timm Muth, director of the energy park, said the collaboration is mutually beneficial. The park can provide resources not available at WCU, and new Western Carolina art graduates might take advantage of the Green Energy Park’s role as a business incubator by renting studio space as a step between academics and a career. “I feel that the park could prove to be an invaluable partner for WCU, offering students opportunities to put what they’ve learned into real-world practice,” Muth said.

Read the whole piece here.

DILLSBORO–High waters along the Tuckasegee early on September 22 caused a 35,000-gallon sewage spill at a treatment plant near Dillsboro, according to administrators with Tuckasegee Water and Sewer Authority. The same authorities have said that public health wasn’t endangered by the spill.

From WRGC radio in Sylva:

TWSA notified the Division of Water Quality of the incident the next day, on September 23. It could happen again. With more rain in the forecast– and the National Weather Service originally calling for up to two inches of rain Saturday– “It does have the potential to recur,” said Bryson. “We were at the limit of our pumping capacity. We couldn’t pump what was coming into the plant. The conduit that was bringing it to us was bringing in more water than we could pump through the plant.” The Division of Water Quality is looking into the matter.

DILLSBORO–It’s a big weekend for the Jackson County Green Energy Park, a series of artisan studios, greenhouses and other ventures powered by captured methane from an abandoned landfill.

Chalking at Art at the Park, 2008

The county owned-facility, located outside Dillsboro, hosts its second annual “Art at the Park” on Saturday, from 9am until 2pm.

Family-oriented activities will include sidewalk chalk, mural painting, weaving, tile mosaics, chalk pastel drawing, take-home art projects, and more.  Adults will enjoy free horticulture workshops throughout the day.  The event will be catered by Bubacz’s Underground Cafe’, of Sylva.

Scheduled are live demonstrations of glassblowing, pottery and blacksmithing, as well as the unveiling of the park’s new glassblowing studio.

Horticulture workshops (Free, but please RSVP at 631-0271)

9:00 – 10:30 am – Basic Propagation of Woody & Herbaceous Perennials
Presented by George Thomas, Instructor, Horticulture Technology at Haywood Community College. No experience necessary – beginners welcome. Participants will learn propagation techniques for various perennial plants with a focus on native species. This workshop will include hands-on experience. Bring paper and pen to take notes.

10:30 – 11:30 am – The Art of Bonsai
Presented by Sage Smith, Horticulture Student at Haywood Community College. Bonsai, the art of shaping woody plants to look like miniature trees, has been practiced for thousands of years. Participants will learn basic techniques for shaping, watering, and re-potting plants to create fascinating living sculptures. No experience necessary.

11:30 – 12:30 – Landscaping With Native Plants
Presented by Marsha Crites, Master Gardener and Owner of Harvest Moon Gardens Landscaping. Participants will hear a short talk on landscaping with native plants, followed by a walk through the grounds at the Green Energy Park to discuss and identify the various native species. No experience necessary.

12:30 – 1:30 – Houseplant Care and Maintenance
Presented by Bo Keen, of Ray’s Florist in Dillsboro. Participants will learn about indoor/house plant care, feeding, handling, repotting and propagation. Bring your plants in for problem identification and solutions. This workshop will have a focused question/answer session.

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DILLSBORO–The Dillsboro Arts & Music Festival has announced its musical lineup. The 25th annual festival is one of the oldest festivals in the mountains of North Carolina.

This year’s music schedule begins with acclaimed blues vocalist Karen “Sugar” Barnes at 10 a.m., and concludes with a special pairing of Barnes and renowned blues guitarist Marshall Ballew at 5 p.m.

In between, the following acts will perform: Tyler Kittle Trio (jazz) at 10:30 a.m.; Keith Shuler (Americana) at noon; Brittany Reilly (blues) at 12:30 p.m.; Marshall Ballew (blues guitar) at 2 p.m.; and Home Remedies (old time rock & roll) at 3 p.m.

The Dillsboro Arts & Music Fest also features the work of artisans from across the Southeast. Art in a wide variety of media will be available, including raku and traditional pottery, fine paintings, photography, jewelry, wildlife and nature-inspired carvings, gourd art, and handcrafted soaps & scented oils.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and there’s no charge for admission. Free and paid parking are available.

Historic Dillsboro, a walk-about town of more than 50 shops, eateries and inns, offers an authentic mountain experience. The town is located about 40 miles west of Asheville at the crossroads of Hwy. 23/74 and Hwy. 441, close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

For information, go to www.visitdillsboro.org, or call the Jackson County Visitors Center (800) 962-1911.

REGIONAL–I posted recently about small hydro vs. big hydro, particularly in relation to the Dillsboro Dam controversy.

No surprise then that a short blurb about micro hydro caught our attention; micro hydro has to do with using very small watercourses — backyard streams for example — to create electricity for a small area.

I first saw such an operation about eight years ago, when Balsam Mountain Preserve installed a waterwheel-driven generator to supply power to a campground it built near Cabin Flats, south of Balsam Gap. I don’t know whether the Balsam generator is still in use — it struck me as a novelty — although I’ve included a picture or two here.

Meanwhile, the blurb I refer to is a workshop planned for July at Appalachian State University. It’s one of ten or so such workshops to be held this year at the school in Boone.

Read about them here.

GSMNP/REGIONAL–Among the nation’s national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains park is most often rode hard and put up wet. Perpetually under-funded and over-used, the park, due to its proximity to major urban areas, maintains its long-standing honor as our most visited national park.

A couple of recent news notes are worth circling with the sharpie for this very reason:

One, the park is the happy recipient of $64 million in federal stimulus money, a windfall that will create up to 1,500 new jobs, according to the park superintendent. Two, the park saw an April jump in visitation that lifted it above the 2008 numbers. This might be a little deceiving because of a calendar quirk, but it remains good news for the tourism industry.

As a bonus feature, we offer Tobias Miller, Dillsboro resident, a man of many hats with the park service, all of them sweaty. Miller was featured in last week’s Mountain Xpress.

DILLSBORO–Dillsboro resident Scott Hartbarger, who coached the Smoky Mountain High School boys basketball team for several years before Jimmy Cleaveland’s arrival, will take the reins of the Franklin High girls squad.

Hartbarger replaces Jay Brooks, 2008 MAC coach of the year, who stepped down to become co-athletics director.

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.”

Read the whole piece here.

UPDATE 4.03.09: Judge Laura Bridges ruled in favor of Duke Power in the judgment outlined below, and ordered Jackson County to issue the relevant permits. The county has appealed.

UPDATE 4.04.09: Ruling available at Sylva Herald blog here.

SYLVA–Attorneys representing Duke Energy and Jackson County met in superior court Monday, March 16, seeking a partial summary judgment in the ongoing dispute over the fate of the century-old Dillsboro Dam (map it).

Dillsboro Dam

The hearing took place before Judge Laura Bridges, who by her own admission has some studying to do about the five-year-old conflict. Judge Marlene Hyatt, who is familiar with the case, recently retired.

Monday’s hearing was centered on Jackson County’s refusal to grant permits for Duke to begin dredging sediment from behind the dam in preparation for demolition — something the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has asked it to do. Jackson County has refused to grant the permits until other facets of pending litigation are cleared up, contending that its own suits against Duke are so intertwined with the dam’s removal that they must be decided before removal can go forward. Duke argues that FERC’s ruling supersedes the rights of the county to deny permitting.

Judge Bridges heard the argument, and said that she’d rule in a week or so, as soon as she waded through the history of the case.

Read an account of Judge Bridges’ decision from Lynn Hotaling at the Sylva Herald

Read an account of earlier proceedings here, from Justin Goble at the Sylva Herald.