Topics Related to Environmentally Speaking

DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser visits Purchase Knob and learns how salamanders, lichens and other native species respond to improvements in air quality.

Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls put on her fishing boots and went to the beach at Cape Point in Hatteras this week, but she wasn’t trying to hook a fish.

When Gov. Roy Cooper in 2017 designated the Department of Environmental Quality as the lead agency to administer the state's share of the Volkswagen settlement mitigation trust funds, I knew we would be embarking on a journey to “do a lot of good."

The Pavilion on Park Square is the centerpiece of a redevelopment project that turned a former mill site into a state-of-the-art gathering and entertainment area for the Town of Forest City. Known as POPS, the town created this downtown oasis for the community with the help of DEQ’s Brownfields Program and the Dry-Cleaning Solvent Cleanup Act (DSCA) Program.

Keeping kids engaged. Educators and parents are often tasked with finding creative measures encourage students to be inspired. While climate change and art aren’t generally synonymous, a group of State educators and environmental professionals who formed the N.C. Climate Education Network (NCCEN) said – let’s give it a shot.

Climate change is a serious subject, with volumes of data and historical research. NCCEN decided to offer an art contest and invited K-12 students to use 30 years of data to express their visual interpretation of climate change.

Have you noticed how fine particulate readings in the morning are often higher than the afternoon during the winter months? This is often due to something called a surface temperature inversion. Typically, the temperature of the air will cool with height as the sun heats the ground, warming the air at the surface.

Working with the state’s Department of Information Technology, the Division of Waste Management’s Hazardous Waste Section successfully modernized its outdated and inefficient paper billing and collection process with an online solution.

It requires a lot of training, but when they are finished, the N.C. Marine Patrol will have a certified swift water rescue team, yet another way they can help save lives during emergencies.

Clark Purvis could not have known just how remarkable that striped bass he recently caught would turn out to be.

Sure, it was a big fish – 40 inches long – given that it was caught in the Roanoke River. Most striped bass caught in North Carolina’s sounds and rivers range between 16 and 24 inches. But that’s not what made the fish so special.

It was the information researchers with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ Tagging Program got from the tag on the fish that showed how extraordinary it was.