Press Releases

State and federal environmental agencies are inviting public feedback on a plan to clean up remaining environmental contamination at a Superfund site in Columbus County. For four decades, companies including Holtrachem and Honeywell, Inc., used a mercury cell process at the site in Riegelwood to make sodium hydroxide, liquid chlorine, hydrogen gas and other chemicals which were then sold to other companies.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel will meet Aug. 25 in New Bern to discuss methodologies for calculating inlet shoreline change rates. The panel will meet at 10 a.m. in the Brock Administration Building, Room B-100 at Craven County Community College, 800 College Court, New Bern. The meeting is open to the public. The panel provides scientific advice to the state Coastal Resources Commission. It was created by the commission in 1997, and is composed of coastal engineers and geologists.

State officials will hold four meetings in September to gather public input on the North Carolina Beach and Inlet Management Plan.

A new state study shows encouraging trends for North Carolina’s efforts to divert wholesome, uneaten food from landfills so it can be used to feed the hungry. The “N.C. Organics Recycling Study” revealed that 15,000 tons of wholesome and perishable food was donated and fed to people in 2015. Most of that food was donated by grocery stores, restaurants, catering companies, farmers and other businesses to food rescue organizations that delivered the food to soup kitchens and shelters, said Jorge Montezuma, who works for the state environmental agency and conducted the study.

The state marine fisheries agency will hold a public hearing on a proposed shellfish/water column lease in New Hanover County at 6 p.m. on Sept. 7 at the Department of Environmental Quality Wilmington Regional Office, 127 Cardinal Street, Wilmington. Keith Walls of Wilmington has applied to lease about 2 acres of bottom and water column in Middle Sound, behind Figure Eight Island, for a shellfish aquaculture operation.

The state’s marine fisheries division will hold two meetings this month to explain new flounder reporting requirements for pound net fishermen. The meetings will be held as follows:

After news reports and editorials inaccurately and unfairly characterized the state’s efforts to protect drinking water, the North Carolina departments of Health and Human Services and Environmental Quality release the following open editorial:

The environmental department today announced that the McCrory Administration has joined 15 other states in challenging the Obama administration’s latest regulation targeting oil and gas production.  The oil and gas rule is the latest in a string of federal regulations aimed at driving up the cost of domestic energy.  

The state’s marine fisheries division today rescinded a regulation requiring seafood dealers to hold a special permit to buy flounder from pound net fishermen and to report those landings daily. Instead, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries will require fishermen who hold pound net permits and are participating in the flounder pound net fishery to report their daily landings of flounder to the division. The daily reporting requirement will begin Sept. 1.

The state environmental department, after consultation with the state health and human services department, the Mecklenburg County Health Department, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Lake Wylie Marine Commission, town officials from Belmont, North Carolina and Rock Hill, South Carolina, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Catawba Riverkeeper and the Sierra Club, has authorized a plan for discharging water from the U.S. National Whitewater Center.