Press Releases

The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission has fast-tracked the review schedule for two state fishery management plans. The commission voted last week to proceed this fiscal year with a review of the state’s Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan, which had been slated for fiscal year 2018-2019, to give the commission more management flexibility. The commission also voted to accelerate the review of the state’s Estuarine Striped Bass Plan by one year to 2017-2018 due to possible problems with reproduction in the Tar/Pamlico, Neuse and Cape Fear rivers.

State officials are urging people to avoid contact with potentially harmful algal blooms that extend from the Pamlico River to more than a dozen of its tributaries.

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.