Within the multi-layered strata of American governance, many people assume that the nation’s most sacred values — liberty and justice — are discussed only at the federal level, but the Town of Waynesville is about to demonstrate that often it’s local governments that must sort out what happens when the rights of one person bump up against the rights of another.

Think about it like this — your buddy owns a factory that makes widgets and he can sell as many widgets to his customers as they want to buy, but your factory makes a slightly different version of that widget and state law prohibits you from selling more than five widgetlets to any customer in any given year. 

An alarming decrease in the population of ginseng on Cherokee tribal land is prompting the tribe to look at cracking down on ginseng theft. 

When the Nudge City video gaming parlor popped up in an old auto dealer’s lot on Dellwood City Road earlier this year, it quickly caught Elizabeth Teague’s eye.

New standards and stricter definitions for manufactured homes in Waynesville could make it easier to develop manufactured home parks, under proposed changes that will soon go before the Waynesville Board of Aldermen.

Drone operators have found that navigating the Federal Aviation Administration’s regulations is more complicated than navigating their unmanned aircrafts.

Some candidates running for office in Waynesville are accusing the town of running off businesses and claim the town’s development rules are hampering development.

By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern

With evolving regulations and a complicated system of reporting, there is no end in sight for the work university officials are doing to put a stop to sexual violence on campus.

Haywood County farmers caught some face time with elected leaders this week over heaping plates of bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits and hash browns to talk candidly about the issues facing today’s farmers — and the unrelenting rain over the past week wasn’t one of them.

More than 200 acres of scattered tracts along the meandering Pigeon River Valley in Haywood County are quiet sentries to the not-so-pretty past of Canton’s century-old paper mill. 

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Mountains of toxin-laced sludge and coal ash are buried in vast industrial dumps on the outskirts of town, hidden relics of the mill’s long papermaking presence here. The old unlined landfills leapfrog along a 2-mile section of the Pigeon River downstream of the mill.