Last week, Gov. Josh Stein and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson stopped by Canton to talk to media, local leaders and State Reps. Lindsay Prather and Eric Ager about the town’s construction of a new wastewater treatment plant. He also highlighted the role the state played in bringing the project to fruition while calling on federal legislators to provide more funding to ensure more towns can complete similar crucial infrastructure improvements. 

In the new documentary, “Papertown,” a film that immerses itself into the mountain community of Canton as it dealt with the closure of its 115-year-old paper mill in 2023, features a scene with Gail Mull — the town’s mayor pro tem and secretary of the local millworkers union — that sums it all up. 

“The mill has provided, and there is going to be life after the mill,” Mull said. “Billionaires come and go, we’re going to be here forever. We have to make something of it.  We have to have the backbone. We have to have the grit. We have got to stay here and make something of it — and we will.” 

As spring takes hold across Western North Carolina, property owners are stepping outside to assess winter’s toll — downed limbs, overgrowth, drainage issues, and land projects waiting to begin. For many in Haywood County and beyond, that seasonal reset starts with a call to Haynes Tree & Excavation.

Based in Waynesville and serving nearby communities like Clyde, Maggie Valley, and Canton, the family-owned company has become a go-to resource for everything from storm cleanup to full-scale land preparation.

As North Carolina braces against a surge in large-scale data center development, a new bill filed by Rep. Lindsey Prather (D-Buncombe) aims to redraw the rules governing how those facilities use electricity, consume water and tap into public subsidies.

In filing the bill, Prather noted that she was inspired by a 12-month moratorium passed in the Town of Canton in February, but also that the bill was “crowd-sourced.”

Canton has entered the growing statewide fight over property tax limits, with town officials adopting a resolution opposing legislation that would restrict how local governments fund the bulk of their operations. 

“I think it’s in line with what is happening across the state — the possibility of what the General Assembly will do and what effect that will have on our already strained budgets,” said Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers.

The tiny Haywood County Town of Clyde has joined a growing number of Western North Carolina communities by formalizing its opposition to data centers through a 12-month moratorium, but with limited jurisdiction beyond its borders and the possibility of preemption by Raleigh looming, Clyde knows it can’t go it alone.

Canton is preparing to turn one of its most flood-prone, long-neglected buildings into something it has rarely been in decades — useful. 

Once the project is complete, the aging structure at 225 Park St. will become a flexible, flood-adapted gathering space designed not just to survive the next storm but to anchor a broader transformation already reshaping the surrounding blocks. 

A looming deadline on a critical wastewater agreement has exposed a growing divide between Canton officials and their private partner, with negotiations stalled over cost, oversight and the data needed to shape the town’s long-term infrastructure plans. 

Town leaders confirmed they do not yet have an extension in place for wastewater treatment services as the current agreement with mill site owner Eric Spirtas was set to expire at 5 p.m. March 31 — when The Smoky Mountain News went to print — leaving only days to resolve a dispute that has been building over months. 

A leaked draft of the FEMA Review Council’s final report on reform of the disaster response agency appears to shift considerable burden onto states, local governments, tribes and territories (SLTTs) while slashing the agency’s workforce by 50%, positioning federal response in the rear and largely ignoring requests to send recovery funding down to the county level.

Just two days before the three-year anniversary of the announcement that the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill in Canton would close, Canton’s governing board took a decisive step toward securing both its wastewater infrastructure and its economic future by approving a complex land purchase that will place key portions of the former paper mill site under municipal control.