Hurricane Helene’s torrential rains in September 2024 caused the Pigeon River to surge to record flow that ripped sections of Interstate 40 to shreds, but the nearby Walters Dam, and powerhouse 12 miles below it, withstood the devastating storm with little damage. 

“The dam was in no way compromised. It functioned perfectly, just like it should. We opened it up to let water out,” Alan Stuart Jr., a senior project manager for Duke Energy, told a Haywood County audience last week during a presentation about the hydropower plant on the Pigeon River. 

To the Editor:

When my Needmore neighbors and I began working in 2000 to protect 4,500 acres from development, we never imagined that 26 years later we would be fighting Duke Energy over our own private property.

Duke Energy acquired 4,500 acres along the Little Tennessee River when it bought a local independent utility in 1988. The land had originally been purchased at low prices from residents of Swain and Macon counties for a dam project on the Little Tennessee that was never built.

To the Editor:

Duke Energy’s request to the Republican-controlled N.C. Utilities Commission (The Smoky Mountain News, April 22) will increase everyone’s monthly power bills by an average of $28 per 1,000 kilowatt hours, a 15% hike. Next year, an average of $6.59 will be added to that. Over the first two years, our higher electricity bills would give Duke about $728.6 million. 

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.

The question before the North Carolina Utilities Commission is simple — should residential customers on fixed incomes continue to subsidize commercial and industrial customers, AI data centers owned by globalist juggernauts, environmentally unfriendly generation practices, industrial accidents and the astronomical corporate salaries of millionaires who run a monopoly, or not?

As the sun set over Canton on Feb. 11, the scene at the town’s makeshift municipal building more closely resembled that of a trendy big-city nightclub. More than 100 people had lined up outside, hoping to join the other 49 people who’d pushed the modular double-wide’s fire code to its absolute limit by making it inside. Their minds weren’t focused on drinks or dancing, but instead on data — Big Data, and its effect on small towns. 

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) State Energy Office has selected seven projects to receive more than $20 million to improve North Carolina’s electric grid.

Seasonal billing surprises can leave utility customers sweating summer spikes or shivering in anticipation of winter surges, but a budget billing program being considered by the Town of Waynesville would help keep those bills steady as a spring breeze. 

Despite a lack of quorum at the November planning board meeting, both the flood damage prevention ordinance and now the removal of Lake Emory Dam remain on the table for Macon County, during a time when much of Western North Carolina is still recovering from damage caused by flooding and winds due to Hurricane Helene. 

As a harsh late afternoon sun beat down on Asheville’s city sidewalks Wednesday, July 27, a crowd of about 100 people gathered outside the Buncombe County Courthouse bearing signs with slogans like “Gas is so last century,” “Declare a climate emergency,” and “Solar is sexier.” Two of them held aloft artistic representations of a bee and polar bear, orange paper flames encircling a nearby flagpole.