The Maggie Valley Sanitary District again earned top marks for water quality from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, one of 15 facilities to be recognized with the “Gold Star” honor for systems that have received an award for exceeding drinking water standards for 10 or more consecutive years. 

To the Editor:

The new 2023 state budget will pump more than $100 million annually into land and water conservation.

A research project aiming to understand contamination levels outside the fence line of the now-shuttered Canton paper mill is likely to draw more than a quarter-million dollars in state funding to test soil, water and air samples nearby. 

It was one of the best opportunities I’d been given since I became a journalist and moved to Western North Carolina about seven years ago.

For the first time since 9/11, the Tennessee Valley Authority opened up Fontana Dam to a tour by members of the public and I was lucky enough to go along and write this story. 

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality is proposing changes to its priority rating system for stormwater infrastructure grants and offering draft intended use plans for state revolving funds. Public comment on these items will be accepted through 5 p.m. June 30.

For years, the town of Canton’s municipal wastewater has been treated, free of charge, by the various operators of the town’s iconic paper mill, but a grant application to be filed by the town wants to study the feasibility of sending that waste to Waynesville’s new treatment plant, once it’s constructed. 

Nearly four decades ago, vast swathes of the 8,600-acre Waynesville watershed were laid bare, the trees timbered for profit and the soil harvested to build the earth-filled dam now holding back the reservoir.

Fast forward to 2019, and the landscape has changed dramatically. There is no more bare soil, and no more open canopy. It’s a full-grown forest, sunlight filtering through a green canopy below which the only sounds are those produced by the birds, insects and wind. The white pines planted to stabilize the stripped soil have thrived, perhaps too much. In 2014, a good many of them were cut down during a thinning conducted on a 50-acre portion of the property, as the seedlings were planted too close together to serve them well as they grew larger. But white pine is still a common species in the 8,600-acre watershed.

Western Carolina University and the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority will explore the possibility of combining their water systems following receipt of a $50,000 grant from the State Water Infrastructure Authority, which the TWSA board voted to accept at its June 18 meeting. 

A $740 grant from the Jim McRae Endowment for the Visual Arts will fuel efforts to create a Women’s History Trail in Macon County, celebrating the lives and accomplishments of Macon County women with a trail to “walk in her steps.”

Development in Cashiers will soon reach the end of a longstanding stalemate following the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority Board’s unanimous vote Jan. 16 to accept a federal funding offer for a new sewage treatment plant.