Charlotte Observer Dec. 12, 2004

Creative minds score victories in recycling, preservation

By Jack Betts

North Carolina's environment is remarkably resilient despite all its challenges from growth, development and sprawl. Local educational and volunteer efforts have cleaned up environmental hot spots and raised significant sums of money to preserve open space. Private businesses have used their creativity and drive to limit their adverse impact on nature and to invent new uses for discarded waste. Here are just a few examples:

• Not long ago a group of retired scientists and engineers in Asheville came up with potential solutions to some recycling problems. Waste Reduction Partners figured out how to reuse deck boards from discarded shipping pallets to make attractive hardwood flooring. Now Oaks Unlimited, a Waynesville lumber company, is using those boards to manufacture solid hardwood flooring in widths up to 4 1/2 inches and random lengths of up to 50 inches for its wholesale lumber business. The process eventually will keep millions of feet of used lumber out of landfills, offer first-rate hardwood flooring for homes and businesses, and provide good jobs in the growing recycled-materials business.

• Faced with water quality problems from the mountains to the sea, the General Assembly in the 1990s created the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund to finance the acquisition of targeted tracts of wetlands and waterside lands that help provide buffers, natural filters and wildlife refuges. The legislature has channeled millions of dollars into purchases, showing a commitment to the environment even in difficult economic times. It also approved legislation authorizing bonds to acquire properties that otherwise might be lost for state parks and buffers around military installations.

Among other projects, the fund helped expand the Lake James State Park in Burke County on the Catawba river, provided $2.6 million to protect the Upper Lake Wylie and Mountain Island lakes in the Catawba basin, protected parts of the Toxaway River, expanded Gorges State Park and awarded $15 million to eliminate hog operations in flood-prone areas of Eastern North Carolina.

• North and South Carolina created the Catawba/Wateree River Basin Bi-State Commission earlier this month to serve as a forum for discussions and possibly become an arbiter for water use in the Catawba basin. The demand for water from Catawba reservoirs is expected to double over the next half-century. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, and Sen. Wes Hayes, R-Rock Hill, is a first step in a long process of discussing the equitable distribution of water between the two states.

• Environmental organizations have been aggressive about donating land or preserving valuable tracts. The Conservation Trust for North Carolina donated 356 acres next to the Linville Falls area of the Blue Ridge Parkway in September, the culmination of a long process of setting aside a spectacular Burke County tract. It also bought the 544-acre Little Table Rock Mountain tract along the parkway in Avery, Mitchell and McDowell counties.

• The Nature Conservancy is negotiating to buy and preserve nearly 5,500 acres of undeveloped savanna near the Pender-Onslow county border not far from Camp Lejeune, helped along by a Clean Water Management Trust Fund grant. And the Conservancy announced more successes in its long-running Forever Wild conservation program, protecting lands near Elk Knob in Watauga County, Hickory Nut Gorge, the riverside forest along the Tar River and the sprawling Roanoke River basin in northeastern North Carolina.

• North Carolina's Ecosystem Enhancement Program showed continued results. It combines two previous programs -- one at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources focusing on wetlands restoration and another in the Department of Transportation aimed at avoiding environmental damage from construction programs. In less than 18 months' existence, the program's operators say, it has helped preserve more than 24,000 acres of natural areas, protecting 96 miles of streams and 4,900 acres of wetlands. It has identified another 11,700 acres it would like to preserve, involving 107 more miles of streams and some 4,000 additional wetland acres. The program was instrumental last year in protecting 64 miles of the Little Tennessee River and its tributaries near the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.

• Private landowners continued their commitment to conservation projects. For instance, the N.C. Forestry Association recently recognized Guy Troy of Randolph County for the limited partnership and conservation easement he arranged on 309 acres of land with the Piedmont Land Trust. The property has been in his family for nearly 200 years, and Troy made arrangements to keep the farm in agriculture for generations more.

• Thanks to Congress, one of the largest undeveloped tracts on the Catawba River has been tagged for future conservation. Federal authorities said about half the $6 million needed for the 1,700 acre Heritage Trust Tract -- including more than 16 miles of river frontage near the Catawba's Great Falls -- would be set aside for the project. Crescent Resources owns the land, which includes hardwood forests, 200-foot bluffs and several eagle nests. The money comes from an omnibus spending bill that cleared Congress just before Thanksgiving.

• Pro-bono efforts by the Charlotte law firm of Kennedy Covington have helped the Southern Environmental Law Center and other environmental interests in a campaign to stop the U.S. Navy from putting a practice jet landing field near one of the most important wildlife refuges on the East Coast. The lawyers turned up several damning memorandums and e-mails that indicate the Navy did not follow federal law and take the required hard look at environmental impacts of the facility, and instead decided to put the field in northeastern North Carolina and then develop reasons to support that decision. U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle has halted the Navy's development of the landing field and has scheduled a trial for early 2005.

By Jack Betts; jbetts@charlotteobserver.com