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North Carolina Open Thread: Methane, Hog waste spill, Pittsboro sues 20 companies, Crypto noise [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-29 Facing South, Sue Sturgis, 1/27/2023 Date on which the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) adopted a new carbon plan to meet the requirements of a 2021 state law aimed at reducing climate-disrupting carbon emissions from electric power plants: 12/30/2022 Percent by which the law requires cuts in carbon emissions from Charlotte-based Duke Energy's plants by 2030 from 2005 levels in hopes of preventing dangerous levels of global heating: 70 In November, number of university and former Environmental Protection Agency scientists who wrote to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) — who appointed all seven members of the NCUC — and Duke CEO Lynn Good asking them to cancel plans for "greatly increasing" the use of natural gas for power generation, which the scientists call "entirely indefensible from a climate and public health perspective": 45 Year in which the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 951, which limited carbon emissions from the state's power plants, most of which are operated by Duke, but which did not mention climate-disrupting methane: 2021 Of all the components of so-called "natural gas," which in fact is a highly processed industrial product, percent made up by methane: 70 to 90 North Carolina Policy Watch, Lisa Sorg, 1/29/2023 The NC Department of Environmental Quality is investigating the discharge of an estimated 30,000 gallons of hog waste from a farm owned by Murphy-Brown, according to a press release from state officials. The farm is in Bladen County, northwest of Ammon and southwest of Roseboro. It has a state permit to raise as many as 4,000 hogs. Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, is the parent company of Murphy-Brown. Operators notified the Division of Water Resources Friday evening that a recirculation pipe had failed, which caused the release. DEQ did not name the waterway, but the closest ones are Turnbull Creek and Little Turnbull Creek. State investigators saw waste in the creek nearly three-quarters of a mile from the farm lagoon. A beaver dam prevented the waste from traveling farther. Turnbull Creek feeds the Cape Fear River about 20 miles downstream. Farm operators are pumping the waste from the creek, state officials wrote. The state database that contains compliance, enforcement and inspection documents for all permitted hog farms was down Sunday morning, so the history of this facility was not immediately available. This farm is one of 144 corporate-owned facilities in North Carolina. Most of the state’s 2,200 hog farms are contract farms, meaning they are independently owned but Smithfield dictates every aspect of their operation. North Carolina Policy Watch, Lisa Sorg, 1/27/2023 The Town of Pittsboro has sued more than 20 companies, including Chemours, DuPont and 3M, BASF and several other manufacturers of PFAS, for allegedly polluting its water supply with the toxic compounds. The lawsuit was filed yesterday in Chatham County Superior Court. It asks the court to force the companies to reimburse the town for expenses related to reducing PFAS in drinking water, plus damages related to “loss of use” and the degradation of natural resources. The town is requesting a trial to determine additional punitive damages, which can be assessed if a judge or jury finds the conduct was intentional, fraudulent or malicious. PFAS, also known as perfluorinated and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widespread in the environment. They are used in manufacturing or are byproducts of that process. The compounds are present in Teflon-coated cookware, water- and stain-proof clothing, cosmetics, furniture, fast food packaging, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes and some types of firefighting foam, known as AFFF. Pittsboro’s drinking water supply, the Haw River, have some of the highest levels of PFAS in the state, according to sampling conducted by scientists with the NC PFAS Testing Network. Blood sampling of 206 Pittsboro residents who are on public water showed PFAS levels well above the national median, and even higher than that found in people living downstream or near the Chemours plant in Fayetteville. CNN, Bill Weir, 1/19/2023 Murphy, North Carolina CNN — When Judy Stines first heard about cryptocurrency, “I always thought it was smoke and mirrors,” she said. “But if that’s what you want to invest in, you do you.” But then she heard the sound of crypto, a noise that neighbor Mike Lugiewicz describes as “a small jet that never leaves” and her ambivalence turned into activism. The racket was coming from stacks and stacks of computer servers and cooling fans, mysteriously set up in a few acres of open farm field down on Harshaw Road. Once they fired up and the noise started bouncing around their Blue Ridge Mountain homes, sound meters in the Lugiewicz yard showed readings from 55-85 decibels depending on the weather, but more disturbing than the volume is the fact that the noise never stopped. The word “mine” evokes pickaxes and coal dust in this region, so at first, the neighbors around Murphy, North Carolina, had no idea that mining a so-called “proof of work” crypto coin is more like playing a computer game with billion-sided dice. Instead of shovels, modern miners need enormous amounts of server power to roll the winning number faster than their competitors around the world. WUNC, Rebecca Hirsher, 1/26/2023 Oil refineries release billions of pounds of pollution annually into waterways, and that pollution disproportionately affects people of color, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency regulatory data. The pollution includes heavy metals, nitrogen and other compounds that can kill aquatic animals, feed harmful algae and make waterways dangerous for humans to fish in, swim in or even touch. The pollution affects communities across the country, but is especially concentrated along the Gulf Coast, in California and near Chicago. The new findings underscore health and environmental dangers across fossil fuel operations, from the wellhead to pipelines, refineries and consumer use. The report was published by the Environmental Integrity Project, an independent watchdog group that routinely analyzes public data collected by the EPA. "This is a highly polluting industry discharging large volumes of wastewater," says Eric Schaeffer, executive director the Environmental Integrity Project, and former director of the EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement. The report authors examined EPA water pollution data from 2019 to 2021 for 81 major refineries across the country – about two thirds of all refineries operating in the U.S. Refineries are required to tell the government how much pollution they release into waterways. Thank you for reading and contributing, I hope you have a safe week. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/29/2149920/-North-Carolina-Open-Thread-Methane-Hog-waste-spill-Pittsboro-sues-20-companies-Noise Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/