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Fire on the Mountain: AppVoices Teams Up With Floydfest
FloydFest, a world music and arts festival held just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Floyd, Va., is gearing up for its 14th annual event July 22-26, and this year the organizers have selected Appalachian Voices as the featured nonprofit.
Read MoreMeet Zack Dixon, grand prize winner of the home energy makeover contest
Zach Dixon, a resident of Boone, N.C., and the grand prize winner of Appalachian Voices’ High Country Home Energy Makeover Contest heats his house with space heaters, and chronically struggles to pay his electricity bills. With help from many partners around the High Country, we’re working to change that.
Alpha Agrees to Water Pollution Settlement
Alpha Natural Resources agreed to a settlement in a 2012 lawsuit, brought by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, regarding high levels of conductivity found in streams at two of its mountaintop removal mining complexes in West Virginia.
Read MoreDanger still looms over the Dan River
In the wake of the Dan River coal ash spill, which spewed 39,000 tons of the toxic waste into the scenic river, much attention has been given to the problems of leaky, unlined coal ash pits across North Carolina. What hasn’t received adequate attention is another menacing threat just upstream from the site of last year’s spill.
The will against poverty: ASU students serve in rural Appalachia
Jan. 19 marked the twentieth year since President Clinton passed legislation to encourage Americans to volunteer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Appalachian State University has recognized the day the with the MLK Challenge for sixteen years. Having participated in the challenge as a student, I couldn’t help but want to participate again. But I never knew I would be spelunking in a dusty crawlspace.
Obama budget creates opportunities for Appalachian communities
The Obama administration’s 2016 budget calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to be spent cleaning up abandoned strip mines, and to support economic development and workforce training in mining communities facing layoffs as coal is increasingly outcompeted in America’s energy mix. Read a statement from Appalachian Voices Legislative Associate Thom Kay on the proposals.
Survey says: Virginians want clean energy
A bi-partisan poll released today shows solid support among Virginia voters for the state to develop a plan to cut carbon pollution and shift to cleaner sources of energy. Meanwhile, in Richmond, the General Assembly is heading in the opposite direction, casting votes in favor of dirty fossil fuels.
Today, I prayed we #kickcoalash
Guest Contributor Caroline Rutledge Armijo: On Sunday, Residents for Coal Ash Clean Up met on Belews Lake, overlooking the smokestacks at Duke Energy’s Belews Steam Station in Stokes County, N.C. Today marks the one year anniversary of the coal ash spill into the Dan River, the third largest coal ash spill in our nation’s history but likely a drop in the bucket of what would happen if there was a spill at Belews Creek.
Update from the Virginia General Assembly
Virginia’s legislative session may be brief, but many bills with major implications for our future energy mix have already been acted on. Two weeks into this year’s session, here is a look at where our top issues stand.
Our Energy Savings campaign is heating up in the High Country
Back in October we launched the High Country Home Energy Makeover Contest as part of our campaign to motivate Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corp. to offer an on-bill financing program for their members in western North Carolina. We solicited enough support to pay for energy efficiency retrofits for three Blue Ridge Electric members. Read on to meet the contest winners.