Residents of Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina will gather for a Protect Our Land picnic on Sunday, Oct. 18 at the Historic Henderson County Courthouse in Hendersonville, N.C. The purpose of the event is to bring residents of the area together and to stand in unity against Duke Energy’s Western Carolina’s “Modernization” plan. This is a family-friendly event with food, fun, entertainment and opportunities for people to participate in actions and share their concerns about the proposed high-voltage transmission lines and the super-sized natural gas powered electric plant proposed for Lake Julian near Asheville.

Follow Carolina Land Coalition at carolinalandcoalition.org for further details about both this event and the campaign. Music and entertainment will be announced in the days to come.

About Duke Energy’s Modernization Project

Duke Energy was pressured to close down the Asheville coal-fired power plant because it pollutes our air, is the region’s largest contributor to climate change and has polluted the French Broad River for years with toxic coal ash. Their solution has been the “Carolina’s Modernization Project,” a plan to replace the current plant with a gas-fired mega-plant that is twice the size and much bigger than what we need for the region, and build a new 45-mile transmission line from Lake Julian near Asheville through parts of Buncombe, Polk and Henderson counties to a new substation in Campobello, S.C. This would require clear-cutting a 150 foot wide path through forests, farmlands, summer camps and people’s private properties, and erecting electrical towers as tall as 15 story buildings. The costs would be passed onto the customers who would pay for this out of our electrical bills.

This is a bad deal for our communities, bad for Western North Carolina’s tourism economy, and bad for all of Duke Energy’s customers.

About the Carolina Land Coalition

We are a group of residents, business owners, visitors and ratepayers thatare concerned about transmission lines and scale of the new natural gas plant and substation proposed by Duke Energy in the Western Carolinas Foothills Modernization Plan. For more information: carolinalandcoalition.org

About MountainTrue

MountainTrue fosters and empowers communities throughout the region and engages in policy and project advocacy, outreach and education, and on the ground projects. To achieve our goals, MountainTrue focuses on a core set of issues across 23 counties of Western North Carolina: sensible land use, restoring public forests, protecting water quality and promoting clean energy – all of which have a high impact on the environmental health and long-term prosperity of our residents. MountainTrue is the home of the Watauga Riverkeeper, the primary watchdog and spokesperson for the Elk and Watauga Rivers, and French Broad Riverkeeper, the primary protector and defender of the French Broad River watershed. For more information visit mountaintrue.org.

 

–       Submitted by Karim Olaechea