Good morning!
It's a gorgeous day here in Western North Carolina, and despite a cold that hit me a couple days ago, and has me confined to the couch for plenty of rest and liquids, I'm excited that spring is approaching, if ever so slowly.
This is the fourth post of the DKos Asheville open thread series that Randall and I are trying to post each Saturday morning. We would like for it to become a place for talking about our April 20 meet up (also known as the 4/20 meet up) to help make the event a success for everyone. So please come say hi, let's talk about food, lets talk about what you would like to see at the gathering, what you would like to see us all get out of this opportunity. And for those not coming, (I know, you want to but you live in Alaska) ideas are always welcome.
We would also like this series to reinvigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos. DKos Asheville could give us all a better sense of connection if nothing else. We hope, through this meet up, that we can do a better job of leveraging our orange passion for progressive politics to help elect more and better Democrats.
I suppose that one of the biggest stories in North Carolina right now is the fracking bill moving through the state legislature in Raleigh. Anne Blythe of The News & Observer writes ...
Forty years ago, when North Carolina banned using deep wells to permanently dump industrial waste, some thought the issue had been decided for good. Now state lawmakers who want to turn North Carolina into the nation’s next fracking hotspot are reopening the case for injecting brines and toxins deep underground.
The bill, which has already passed through the Senate, ends the moratorium on fracking. The best sites for extracting natural gas from land in North Carolina are in the central part of the state; however, the geology of that area is such that it's not the best place for drilling injection wells for dumping the toxic wastes that result from fracking. Thus proponents want to truck the wastes to the North Carolina coast where they would drill their injection wells in our coastal communities.
The reason we've had a ban on deep waste disposal wells is because those types of wells, at the coast, failed in the past and contaminated aquifers and drinking water.
Apparently, not every Republican is excited about the prospects of dumping wastes into wells in our coastal communities; so an effort is being made to sway their opinion and kill this bill. If you would like to help in this effort, Credo has a petition you can sign here.
Other resources for taking action:
North Carolinians Against Fracking
Croatan Earth First
My own view is that fracking is just not a good idea. I think the long term damage this does to our aquifers far outweighs the short term gains of the fossil fuel corporations. But this is just one of the results of Republican governance here in North Carolina. I'm hoping that the fracking issue will be one of the tools that we can use to win some of the legislative races in 2014. If we can educate enough people about the damage that fracking does, and the carelessness of Republican lawmakers that would allow it, perhaps that can help make the difference at the polls.
Please use this open thread to talk about whatever you want to talk about here in our Western North Carolina mountains. And have a great day today!
DKos Asheville Meetup News!
Hi folks, randallt here.
davehouck and randallt will be guests on Asheville's progressive talk station, 880 The Revolution on Friday, March 15th. The Ides! Muwahaha. We'll be talking about local issues, Daily Kos and of course the 4/20 meet up. We will be on to start the 4:00 eastern segment and you can stream it through iHeart radio. So wish us luck and please tune in!