NC's Environmental Success Stories

From 2005 - While North Carolina faces an array of environmental challenges to protect its land, water and air, it's also fortunate to have developed an environmental preservation ethic that has led to a growing list of success stories. Here are a few:

1. The Land Trust movement
The Piedmont Land Conservancy in Greensboro is one of a couple of dozen nonprofit groups, including the Catawba Lands Conservancy, working to preserve the state's land, waters and natural heritage through a variety of means. Land trusts sometimes buy land, help arrange conservation easements and management plans that will protect it from development and sometimes broker donations of property for parks or refuges.

Since its founding in 1990, the Piedmont Land Conservancy has protected about 11,300 acres in nine central Piedmont counties -- 6,000 acres donated and 5,300 acres either purchased or acquired at below appraised value. One of its most compelling stories is its decision to pursue the creation of a farmland preservation corridor in an area between Liberty and Randleman, south of Greensboro. Working with owners whose families have farmed the land for generations, the conservancy has put together funding from local governments, foundations and state and federal trust funds to protect 1,000 acres of beautiful, rolling farmlands in a fast-growing section of the Piedmont. The project keeps family farms whole, protects the scenic landscape and helps keep waterways clean. For more, visit the group's Web site at www.piedmontland.org and follow the links to other land trusts in North Carolina.

2. N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund
The N.C. General Assembly sometimes deserves criticism for its failure to act proactively on environmental protection, and sometimes it deserved rave reviews. It deserves special thanks in 2005 for fully funding the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund for the first time with a $100 million appropriation.Run by former Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Bill Holman, the fund works across the state to help identify, design and help pay for land and water acquisition projects. It helps provide buffers, set aside natural areas and preserve wetlands that help filter runoff and keep surface and groundwater clean.

3. Military cooperation
In a state that is economically dependent upon large military bases, North Carolina has a big stake in maintaining good relations. Unlike Virginia, which allowed residential development near Naval Air Station Oceana until the Base Closure and Realignment Commission began to talk of relocating the base, N.C. environmental interests put together some creative funding to buy 37,500 acres of buffers around Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune. Those buffers provide wildlife habitat and ensure that residential development would not be an immediate problem.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took note of the state's cooperation with the military in a speech in August, quoting the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources as saying that "military bases are now among that state's most environmentally conscious communities."

4. Local government leadership
Environmentalists point to a number of local governments that are providing leadership to reduce pollution, ameliorate anticipated effects of global warming and use resources more efficiently.Outgoing Asheville Mayor Charles Worley signed the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement committing the city to pursue more fuel-efficient staff cars and design more efficient buildings. Meanwhile, the city of Charlotte decided to add two dozen hybrid electric vehicles to its fleet, expanding on an earlier decision to reduce fuel consumption and emit fewer pollutants.

5. The Coastal Federation's wetlands and oyster restoration
The N.C. Coastal Federation has long combined education, advocacy, policy development and preservation projects to help restore and preserve the state's coastal region.
One of its most admirable efforts is its project to restore wetlands to the North River Farms area of Carteret County as a prelude to fostering a return of the oyster population. When the vast acreage was cleared for agricultural production, wetlands largely disappeared, and storm runoff in the area sent oyster beds into further decline. The federation has acquired acreage and begun to restore the wetlands that filter storm runoff and reintroduce a forest of bald cypress, water tupelo, Atlantic white cedar, black gum, green ash and silky dogwood. The federation hopes to plant 6,000 trees as part of the 5,100-acre project. For more information about paying for one or more of those trees, go to www.nccoast.org.

6. N.C.'s Ecosystem Enhancement Program and other efforts
State agencies have success stories, too.One is the Ecosystem Enhancement Program, which combined efforts by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Transportation to mitigate the loss of wetlands. Instead of delaying highways and other transportation projects because of environmental concerns, the program protects natural areas and creates new wetlands to compensate for the potential loss of wetlands from forthcoming projects. Since 2003 it has created 7,600 acres of wetlands with another 1,500 in the works, without delaying any of the $1.9 billion in transportation projects that required wetlands mitigation.

State regulatory efforts evidently have reduced nitrogen in the Neuse River -- thought to be related to fish kills on that river, and to a reduction in agricultural nutrients that degrade waters in the Tar-Pamlico basin. These are remarkable reductions that either meet or exceed the targets set by the state in major river basins feeding Pamlico Sound.

The state is also expanding its parks system, adding more than 300 acres to Mayo River State Park just last week. It is also developing the Haw River State Park north of Greensboro, the Hickory Nut Gap park east of Asheville and the Carvers Creek park in Cumberland County, significant expansions of the state system.

7. Private donations of important lands
Every so often a private donor makes available a biologically diverse tract of land or waterway, and groups like The Nature Conservancy are there to inventory it, receive it and make sure it's handled appropriately. The Nature Conservancy was given the 1,380-acre Long Valley Farm in the Sandhills area of Harnett and Cumberland counties when James Stillman Rockefeller, the great-nephew of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, died at 102. The tract, near Fort Bragg, is a heavily wooded farm that includes longleaf pine and a cypress swamp with canopy trees 100 feet tall.

BY JACK BETTS jbetts "at" charlotteobserver.com