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“That Tree Is So Perfect For Lynching”: NC State Frat Suspended Over Alleged Link to Outrageously Offensive Pledge Book

by AntoineCarper Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Update: The Associated Press reports that North Carolina State University will temporarily ban alcohol from social events at more than 20 fraternities. The ban would not apply to historically black Greek organizations or the Multicultural Greek Council.

Amid ire over racist activity at the Sigma Alpha Episilon chapter at Oklahoma University that led to its shut down, a pair of fraternities at North Carolina State University are under investigation this month—one for sexual assault and drug allegations, the other for its relationship to a book containing derogatory and racially charged language.

On Thursday, according to a search warrant obtained by The News & Observer, campus police seized drug paraphernalia, white powder and an orange liquid at the Alpha Tau Omega house after a student, who had also reported she was sexually assaulted at the house, said she saw at least one of the fraternity’s members dealing cocaine, ecstasy and LSD at the house. No arrests or charges have been made in connection to either the drug or sexual assault inquiries.

The fraternity was suspended two days after the student filed the sexual assault complaint with campus police. Alpha Tau Omega CEO Wynn Smily told WTVD the drug paraphernalia belonged to a pledge and that he had been kicked out of the house. “It’s devastating for the organization’s reputation,” Smiley said. “It’s very unsettling and it’s too bad this has all happened.” He went on to accuse the alleged victim in the investigation of lying.

“What she claims was happening in the chapter house was not happening. This woman’s claims to police that she saw all kind of drug activity going on in the house, we believe that to be at best wildly exaggerated and in many cases, fabricated. Her credibility throughout this whole process has been certainly in question.”

Meanwhile, the discovery of an apparent pledge book linked to the Pi Kappa Phi chapter at NC State has led to a school probe. WRAL reported that the book, found at a restaurant near campus, contained disturbing racial and sexual commentary. Some of the handwritten comments included:

“It will be short and painful, just like when I rape you.”

“If she’s hot enough, she doesn’t need a pulse.”

“That tree is so perfect for lynching.”

The chapter has been temporarily suspended as a result of the inquiry. In a statement on the fraternity’s national website, CEO Mark Timmes said it would cooperate with the school’s investigation. “The written comments and quotes reported earlier this evening are offensive and unacceptable. These statements are inconsistent with the values of Pi Kappa Phi and will not be tolerated.”

The investigations follow a string of behavioral misconduct at fraternities across the country. The Kappa Delta Rho fraternity at Penn State University was suspended for a year on Tuesday after a former member told police about two private Facebook pages in which members shared photos of nude and partially nude women, drug sales and hazing, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The pages included photos of nude and partially nude women, some of whom appeared asleep or passed out. The fraternity could face criminal charges under the state’s “revenge porn” law that went into effect in September.

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“That Tree Is So Perfect For Lynching”: NC State Frat Suspended Over Alleged Link to Outrageously Offensive Pledge Book

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New Analysis: Giving Consumers Access to Renewable Fuel Yields Environmental Benefits

by Posted on March 20, 2015

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New Analysis: Giving Consumers Access to Renewable Fuel Yields Environmental Benefits

Posted 20 March 2015 in

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A new analysis produced by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s principal research economist Dr. Stefen Mueller found that giving consumers more access to cleaner fuel options like E15 would provide significant environmental benefits. E15 is a cleaner burning, high-octane, high-performance fuel that also costs about 5 cents less per gallon than regular gasoline.

In Kansas, giving consumers the choice to use E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 184,226 metric tons per year.
In North Carolina, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 617,870 metric tons per year.
In Ohio, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 711,179 metric tons per year.
In Michigan, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 661,051 metric tons per year.
In Wisconsin, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 351,272 metric tons per year.
In Iowa, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 220,821 metric tons per year.
In Illinois, offering E15 would reduce carbon pollution by 663,646 metric tons per year.

While regular gasoline contains about 10% ethanol as a way to deliver added octane and limit emissions, E15 fuel contains 15% renewable, American made ethanol — helping to create jobs across the country and lower our dependence on foreign oil.

Because it improves engine performance and burns with fewer emissions, E15 has been adopted throughout professional auto racing.

Under the commonsense, bipartisan Renewable Fuel Standard, clean burning E15 is expected to become more widely available to consumers alongside regular gasoline — giving consumers an additional choice and the opportunity to save money each time they fill up. Maintaining a strong Renewable Fuel Standard is a smart and effective way to substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

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New Analysis: Giving Consumers Access to Renewable Fuel Yields Environmental Benefits

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On the Selma Anniversary, These North Carolina Activists Will March Backward

by AimeeLawless Posted on March 7, 2015

Mother Jones

Activists, politicians, and luminaries from across the nation will flock to Selma, Alabama, this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the nonviolent voting-rights march that was undermined by police-sanctioned attacks, presaging the passage, six months later, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But this year’s events, which include a reenactment of the fateful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, are shaping up to have a more activist edge than past commemorations.

Some black leaders, such as North Carolina NAACP president Rev. Doctor William Barber II, will use the day to highlight the assault on black voting rights in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that rolled back a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Rather than make it across the bridge, Barber and his delegation plan to turn around and march back toward Selma.

“For the last fifty years we’ve been walking across that bridge to celebrate how the civil rights leaders pushed us forward. This year, we have to turn around,” he told me. This change in routine, he says, is a response to the politicians who “will come down to Selma and give all these platitudes and talk about how they love the people of the past, but won’t ensure a Voting Rights Act that meets the test of history today.” And that “is a step backward.”

Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the VRA required nine historically racist states, including North Carolina, along with several counties, to get permission from the Department of Justice before modifying their voting laws. It paid off. In 2012, for instance, North Carolina ranked 11th out of 50 states in voter turnout, with 65 percent of registered voters casting a ballot.

But the gains, ironically enough, helped influence the court’s decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. held that it was unconstitutional to single out just a few states for these voting requirements, especially after all this time—”nearly 50 years later,” he wrote, “things have changed dramatically.”

They can change back, too. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg likened the majority’s reasoning to throwing away an umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

Prescient words: Freed from DOJ oversight, several of those states quickly reversed course, enacting a deluge of new, restrictive voting laws. Within two months of the ruling, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a package of legislation that was, for anyone who favors access to the ballot box, a nightmare: Same day registration? Gone. Pre-registration for for 16- and 17-year-olds? Also gone. A shorter early registration period? Check. Extended voting hours when voting demand exceeds the availability of voting machines? Nixed. The ability to vote in a precinct outside of where one resides? Nope. Then there’s the most contested provision: the requirement for voters to present a state-approved ID starting in 2016. Without a valid driver’s license, state ID card, US military ID, veteran card, or passport, North Carolina voters are out of luck.

“Voting should not difficult. It should not be something that we have to jump over hurdles to do,” says Donita Judge, a senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a civil rights nonprofit. She and her colleagues promptly sued the state over the new voting restrictions. A number of other groups, including the League of Women Voters, has joined the lawsuit, which is set for a trial in July.

A similar lawsuit filed by the DOJ not long after prompted sneers from Gov. McCrory: “I believe if showing a voter ID is good enough and fair enough for our own president in Illinois, then it’s good enough for the people in North Carolina.” The package, he said, is “common sense reform” aimed at curbing voter fraud and maintaining democratic integrity. Never mind that, between 2000 and 2010, there were 47,000 reported UFO sightings, but only 13 credible cases of someone trying to impersonate a voter. “It’s a red herring. It’s been proven time and time again that there is very minimal voting fraud,” Judge says. “What we do have is politicians manipulating elections—it’s more election fraud then voting fraud.”

Indeed, the sorts of restrictions North Carolina has put in place have been shown time and again to have a disproportionate impact on minority voters. The Advancement Project notes that black turnout leaped from 42 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2012 after same-day registration and early voting were implemented. (Granted, there wasn’t an electable black guy running in 2000.) But in 2013, Democracy North Carolina released a report showing that 34 percent of the state’s registered black voters lacked a state-issued ID—overall, 318,000 registered voters lack one, according to data from the state board of elections.

“When people can’t vote, they lack the ability to choose who represents them and therefore who has their best interest at heart, but they also lack the ability to weigh in on important issues, like the criminal justice system,” Judge says. “If you can’t vote, you’re not going to end up on juries, so you don’t have a voice.”

Hence the backward march. “Fifty years ago, they didn’t settle in the face of death, in the face of the Klan, in the face of accepted police brutality. And if they didn’t accept then, we can’t accept now,” Rev. Barber explains. “If they died for us to have these rights, there is no way in the world we can be afraid of the Koch Brothers, of the Tea Party, of regressive politicians.”

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On the Selma Anniversary, These North Carolina Activists Will March Backward

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Saying Goodbye to Dean Smith, College Basketball’s Liberal Conscience

by JenniSmerd Posted on February 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Famed college basketball coach Dean Smith died Saturday night at the age of 83, after years of decline. His on-court prowess as the frontman at North Carolina from 1961 to 1997 is unforgettable: 879 wins, two national championships, 11 Final Four appearances, and a lasting legacy as a hoops innovator. But for many, it’s his off-court example—which manifested itself in something people in Chapel Hill still call the Carolina Way—that made him a legend.

Smith was an outspoken liberal Democrat who was anti-nukes, anti-death-penalty, and pro-gay-rights in a state that sent Jesse Helms to the Senate for five terms. (In fact, North Carolina Dems even tried to convince Smith to run against Helms.) His father, Alfred, integrated his high school basketball team in 1930s Kansas; years later, Smith would do the same at UNC, recruiting Charlie Scott in the mid-1960s to become the first African American player on scholarship there and one of the first in the entire South.

This story, from a 2014 piece by the Washington Post‘s John Feinstein, has been making the rounds today. It’s worth re-reading:

…In 1981, Smith very grudgingly agreed to cooperate with me on a profile for this newspaper. He kept insisting I should write about his players, but I said I had written about them. I wanted to write about him. He finally agreed.

One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith’s pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill’s restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church.

“You have to remember,” Reverend Seymour said. “Back then, he wasn’t Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more.”

Smith agreed and went to a restaurant where management knew him. He and his companion sat down and were served. That was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.

When I circled back to Smith and asked him to tell me more about that night, he shot me an angry look. “Who told you about that?” he asked.

“Reverend Seymour,” I said.

“I wish he hadn’t done that.”

“Why? You should be proud of doing something like that.”

He leaned forward in his chair and in a very quiet voice said something I’ve never forgotten: “You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.”

RIP, Dean.

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Saying Goodbye to Dean Smith, College Basketball’s Liberal Conscience

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2014: The Year of Koch

by BradforLanders Posted on November 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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The 2014 election season acquired its fair share of nicknames: the Nothing Election, the Seinfeld Election, and the Meh Midterms. Here’s another: The Year of Koch.

Big money from outside spenders like the Koch brothers’ political network and the pro-Democratic Senate Majority PAC dominated this year’s elections. In the battleground states, a voter couldn’t watch five minutes of television, listen to the radio, or cue up a YouTube clip without being bombarded by political ads, most of them of the minor-chord, attack-ad variety. Broadcasters in Alaska, North Carolina, Colorado, and other critical states collected money by the fistful. Major candidates galore had a deep-pocketed super-PAC or a political nonprofit in his or her corner.

Here are seven big-money takeaways from the second election since the Supreme Court’s landscape-changing Citizens United decision.

The price tag for 2014 will probably be the highest in American history.
Candidates, parties, PACs, super-PACs, and political nonprofits—those anonymously funded outfits including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the pro-Democratic Patriot Majority—were on pace to spend $3.67 billion on the 2014 races, according to projections by the Center for Responsive Politics. That would be a new record, surpassing the $3.63 billion spent in 2010.

When all the numbers are tallied, Republicans will likely outspend the Democrats—but not by much. CRP predicts that Republican candidates and their allies will unload $1.75 billion this election, while Democrats and their supporters will spend $1.64 billion. (The remaining dollars, according to CRP, went toward nonpartisan and third-party spending as well as overhead costs.)

Super-PACs and dark money are a bigger deal than ever.
All those attack ads clogging up the commercial breaks during your favorite show? Chances are they were funded not by a candidate but an outside group—a super-PAC, a labor union, or a political nonprofit.

The 2014 elections will be remembered as the cycle when outside groups handled much of the mudslinging, which traditionally was the responsibility of candidates and their campaigns. In Kentucky, for instance, a secretly funded group called Kentucky Opportunity Coalition ran 12,000 TV ads—many of which attacked Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, depicting her as an Obama clone. The group’s commercials accounted for one out of every seven ads run during that race, according to the Center for Public Integrity. On paper, Kentucky Opportunity Coalition was independent of the candidate it supported, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But the group was run by a former McConnell aide and functioned effectively as an offshoot of McConnell’s campaign.

This pattern unfolded across the country, as outside spending ramped up. In all, outside groups pumped $554 million—$301 million from Republican-aligned shops, $225 million from Democratic allies—into 2014 races. And you guessed it: That, too, is a new record for a midterm election.

Koch and Rove: From zeroes to heroes.
Two years ago, the biggest donors and operatives in the Republican money universe—Karl Rove, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch brothers and their donor network—spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat President Obama and retake the Senate. They got nothing; it was an embarrassment.

This year, they won big.

Rove’s groups—American Crossroads, a super-PAC; and Crossroads GPS, its dark-money-funded sibling—spent heavily in 10 Senate races. The Republican won in at least six of those elections. If Republican Dan Sullivan defeats Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska (Sullivan was leading the vote count the day after the election) and GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy ousts Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana’s run-off next month, Rove will end up eight for 10. The Sunlight Foundation calculates Crossroads GPS’ return on investment—that is, the success rate of GPS’ spending to elect or defeat candidates—at an impressive 96 percent.

The Koch brothers’ flagship organization, Americans for Prosperity, had an equally stellar Election Day. At least five of the nine AFP-backed Senate candidates won. The Kochs’ Freedom Partners Action Fund recorded an 85 percent ROI, according to the Sunlight Foundation.

By contrast, Senate Majority PAC, the super-PAC aligned with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that funded more ads than any other outside group, took a beating. It spent $47 million—the most of any super-PAC—but saw only two of the nine Republican candidates it targeted go down to defeat. Senate Majority PAC’s ROI: 9 percent.

The Democrats’ new George Soros had a bad night.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor turned environmental activist, put nearly $73 million of his money into electing candidates who believe in human-caused global warming and who want to do something about it. No single person gave more in 2014 than Steyer, according to CRP. He has become the big-money bogeyman of the right, but he fell short in multiple key races.

The bulk of Steyer’s money funded NextGen Climate, the organization he started to elect more climate-savvy politicians. NextGen’s super-PAC spent at least $20 million and defeated two of the four Republicans running for Senate it targeted. NextGen fared worse in governor’s races: Of the three GOP governors it sought to defeat—Florida’s Rick Scott, Maine’s Paul LePage, and Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett—only Corbett went down to defeat. And he might have well done so without Steyer’s money in the race.

North Carolina: Our Senate race cost more than yours (and yours, and yours).
The campaign pitting incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) against Republican Thom Tillis officially cost more than $100 million. It was the most expensive Senate race in American history.

To better understand that figure, consider this statistic: In the final stretch of the race, the Center for Public Integrity reports, a Senate-themed ad ran on TV somewhere in North Carolina every 50 seconds.

Larry Lessig’s spend-big-money-to-fight-big-money plan flopped.
Larry Lessig, the Harvard law professor revered by the Reddit crowd, launched MayDay PAC to great fanfare in May with a plan to raise and spend millions of dollars to elect candidates who would, once in office, fight to get big money out of politics. “Embrace the irony,” Lessig likes to say.

But in the end, MayDay was more hype than action. It spent $7.5 million and of the eight “anti-corruption candidates” listed on its website, only two MayDay-backed candidates won. There’s little evidence to suggest that either of those candidates—Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallegos and North Carolina Republican Walter Jones—won due to MayDay’s intervention on their behalf.

Every Voice, another anti-super-PAC super-PAC, didn’t fare much better. Only four candidates supported by Every Voice won in the dozen races the group tried to influence.

Judicial elections keep attracting big bucks.
Nearly $14 million was spent on advertising in judicial races this year, an increase from 2010’s $12.2 million, according to Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center for Justice. But the money flowing into those races from business interests and anonymous outside groups seeking to toss out incumbent justices largely failed in Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, through its new Judicial Fairness Initiative, spent $3.4 million on TV advertising in judicial races in five states. The RSLC has sought to elect more pro-business judges across the country. This year, though, it failed to defeat seven judges it had targeted. Its only success was the reelection of Justice Lloyd Karmeier, who sits on the Illinois supreme court.

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2014: The Year of Koch

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How Superbugs Hitch a Ride From Hog Farms Into Your Community

by MittieAvila Posted on September 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Factory-scale farms don’t just house hundreds of genetically similar animals in tight quarters over vast cesspools collecting their waste. They also house a variety of bacteria that live within those unfortunate beasts’ guts. And when you dose the animals daily with small amounts of antibiotics—a common practice—the bacteria strains in these vast germ reservoirs quite naturally develop the ability to withstand anti-bacterial treatments.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria leave these facilities in two main ways. The obvious one is meat: As Food and Drug Administration data show, the pork chops, chicken parts, and ground beef you find on supermarket shelves routinely carry resistant bacteria strains. But there’s another, more subtle way: through the people who work on these operations.

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How Superbugs Hitch a Ride From Hog Farms Into Your Community

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It Looks Like Obamacare Is Here to Stay

by MildredRandell Posted on August 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Republicans may say that Obamacare is still the white-hot issue it’s always been, and among their tea party base that might still be true. But if money talks, it turns out that Republicans no longer really believe Obamacare is a winning issue anywhere else. Bloomberg ran the numbers in a few battleground Senate races and discovered that GOP candidates are starting to turn to other issues:

Republicans seeking to unseat the U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina have cut in half the portion of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the party’s favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch.

The shift — also taking place in competitive states such as Arkansas and Louisiana — shows Republicans are easing off their strategy of criticizing Democrats over the Affordable Care Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the measure is unlikely to be repealed.

….In April, anti-Obamacare advertising dwarfed all other spots in North Carolina. It accounted for 3,061, or 54 percent, of the 5,704 top five issue ads in North Carolina, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. By July, the numbers had reversed, with anti-Obamacare ads accounting for 971, or 27 percent, of the top issue ads, and the budget, government spending, jobs and unemployment accounting for 2,608, or 72 percent, of such ads, CMAG data show.

As Greg Sargent points out, this doesn’t mean Democrats are any more likely to hold the Senate this year. But it does suggest that as time goes by and Obamacare appears to be working fairly well without causing the collapse of the Republic, even the GOP faithful are starting to accept it. More and more, it looks like Obamacare is here to stay.

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It Looks Like Obamacare Is Here to Stay

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Climate change is flooding out American coastlines

by ElmaVillanueva Posted on July 11, 2014

Drowning in dangers

Climate change is flooding out American coastlines

By

U.S. Coast Guard

Flooding caused by Hurricane Arthur on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Hurricane Arthur is no more than a holiday-dampening memory in the minds of many East Coast residents and visitors. But the 4.5-foot storm surge it produced along parts of North Carolina’s shoreline on July 4 was a reminder that such tempests don’t need to tear houses apart to cause damage.

As seas rise, shoreline development continues, and shoreline ecosystems are destroyed, the hazards posed by storm surges from hurricanes are growing more severe along the Gulf Coast and East Coast.

Two soggy prognoses for storm-surge vulnerabilities were published on Thursday. A Reuters analysis of 25 million hourly tide-gauge readings highlighted soaring risks in recent decades as sea levels have risen. Meanwhile, a company that analyzes property values warned of the dizzying financial risks that such surges now pose.

First, here are highlights from the Reuters article:

During the past four decades, the number of days a year that tidal waters reached or exceeded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flood thresholds more than tripled in many places, the analysis found. At flood threshold, water can begin to pool on streets. As it rises farther, it can close roads, damage property and overwhelm drainage systems. …

The trend roughly tracks the global rise in sea levels. The oceans have risen an average of 8 inches in the past century, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Levels have increased as much as twice that in areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts where the ground is sinking because of subsidence – a process whereby natural geological forces or the extraction of underground water, oil or gas cause the ground to sink.

The most dramatic increases in annual flood-level days occurred at 10 gauges from New York City to the Georgia-South Carolina border, a stretch of coast where subsidence accounts for as much as half the rise in sea level in some locations, according to U.S. Geological Survey studies.

Also on Thursday, data and analytics firm CoreLogic published its annual storm surge report — a document that’s based on data produced for the insurance company. The firm’s latest analysis concluded that 6.5 million homes are at risk of being damaged by a category 1 hurricane’s storm surge. About 3.8 million of those homes are along the Atlantic Coast and the rest are along the Gulf Coast. Florida and Texas are most at risk. Rebuilding all of those homes would cost an estimated $1.5 trillion, the company’s analysts concluded.


Source
Exclusive: Coastal flooding has surged in U.S., Reuters finds, Reuters
2014 CoreLogic Storm Surge Report, CoreLogic

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Climate change is flooding out American coastlines

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Outer Banks Mops Up and Counts Storm’s Cost

by Myrna Posted on July 4, 2014

Hurricane Arthur, the first hurricane of this season, made a surprising shift to the west as it neared North Carolina, and reports of damage were limited. More: Outer Banks Mops Up and Counts Storm’s Cost Related ArticlesHurricane Arthur Moves Away From U.S. East CoastStudying What Lures Turtles to a Tarmac at Kennedy AirportHurricane Arthur Nears U.S. Coast on Eve of Holiday Weekend

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Outer Banks Mops Up and Counts Storm’s Cost

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First responders vs. frackers: Who will win?

by StevieMcMillan Posted on May 16, 2014

Battle of the divulge

First responders vs. frackers: Who will win?

By

Shutterstock

First responders in North Carolina might one day get to know which chemicals are involved in the fracking-related emergencies to which they respond.

Frackers across the country refuse to divulge what’s in their special sauces of fracking chemicals, claiming the information is a trade secret – even when their poisonous cocktails are being pumped into the ground beneath us. It’s a dangerous state of affairs that puts firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and other first responders in particular peril.

North Carolina Health News reports on a bill that would help protect these first responders in the Tar Heel State from currently unknown risks:

On May 8, a commission of state legislators approved the draft Energy Modernization Act, which would require drillers to disclose all the chemicals they use for fracking, including those that they designate as trade secrets. The bill would not provide trade secrets to the public but would make North Carolina’s state geologist the custodian of the information.

The state geologist, an employee of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, would be empowered to release this information to state officials who plan for emergencies, as well as doctors and fire chiefs who are responding to events such as chemical spills and explosions.

The proposal would override rules being drafted by the N.C. Mining and Energy Commission, which is developing regulations for gas drilling and fracking. The MEC in January tentatively approved rules that would bar the state from holding confidential information about fracking chemicals.

Landowners and environmentalists were concerned about the MEC’s provision, which they said could harm public health and hinder the state’s response to chemical spills. Amy Pickle, a member of the MEC, admitted that the rules create “a very convoluted” process to handle information about trade-secret chemicals.

The bill comes with a poisonous barb. As currently drafted, it would ban cities and counties from outlawing fracking in their communities.


Source
Proposed Bill Would Provide Secret Fracking Data To First Responders, North Carolina Health News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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First responders vs. frackers: Who will win?

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