The new state budget, signed into law by Gov. Cooper, the General Assembly included a raft of one-time appropriations of varying sizes that feature extremely vague descriptions and very few details as to the specific purpose for which the funds are to be used. For example, in the Department of Transportation budget, General Assembly allotted a $5 million grant to a Winston-Salem nonprofit known as AeroX for the "development of an urban advanced air mobility system."

After a series of tests at N.C. State’s Dabney Hall, home to the Chemistry Department, the school’s Environmental Health and Safety office is saying concerns expressed by staff, faculty and students about air quality are overblown. But chemistry and safety experts in the department say the methodology of the tests was faulty and still show concerning levels of chemical compounds in areas where they shouldn’t appear — including offices where no chemicals are used or stored.

For the past 10 years, Republican-led majorities in the General Assembly have sacked the Department of Environmental Quality budget, apparent punishment for enforcing, even meagerly, state and federal environmental regulations. Yet, for the first time since 2017, the legislature's new proposed budget for DEQ exceeds $100 million.

This past Halloween the streets of the Eagle Creek Subdivision in Moyock, in Currituck County, teemed with trick-or-treaters, their buckets and bags filled with candy. “People were saying, ‘What’s that smell?’” Stephanie Harlow an Eagle Creek resident, told Policy Watch. “‘It smells like a zoo.’”

With more than three years to go before its self-imposed deadline, North Carolina has attained 40% of its goal for zero-emissions vehicle registrations.In 2018, Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order 80, which laid out North Carolina's plan to combat climate change and to transition to clean energy.

Advocates cry foul as future of thousands of easements in North Carolina and Virginia remains uncertain  Dominion Energy laid claim to 3,100 tracts of private land along the Atlantic Coast Pipeline route, including hundreds in North Carolina, but the company is not immediately returning that acreage to property owners, even though the project has been cancelled.

GenX, a chemical compound found in the drinking water of more than 1 million North Carolinians, is far more toxic that scientists originally believed, according to the EPA. The agency yesterday released a final toxicology assessment for the compound, showing that even lower levels of GenX in drinking water could harm human health, particularly the liver.

Students reported headaches, nausea, vomiting, but say their concerns about poor ventilation were dismissed On the morning of Oct. 7, NC State University chemistry professor Jim Martin arrived at Dabney Hall carrying boxes to pack up his office in Room 822A. In less than 10 minutes, an air sensor gave him some disturbing results.

The Lake Raleigh fishing pier lies 80 miles north of Ground Zero for the toxic compound GenX, the Chemours chemical plant near the Bladen-Cumberland county line. Presumably, you could safely eat the fish caught from this lake, which is on the NC State University campus, but given the widespread PFAS contamination of North Carolina’s waterways, only testing could tell you for sure.