Opinion Roundup: coal ash cleanup; voter i.d. appeal; charter schools; CBD; and more

Friday, Jan. 3, 2020 -- A round up of opinion, commentary and analysis on: Coal ash out of here; clock ticking on campaign promises; an appeal but no enforcement; candidate field narrows; CBD bad; and more

VALERIE BAUERLEIN: Duke Energy Agrees to Coal-Ash Cleanup Settlement (Wall Street Journal reports) -- Duke Energy has agreed to move 80 million tons of coal ash to lined landfills at six power plant sites in what state regulators are calling the biggest cleanup of its type in U.S. history.

Duke Energy agrees to close all remaining coal ash ponds in North Carolina (WRAL-TV reports) -- Duke Energy and regulators announced an agreement to permanently close all remaining coal ash basins in N.C.

Duke Energy agrees to remove coal ash in North Carolina (AP reports) -- The state says it has secured an agreement with Duke Energy to excavate nearly 80 million tons (72.5 million metric tons) of coal ash at six facilities.

Duke Energy will dig up most of its coal ash under a settlement with N.C. (Durham Heral-Sun reports) -- Duke Energy will dig up nearly 80 million tons of coal ash at six sites in N.C. in a settlement with the state Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ said the excavation would be the largest coal-ash clean up in U.S. history. Last year, DEQ ordered the utility to dig up ash from nine basins at six sites. Duke Energy had planned to keep the ash in place at those locations, sealed with a cap. The utility sued DEQ over the order.

Duke Energy agrees to settlement for statewide removal of coal ash (Carolina Public Press reports) -- Duke accepts settlement with the state and environmental and civil rights litigants, saying it will be less costly than other proposals to remove coal ash.

DEQ, Duke Energy, community groups strike deal on largest coal ash cleanup in US (N.C. Policy Watch reports) -- In an historic agreement, Duke Energy will remove coal ash from unlined pits at its six plants – Allen, Belews Creek, Cliffside/Rogers, Marshall, Mayo and Roxboro – which will finally cut off this source of groundwater and surface water contamination near those communities. The NC Department of Environmental Quality, Duke Energy and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented community groups in litigation against the utility, all announced the details of the settlement.

Legal Battle Over Duke Energy Coal Ash Ends But Cleanup Has Years To Go (WFAE-FM reports) -- Charlotte-based Duke Energy will have to excavate nearly 80 million tons of coal ash from six North Carolina sites — including Allen Steam Station in Belmont — as part of a settlement between the company, the state and several community groups.

Will Duke's sweeping cleanup plan influence EPA? (Energy Wire reports) -- Duke Energy Corp. has committed to the largest coal ash cleanup in the nation, and environmental advocates hope the Trump administration is watching.

What to know about Duke landfill at Lake Julian (Asheville Citizen-Times reports) -- Here are the top 10 things to know about the proposed Duke Energy industrial landfill at the Lake Julian power plant site.

Backlog of toxic Superfund clean-ups grows under Trump (AP reports) -- The Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund clean-up projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, according to 2019 figures quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency over the winter holidays. The unfunded projects are in North Carolina, 16  other states and Puerto Rico. They range from a defunct dry cleaner that released toxic solvents in North Carolina to abandoned mines that discharged heavy metals and arsenic in the West and an old wood pulp site in Mississippi.

UNC study: Rising temps affects river ice cover, will have global impact (WRAL-TV/TechWire reports) -- A new study from researchers in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Geological Sciences found that annual river ice cover will decline by about six days for every one degree Celsius increase in global temperatures.

Give Natural Christmas Trees a Second Life (Coastal Review reports) -- State parks, community organizations and local governments are collecting natural Christmas trees free of decorations to help with dune stabilization.

TRAVIS FAIN: Attorney General will appeal voter ID decision (WRAL-TV reports) -- Josh Stein will defend N.C.'s voter ID law but won't push to require ID at the polls in the March primaries.

NC will appeal ruling that blocked voter photo ID law (AP reports) -- North Carolina will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that blocks the state’s photo identification voting law but not before the March 3 primary, the state Department of Justice said Thursday.

Voter ID case pits Democratic politicians against NAACP, as state leaders will appeal (Durham Herald-Sun reports) -- Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein’s office has written that the ruling “would contravene the will of NC voters, who ratified the constitutional requirement for voter ID in the 2018 statewide election.”

MATTHEW BURNS & TRAVIS FAIN: Cooper running out of time to fulfill promises (WRAL-TV reports) -- Politicians like to make promises when they run for office. But once the heady days of an election victory have passed, the work of fulfilling those promises is much harder. Gov. Roy Cooper has found that out over the last three years. To date, Cooper has achieved only seven of the 31 promises WRAL News has tracked since his days on the campaign trail in 2016. - three in 2019.

North Carolina poised to gain another seat in Congress (Charlotte Observer reports) -- North Carolina is among seven states that are poised to gain at least one new congressional seat. That would give the state 14 House members as well as 16 electoral votes.

NC Sen. Jim Davis to run for US Congress (Hendersonville Times-News reports) -- After serving nearly five terms in the N.C. Senate, Macon County native Jim Davis has announced his run for U.S. Congress. Davis is among a dozen candidates vying for the Republican ticket in the 11th Congressional District.

Democrat Julián Castro drops out of 2020 presidential race (AP News reports) -- Former Obama housing secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, ended his campaign after a yearlong run in which he pushed his rivals on immigration and took big swings in debates but struggled to break through with voters.

As 2020 dawns, Trump looks to boost evangelical support (AP reports) - In his first campaign move of the 2020 election year, President Donald Trump highlights his support among evangelicals at a Miami mega-church as he aims to shore up and expand support from an influential piece of his political base. The president will host the kickoff meeting of “Evangelicals for Trump” just days after he was the subject a scathing editorial in the Christianity Today magazine (founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham) called for his removal from office.

City of Winston-Salem, others say court properly dismissed UDC Confederate statue lawsuit (Winston-Salem Journal reports) -- The city of Winston-Salem says a lawsuit filed to force the return of a statue of an anonymous Confederate soldier to downtown is flawed because the United Daughters of the Confederacy cannot show that it has any rights over the placement of the statue and the memorial plinth it stood on.

Freedom Park (The Insider reports) -- The group behind a proposed African-American history park in downtown Raleigh wants new terms on its lease with the state. An agenda for next week's Council of State meeting details a proposed new lease for the N.C. Freedom Park, which is expected to break ground soon on the lot behind the State Archives building, across Wilmington Street from the Legislative Building.

Jim Black ally told to repay $1.4M to Medicare (WRAL-TV reports) -- Scott Edwards is the man who funneled money to then-Speaker of the House Jim Black's campaign. Now, 10 years after Edwards pleaded guilty, the government decided to kick him out of the Medicare program.

A betrayal of trust (Winston-Salem Journal) -- It’s disconcerting — and maddening — to learn that five Catholic priests with connections to Winston-Salem and Forsyth County were accused of child sexual abuse — accusations that were deemed credible — in a report released Monday by the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. It’s hard to imagine a worse betrayal of trust than that perpetrated by religious authorities — charged with serving as spiritual guides and examples for our youth — who misuse their positions to benefit their perverted sexual desires.

Judge Lewis helped courts better address vital community problems (Wilmington Star-News) -- Judge Ola Lewis made a traditionally cookie-cutter justice system work better for more people, tackling pressing problems in the counties she served.

PAUL ALLEN REICHLE: BRAC, despite dollars, left behind long-term problems for Fayetteville (Fayetteville Observer column) -- We became institutionalized in a few short years. The grit and reality of the army became sanitized by big business.

JOE STEWART: Insurance industry prepping for more storms, drought (Fayetteville Observer column) -- We only need to look at Lumberton to see what hurricanes are doing to North Carolinians. Actuaries rank climate change as the No. 1 risk.

Board: 'Misleading' parts of NC charter schools report should be changed so it's not 'blown way out of proportion' (WRAL-TV reports) --Some portions of N.C.'s annual charter schools report are "misleading" and should be removed or reworked so the information does not "get blown way out of proportion" when the report is presented to the State Board of Education next week according to a lower board.

ADAM OWENS: Chairman tells Johnston school board member to put up or shut up regarding alleged wrongdoing (WRAL-TV reports) -- The chairman of the Johnston County Board of Education called for a board member to provide evidence of the financial misdeeds and sexual harassment he has alleged in recent weeks or stop making accusations so the school district can move forward.

Dr. Robert Bashford, UNC leader and advocate for rural medicine, has died (Durham Herald-Sun reports) -- Dr. Robert Bashford, a psychiatrist, professor and associate dean at the UNC School of Medicine who helped guide aspiring physicians into pockets of N.C. where patients struggle to find care, died Tuesday. Bashford, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was 74, but continued to teach, practice and advocate for rural health care.

Democrats and Republicans Have Found One Common Foe: the NCAA (Wall Street Journal reports) -- The U.S. Congress is divided in almost every way. But there is one issue where Republicans and Democrats have found a surprising consensus: hating on the NCAA.

Thousands of college kids paid to work for a viral party kingpin. What could go wrong? (New York Times reports) -- For eight years, a digital media company called I’m Shmacked has posted viral videos of the college party scene. Cinematic shots of college campuses and university landmarks are interspersed with flip cup games and keg stands. The business model is to recruit undergraduates as content creators, often with promises of thousands of dollars a month in compensation and online fame. An East Carolina student became one of the many victims.

BRYAN MIMS: UNC doctor helps ISS astronaut who was suffering from blood clots (WRAL-TV reports) -- UNC Chapel Hill has a long relationship with NASA. So when an astronaut on board the International Space Station needed some medical attention, guess who the space program consulted.

MANDY MITCHELL: CBD, pot could be as bad as alcohol for your unborn baby (WRAL-TV reports) -- New research out of Chapel Hill shows links between CBD, THC and birth defects that look similar to those caused by fetal alcohol syndrome.

Health trends and policies to watch for in 2020 (N.C. Health News reports) -- We asked our reporters to predict the biggest developments in health in the state this coming year. Today, we look ahead on Medicaid transformation, environmental policy, mental health and more.

SARAH KRUEGER: Infant deaths could be linked to carbon monoxide in Durham housing complex (WRAL-TV reports) -- Two infants have died recently at McDougald Terrace in Durham, and authorities say the deaths might be linked to high levels of carbon monoxide found at the public housing complex.

Durham official says carbon monoxide poisoning possible in children’s deaths (Durham Herald-Sun reports) -- Did children die from carbon monoxide poisoning in Durham?

Lee County man wins first $1 million prize of the new decade (WRAL-TV reports) -- James Paschal of Broadway is the first N.C. player to win $1 million in the new decade.

Longtime Raleigh restaurant sold (WRAL-TV reports) -- After 45 years, Arthur and Anya Gordon have sold The Irregardless Cafe in downtown Raleigh. David Meeker, co-founder of Trophy Brewing Co., purchased the building, Gordon said., while Lee Robinson has taken over managing Irregardless.

Local breweries help expand dining options at RDU airport (WRAL-TV reports) -- Six new dining concepts are headed to Raleigh-Durham International Airport's Terminal 2.