Clear-cutting our forests to service a boondoggle in Europe:

Enviva Pellets Hamlet, LLC and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Air Quality (DAQ) on Monday reached a settlement with Clean Air Carolina (CAC) in which the wood pellet processing company agreed to a new round of measures to control emissions and to submit semi-annual output reports to CAC for review.

In January, Enviva modified its permit with the DAQ to allow it to increase its production of wood pellets from 537,625 oven-dried tons per year to 625,011 and to be reclassified as a minor source of pollution in exchange for adding new emission controls.

Bolding mine, because this method of calculation actually downplays the volume of trees this industry is consuming. In order to arrive at that "oven-dried" weight, several times that amount of green/wet wood is required. Enviva is clear-cutting some 50 acres of North Carolina forests every single day. Here's more from the Rachel Carlson Council:

As usual, sedimentary deposits tell the tale:

"Our results clearly indicate the presence of coal ash at the bottom of Sutton Lake and suggest there have been multiple coal ash spills into the lake from adjacent coal ash storage facilities after, and even before, floodwaters from Hurricane Florence caused major flooding in 2018," said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the research.

According to Vengosh and his colleagues from Duke and Appalachian State University, the amount of contaminants was more than what was found in streams following major coal ash spills in Kingston, Tennessee in 2008 and the Dan River in North Carolina in 2014.

Of course Duke Energy is spouting denials and rationalizations left and right, but Avner knows his stuff. This isn't an environmental advocacy org speaking, it's pure science:

WILLIAM BARBER TRESPASSING TRIAL TURNS HINKY: In a hearing ahead of his trial on 2nd-degree trespassing charges, an attorney for the Rev. William Barber said Monday that a jury should be able to decide whether a North Carolina citizen can be found guilty of trespassing in a building the people own and maintain for the purpose of addressing their political leaders. An assistant district attorney argued that’s for a judge to find, because it’s too complicated an issue for a jury to handle. This question arose in a pretrial hearing for a motion by Wake County Assistant District Attorney Nishma Patel, who had asked the court to keep Barber’s attorney from “misleading” or “confusing” a jury by talking about First Amendment rights, or about whether trespassing laws apply in the case.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article231130048.html