Day: March 14, 2007
Buncombe County Commission
Despite a threat of legal action by the developer of the largest single residential project in Buncombe County history, the Board of Commissioners once again approved sharp restrictions on multifamily construction at higher elevations during a special session held March 8 to allow a second reading of the ordinance. It was originally passed Feb. 27 … Read more
Department of Emergency Services Excerpts
The hard eight: Buncombe’s main hazards Buncombe County “is exposed to many hazards, all of which have the potential to disrupt the community, cause damage, and create casualties,” the emergency plan notes. Near the beginning, it identifies eight key categories of hazards. Below is a condensed version of that list, with excerpts from the EOP: … Read more
Enviro triumph or Dirty Bird?
Every day, the Blue Ridge Paper mill in Canton, one of Haywood County’s biggest employers, discharges more than 20 million gallons of treated industrial wastewater into the Pigeon River—which critics say is much too small a waterway to accommodate that much effluent. Trials and tributaries: The Canton paper mill has discharged industrial wastewater into the … Read more
Buncombe’s plan for the worst
“Mass casualty event.” “Decontamination action guidelines.” “Emergency mortuary plan.” Not exactly light lunchtime topics. But such sobering terminology is common at Buncombe County’s Department of Emergency Services, which is charged with coordinating the county’s response to disasters both natural and human-made. Among the department’s duties is compiling a comprehensive emergency-operations plan—a hefty document containing a … Read more
Buzzworm news briefs
Today Asheville, tomorrow the world: AGR-TV goes satellite Air time: AGR-TV co-anchors Eamon Martin, far left, and Anna Belle Peevey, far right, produce a new episode of the program. Pictured in the center, from left, are sytlist Denise Wolcott, producer David Connor Jones and editor Sean McNeal. photo by Jonathan Welch Quick—name an Asheville-based television … Read more
The Green Scene
Getting the lay of the land Tracking development in Asheville just got a whole lot easier. A new online tool unveiled recently by Asheville’s Information Technology Services Department enables anyone to quickly find out about new local construction projects. The Web-based program, called the mapAsheville Development Mapper, uses geographic-information-systems technology to retrieve detailed data about … Read more
A boy’s first bagpipes
The opposite of ADD: Self-professed “obsessive-compulsive” teen Jack Devereux is probably the world’s youngest maker of the complicated Irish Union bagpipes. photos by Amy Rowling On a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, Jack Devereux was in the garage behind his family’s Asheville home, building bagpipes. With the help of a lathe, Devereux was trimming a … Read more
Dark is the new blushing bride
“Anoint my head/ With your sweet kiss/ My joy is dead/ I long for bliss …” Moaning at the misconceptions: Williams says she’s a “positive person.” No, it’s not something I scrawled on my 9th-grade Social Studies book cover after Jessica Santelli told me that Tim Jordan told her that he didn’t want to slow … Read more
Going his own way
Besides being requisite to every lite-rock-station playlist in existence, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours virtually created the Behind the Music soap opera. The turmoil surrounding the creation of the album (i.e., the breakup of Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac vocalist/erstwhile witch Stevie Nicks) resonates even today—if you’re stuck in the ‘70s, that is. A jollier Joyce? (Or … Read more
