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The Public Service Commission of South Carolina will hold four public meetings regarding the request for the increase.

The first public hearing is Wednesday night at 6:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Tracy J. Gaines Building on the campus of Spartanburg Community College.

The remaining three public night hearings will be held at 6:00 p.m. in the following locations:

Greenville County- Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Greenville County Council Chambers
301 University Ridge, Suite 2400
Greenville, SC 29601

Anderson County – Thursday, November 10, 2011

Anderson Civic Center, Ballrooms A & B
3027 MLK Jr. Blvd.
Anderson, SC 29625

Additional information concerning Duke’s application for an increase can be found on the Commission’s website.  Check out the link here.

Source: http://www2.wspa.com/news/2011/oct/19/3/have-your-say-potential-duke-rate-hike-ar-2571764/

Volunteers will help dig up 150 plugs from the marsh, and transplant them along with 150 purchased plants at the project site on Jeremy Island. Volunteers will travel by boat to the island and work and maneuver in the mud. All volunteers must be in good physical condition, as a lot of bending and digging is involved. Volunteers must be at least 18 years old.
Volunteers will need to provide their own pair of mud boots or old lace up tennis shoes/boots that can get dirty. TNC will provide work gloves for the volunteers. Please plan to be outside for about 5 hours. This means bringing a drink in a refillable container and a snack or lunch. There will be water on site to refill your containers as needed. Plan to meet at the McClellanville Boat Ramp at 10:00 am (It is beside the McClellanville Town Hall located at 405 Pinckney St. McClellanville, SC 29458).

If you are interested in helping with this important project or have any questions, please contact Joy Brown at joy_brown@tnc.org or call (843) 937-8807, ext 35.

The evening will feature local food by Chef Brannon Florie of 17 North, music by the Blue Plantation Band, and open bar by ICEBOX and Palmetto Brewery.

Special ticket pricing is available to CCL members. To purchase tickets and for more information visit www.Growcountry.eventbrite.com .

We look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,
The Coastal Conservation League

TOMORROW–Wednesday, September 28–6 PM
Kiawah Island Town Hall
21 Beachwalker Drive
Kiawah Island, SC 29455

Please attend this meeting to show OCRM that you want this permit application denied. If you are willing to speak, even better! Here are some talking points to guide your comments:

* The planned dock’s walkway is too wide at 9 feet. OCRM regulations only allow a maximum of 6 feet.
* The planned community dock does not replace any single-family docks. OCRM regulations state that “Community docks….will only be permitted in lieu of multiple single-family docks.”
* Since no single-family docks are being removed, this proposed community dock exceeds the size restrictions in the regulations.
* OCRM has these size and number restrictions in place to protect the water quality for residents and marine life reliant upon the health of the Kiawah River. Allowing this particular permit to be approved as submitted puts the stability of the beach, dune system, and habitat on this fragile spit of Kiawah coastline in jeopardy.

You can view details of the permit application online here: http://www.scdhec.gov/environment/ocrm/docs/PN081211/JPN081211_KDP.pdf

Comments in person are appreciated, but you can submit comments to OCRM Project Manager Bill Eiser here.

Thank you and see you tomorrow, Wednesday 28th at 6pm at Kiawah Island Town Hall!

Katie Zimmerman,
Project Manager

The ruling is particularly important for the Southeast, the “fiber basket of the nation,” where utilities and independent power producers are moving briskly forward with dozens of large wood-fired power plants and re-purposed power plants. In communities scattered across the South, local demand from existing and proposed plants for wood fuel could easily outstrip the supply of available wood waste, meaning the facilities would need standing trees to meet the demand.

Ryan Black, Climate & Energy Project Manager at the Coastal Conservation League stated that, “the development of small-scale, high-efficiency advanced wood combustion facilities (AWCs) could invigorate South Carolina’s working rural landscapes while reducing our dependence on imported energy resources such as coal. However, the environmental challenges and risks associated with AWCs and other larger, less efficient biomass facilities remain, and current regulations do not adequately address those risks.”

“The South is already seeing a huge uptick in the number of new and retrofitted facilities that will burn woody biomass, which will create increasing pressure to cut native, standing forests for fuel. While certain types of biomass must be part of our nation’s move to clean, sustainable energy sources, science shows that cutting whole trees often adds to the carbon output,” said Frank Rambo, head of the Clean Energy and Air Program for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is representing the Coastal Conservation League.

Recent scientific information indicates that burning biomass — trees, for example — can actually increase global warming pollution, even compared to fossil fuels. According to scientists, nearly all biomass fuels cause at least temporary near-term increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, significant amounts of which will persist in the atmosphere and cause climate damage for a century or more. This near-term increase directly undermines efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next several years, an effort that is essential to avoid the very worst damage due to climate change. The EPA’s rule, however, grants all facilities burning any biogenic materials a three-year hiatus from having to obtain permits and control their CO2 emissions.

Legal Background

The EPA’s rule marks a striking about-face for the agency. The agency’s “tailoring rule” — the June 2010 regulation in which it spelled out how greenhouse gases would be regulated under Clean Air Act permit programs — treated biogenic and nonbiogenic greenhouse gas emissions similarly. When industry groups challenged this aspect of the tailoring rule, the organizations filing today’s lawsuit intervened to defend the EPA’s decision. That case, National Alliance of Forest Owners v. EPA (D.C. Cir. Case No. 10-1209), is still pending. The EPA, however, has since reversed course. Earlier this year, the agency improperly granted an industry petition for reconsideration of the tailoring rule, a decision that the organizations filing today’s lawsuit challenged in Center for Biological Diversity, et al. v. EPA (D.C. Cir. Case No. 11-1101). The biomass exemption rule challenged in today’s lawsuit is the final outcome of the EPA’s reconsideration process.

Numerous groups filed the original joint petition on August 15 in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. SELC, which is representing the Coastal Conservation League and Dogwood Alliance in its petition, is already representing Georgia ForestWatch and Wild Virginia in the lawsuit. The Center for Biological Diversity is representing itself, and the Clean Air Task Force is representing Conservation Law Foundation and the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Contacts:
Ryan Black, SC Coastal Conservation League, (585) 645-5913
Frank Rambo, Southern Environmental Law Center, (434) 962-0086

Stephen Marchetti, a retired engineering executive, was looking for an outlet for his restless energies. So, Stephen and his wife bought a piece of land on St. Helena with hopes of turning it into a farm. Weeds and brush had overrun the plot, and the former tenants had sullied the ground with a strange miscellany of litter. But after months of preparation, clearing and cleaning, Steve managed to put Wren’s Nest into full production for the 2010 season.

The ground at Wren’s Nest bears testament to Steve’s unceasing experiments in growing. A pear tree sapling grows amid a row of tomatoes, next to the beginnings of a great swathe of corn. Some of these fruits and vegetables aren’t exotic, but they are uncommon in the marshy, small acreage farms of the low country. On occasion, Steve’s engineering verve does lead him to creative experiments — last season he dabbled in a strain of petite Spanish Christmas melons that, he reports, outdo any melon he has tasted in his life.

Steve has put about one acre of ground into production at Wren’s Nest. This a verdant block that surrounds the road and the small house Steve built on the property. The farm’s first forays into the market have been promising — Steve beams about the hundreds of pounds of onions and broccoli he moved last year. But his property extends for 16 acres through the marsh, crisscrossing over a lake and the coastal plain, promising to bear and grow more. This land is eminently arable, and Steve hopes he can get the machine-power to make it fit for onion sprigs and broccoli sprouts in the coming season.

Wren’s Nest is, at last, a personal adventure. Steve delights in his grandchildren’s enthusiastic trips to the farm, in his own hard work, and in the thought of keeping the farm in shape for his children.

Wren’s Nest Farm
Stephen Marchetti
19 Seaside Road
St. Helena, SC 29920

Produce: diversified

Available at:
Habersham Farmers Market, Port Royal Farmers Market

Volunteers will help load/unload, transport and assemble the concrete blocks that form the oyster castles. Volunteers will travel by boat to the island and work and maneuver in the mud. All volunteers must be in good physical condition, as heavy lifting is involved. Volunteers must be 18 years old.

You will need a pair of work gloves and mud boots or old lace up tennis shoes. Please plan to be outside for 5 hours- so bring some water or a snack if you need it. Extra water will be provided.

Meet at the McClellanville boat ramp at 9:00 am (beside the McClellanville town hall located at 405 Pinckney St. 29458

September 7, 2011 9:00 am- 2:00 pm

Jeremy Island (Near McClellanville in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge)

If you are interested in helping with this project or have any questions- please contact Joy Brown at joy_brown@tnc.org or call 843. 937.8807 ext. 35

Beth Lee is the senior member of the sibling farmers — she had a fifteen year head start on her sister Priscilla. The sisters have lived distinct and distant lives, but they are now reunited in agriculture on family land, now known as Three Sisters’ Organic Farm.

The tract in Bluffton has been in the sisters’ family since 1847, and passed through the hands of more than one farmer before it came to Mary, Beth and Priscilla. The land has been in production for almost six years, and is starting to get a taste of agronomic modernity. The vegetable farm extends for about three acres, the ground laced with a complex irrigation system of grey drip-hoses that terminate in series of metallic spigots. The bright sheen of these valves divides the field, helping the eye to separate row upon row of flower, fruit and vegetable.

This level of infrastructure sophistication allows the sisters to get more product out to their dedicated customer base — which includes a bevy of individual customers, three farmers markets and a group of restaurants.  It takes only one glance at the field to understand why there is always demand for Three Sisters produce.  Thick blankets of kale and lettuce stand starkly in the field. Many colored flowers—some of which, Priscilla points out, taste like fruit loops— paint a creamy pastiche atop the dark marsh dirt. In addition, the sisters open eight acres of daffodils to willing pickers every spring.

But challenges still abound for this small organic farm. The sisters—whose farm is certified organic by the USDA— must compete with farmers market vendors who claim similar practices without the fees associated with the certification process.  As a matter of fact, some vendors are not even growing the produce that they sell. But, by combining hard work in the field and at the market, the farm’s future is nonetheless bright. How could it fail to be, with so many yellow daffodils on hand?