Big news in today's N&O on a farming incubator being established in Orange County by the county, the state Cooperative Extension, and NCSU's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. This is very good news for Orange County as the continued vitality of local farming will be critical to our future sustainability.
Consider the following, according to Michael Pollan:
Food energy in a 1-pound box of prewashed organic lettuce: 80 calories
Fossil-fuel energy spent growing, chilling, washing, packaging, and transporting box of lettuce from California to East Coast: More than 4,600 calories
That's a 57.5 to 1 ratio. And, there is nothing on the horizon to improve upon it. In fact, as gas supplies dwindle while demand rises, it is likely to get much worse. This means that the value of locally grown produce will continue to rise as will the value of farmland (and even garden space).
The unchecked growth charted for NW Chapel Hill will not only effectively choke off many of the neighborhoods in the area, but will, in a metastatic line of attack have negative effects on the entire town.
Can schools absorb 1000 new students?
Can roads (especially Weaver Dairy Road) absorb thousands of additional cars?
Can an over stressed environment absorb more impervious surfaces, pollution, and waste?
We cannot continue to just focus on each of these proposals as though they were an entity unto themselves. We must see how each one of them fits into the greater whole of the huge number of residences already here.
This “gateway†entrance into Chapel Hill will be one that greets people with bumper to bumper traffic. Neighborhoods to the west of MLK Jr. Blvd. will be isolated from the option of walkability that this area has the potential to offer.
There must be a moratorium on all plans in the NW Quadrant. There must be a study done on how this area can continue to exist as a viable part of the community if development continues in this haphazard fashion.
This week's Independent Weekly recognizes two Orange County residents (and a number of others in the Triangle) with their annual Ctizen Awards. The North Carolina Peace and Justice Coalition's Andrew Pearson ( www.ncpeacejustice.org ) and the People's Channel's Chad Johnston ( www.thepeopleschannel.org ) were both recognized. You can read about all five honorees at www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A40503
Congratulations to both Andrew and Chad (and the many people involved in their respective organizations) for this recognition!
Looks like Allen Baddour will get the second Superior Court seat as he has retained the same small margin he had after the provisional ballots were counted last week.
It took all day Tuesday for the ballots to be recounted, but when the final count was in, Baddour had received 17,228 votes, and Stein had received 17,165, a 63-vote difference.
- heraldsun.com: Baddour retains Superior Court post
Since we had four very talented and qualified candidates running for these two seats, I knew we'd have a good judge coming out of it either way. I do regret that our community will never get to have Adam Stein on the bench, but we still benefit from his work in so many other ways.
Congratulations, Allen. It's certainly nice to see someone my own age in a respected position of authority. Give 'em hell!
The Chapel Town Council has a big meeting tonight. I meant to blog about it in advance, but since I didn't I will start this thread and hope to post live comments as it goes along.
Here's the agenda. I'll stick with this at least through the Public Forum on the Downtown Development Initiative.
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