Proposed legislation could drastically alter services.

Education is not the only social service that stands to be gutted in the state budget negotiations currently under way in Raleigh. Public health services are also on the chopping block.

According to Jim Bruckner, Macon County’s Director of Public Health, several pieces of proposed legislation could dramatically impact local public health services, including a proposal to abolish the Health and Wellness Trust Fund (HWTF), which helps to fund preventative health programs targeting tobacco use and obesity.

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The North Carolina Senate will soon decide how early “early voting” can be. The state House has passed its version of a bill to reduce the amount of time polling sites can be open before elections, by one week. Republican backers of the idea suggest it will save county governments money, but the people who administer the elections say it would actually cost more.

Bev Cunningham, director of the Henderson County Board of Elections in Hendersonville, says her elections staff would be much busier, for a shorter time period.

USDA provides $6 million in disaster recovery aid to 10 states affected by storms, floods

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced that USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has made immediately available $6 million in Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) Program aid for disaster recovery projects in 10 states affected this month by storms and floods. These states are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

“Our thoughts are with the families and communities across many parts of the country that have been affected by this severe weather,” said Vilsack. “USDA personnel in our state and local offices are coordinating with their state and local government counterparts in order to provide much-needed assistance as quickly as possible to communities that have been hard hit by this string of terrible tragedies.”

EPA landmark Clean Air Act settlement to modernize coal-fired power plants and promote clean energy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a settlement with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations at 11 of its coal-fired plants in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The settlement will require TVA to invest an estimated $3 to $5 billion on new and upgraded state-ofthe- art pollution controls that will prevent approximately 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths, 2,000 heart attacks and 21,000 cases of asthma attacks each year, resulting in up to $27 billion in annual health benefits.