Orange County farmers have had a tough year already and without significant rain may face an unusually heavy loss of crops, county agriculture officials say.

Karen McAdams, an Orange County-based extension agent for the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, said some parts of the county have only had a half-inch of rain since the first of July.

“It’s rough on people and rough on animals,” McAdams said. “But most farmers are pretty prepared and make sure they have enough water and shade. The big concern is the feed supply. Pastures are drying up and there’s not much grazing.”

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Carrboro and the rest of the O.C. bake away

Lifeguard Elizabeth Hamilton surveys the pool at Heritage Hills. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

If you had a strange sensation on Monday morning that something wasn’t quite right, that maybe something was missing, you were right. In most places in southern Orange County, there was no dew.

Even though the air was plenty heavy with water, temperatures never dipped low enough Sunday night and early Monday to allow for the usual overnight condensation.

That was an early clue of the heatwave barreling down on us. The next clues were not so obscure.

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Photo by Kirk Ross

Residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, joined by police officers and town officials for the annual Neighborhood Night Out, stroll through the Northside neighborhood Tuesday. Despite the heat (thermometers read 100 degrees as the walk got started), about 60 residents turned out for the event, which wound through Northside to the Hargraves Center where food, music, games and plenty of water were on hand for participants. The event is organized each year by Empowerment, Inc.

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

With one participant reportedly saying, “There are people here who need to eat,” a variety of foods were distributed at last Saturday’s Really Really Free Market, held the first Saturday of each month on the Carrboro Town Commons.

The rub, from the town’s perspective, is that participants in the Really Really Free Market aren’t insured to distribute food at the event and therefore have been in violation of the event’s contract with the town.

But at least a few among those who bring goods to the gathering for free distribution say the town is wrong – that they are no different than anyone who may bring food to a public park and then share it, and that signs posted informing those who partake that the town can’t be held liable in case of sickness sufficiently cover all concerned.

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Joe-Pye-Weed flower heads.  Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Common names and the meanings and tales associated with them are the source of endless wisdom, humor and trivia. I’ve always wondered who Joe-Pye really was. The familiar description is of a Native American herb doctor in the Massachusetts Bay Colony region.

The Indian’s name was Joe-Pye and he used a special plant to ease the discomfort of a common disease known as typhus, or typhoid fever. So the plant was commonly identified by early settlers as Joe-Pye-Weed.

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State plans to examine groundwater contamination at former Fidelity Street cleaners

Roll-offs with contaminated soil are due to depart Carrboro before the weekend. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

State officials say that soil removed from a former dry cleaners building on Fidelity Street will be on it’s way out of the area starting today (Thursday) and will likely be gone by Friday.

Contractors working for the state’s Dry-Cleaning Solvent Cleanup Act Program removed roughly 240 tons of soil from the site after testing required by the town as part of a permit to refurbish the building revealed contamination from perchloroethylene, or “perc,” a solvent used in the dry cleaning process. The chemical is consider hazardous and is linked to some cancers, but according to Al Chapman, a project manager for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the public is not in danger from the soil.

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After searching for an alternative site to the Morehead Planetarium that’s near campus and downtown Chapel Hill, the Orange County Board of Elections decided on Tuesday night to set up an early-voting center in the lobby of the Franklin Street Post Office.

Barry Garner, the county’s elections director, said the board reviewed several sites, including the Student Union and the Seymour Senior Center on Homestead Road before opting for the post office. The new early-voting site will be in the lobby to the right of the entrance, he said.

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It’s named after the giant mill that used to occupy the site, but the only knitting and yarn-spinning likely to be done will be in the living rooms and kitchens of its occupants.

Alberta, a four-story condominium and retail project planned for the lot at the corner of Roberson Street and Sweet Bay Place, goes before the town planning board tonight (Thursday).

The board meets at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Hall Board Room.

The project by Carr Mill Investment Limited Partnership totals 46,340 square feet with 6,772 square feet of retail on the ground floor, 23 residential units and 69 parking spaces.
Of the residential units, there will be three one-bedroom units, 17 two-bedroom units and three three-bedroom units.

The main retail spaces will face Roberson Street.

IFC hires new development director
The Inter-Faith Council for Social Service has hired Kimberly Shaw as the agency’s new development director.

Shaw started work on Monday. She has nearly 20 years of experience in development and marketing in the nonprofit sector and also has worked for the Carolina Theatre, the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science and the North Carolina Center for Voter Education.

Community members are invited to meet Shaw on Wednesday, August 15 from 3-4 p.m. at the IFC’s second-floor conference room at 110 W. Main Street in Carrboro.

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Why not every night?

Progress is slow, but there is progress.

If you’ve any recollection of what things were like when they were at their worst, then a walk through Northside today will make that evident.

Houses have been reclaimed, refurbished and the whole place has a tidier feel. But the ghosts of the past still haunt the place in pockets, and late in the evening you can see the drug trade and its casualties creep back to life.

The houses that were once the haven of the trade have been taken back, but the night, well, that’s a different story. Some nights, yes, but most nights, no — not entirely.

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By Kirk Ross 

This year there proved to be at least one great advantage to having been denied membership to the 2007 edition of the Capital Press Corps: I didn’t have to write about what a regular guy Don Beason is and how I was either shocked or knew all along that he was the one who “loaned” Jim Black half-a-mil’. Unlike some of the pros up in Raleigh, I’m not used to explaining how it’s important I get cozy with lobbyists and insiders and how I’m completely immune to their charms.

That could turn one all pretzely over time.

I’m only kidding slightly here.

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Wrong on campaign funding
Chris Fitzsimon once again thinks taxpayers should be forced to fund a plan simply because he and his elitist buddies think it is a good idea (“The forgotten lesson from Jim Black,” August 2). He believes that if only the public campaign finance genie could sprinkle her magic dust upon the election process, all government corruption will be ended.

He goes on to claim that this program eliminates strings attached to money. On this point, he is being naive at best. Try this from an Arizona Republic (Arizona has had public campaign financing since 2000) article from 2003: “It’s no secret that labor unions mined their member list to come up with the 4,000 $5 contributions Janet Napolitano needed to be eligible for clean elections money.”

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By Rob Schofield

While it will take some time for analysts and observers to generate all of the post-mortems on the 2007 legislative session, a couple of things are already clear. First and foremost, this was not, as some naysayers have claimed, a “do nothing” session. To the contrary, 2007 was a year of solid, even above-average, productivity.

Any objective look at the final results must lead to the conclusion that, for all of the unavoidable nonsense that comes from forcing 170 elected officials to co-exist in tight quarters for six straight months, lawmakers passed a lot of good and important new laws. This performance was particularly impressive in light of the coincidence of a House speaker in his first term, a governor nearing the end of his second and a Senate president pro tem battling multiple family tragedies.

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By Chris Fitzsimon

House Speaker Joe Hackney and his leadership team met with reporters Thursday afternoon to talk about the legislative session, what was accomplished, what wasn’t and how the legislative process worked this year.

The message was much different than the talking points from the anti-everything right that have seeped into columns and interviewers’ questions, claims that the budget spends and taxes too much and that the session has dragged on without much to show for it.

Hackney made the opposite case, that this General Assembly made significant progress on issues like education, health care and the environment while ending the county share of Medicaid and giving local governments ways to raise revenue to pay for their exploding growth.

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Federal and state standards part of No Child Left Behind

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Two Chapel Hill-Carrboro elementary schools must allow students the option of transferring to other elementary schools in the district this year under federal No Child Left Behind standards.

The school district recently released preliminary Adequate Yearly Progress results for the nine elementary schools and four middle schools. While all district elementary schools and three of the four middle schools met federal standards in reading, all four middle schools and four elementary schools failed to meet standards in math.

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