Feds restore mental health funds
Rural communities stand with vulnerable neighbors in Minnesota; Mothers, daughters, Girl Scouts traveled to Richmond to watch the first woman become governor of Virginia; Measles cases climb in NC; Duke Energy Plans to Build a Massive Natural Gas Power Plant in Davidson County, NC
It's Friday, January 23, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Feds restore over $14M in Mississippi mental health grants, two days after terminating them, Rural Communities Stand With Somali-American, Other Vulnerable Neighbors Amidst ICE Siege on Minnesota, Minnesota detainees denied visitors at Fort Bliss following 3rd death at ICE facility, Parents worried that proposed CO2 pipeline could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on nearby school, neighborhood, Building on a legacy of nonviolent faith-based activism in NC, Duke Energy Plans to Build a Massive Natural Gas Power Plant in Davidson County.
Media outlets and others featured: Mississippi Today, The Daily Yonder, El Paso Matters, Cardinal News, Verite News, North Carolina Health News, Carolina Public Press, Inside Climate News.
Feds restore over $14M in Mississippi mental health grants, two days after terminating them
by Allen Siegler, Mississippi Today
January 15, 2026
Less than 48 hours after terminating over $14 million of Mississippi mental health grants, the federal government informed organizations that their funding will be fully restored.
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration cancelled nearly $2 billion of grants across the country Tuesday, according to NPR. In Mississippi, government health centers, private nonprofits and universities were told to stop all work funded by those grants — mainly related to addiction and children’s services.
By Tuesday evening, Mississippi Today had learned about roughly $9.2 million of cancelled Mississippi grants. Later that night, the state Department of Mental Health accounted for an additional $4.9 million that had been terminated to Mississippi State University, University of Southern Mississippi and the Mississippi Public Health Institute.
Wendy Bailey, the mental health department’s executive director, said Wednesday night there could have been other terminated grants her agency hadn’t learned about yet.
A Tuesday letter the federal mental health department sent to grantees said the cancellations were final because “no corrective action could align the award with current agency priorities.” But by Thursday morning, the agency sent the same organizations a short message to “disregard the prior termination notice and continue program activities as outlined in your award agreement.”
Nationwide, all $2 billion of the cuts from earlier this week were reversed, according to Roll Call. A spokesperson for the federal agency did not answer Mississippi Today’s call and email about the terminations and restorations.
Four of Mississippi’s 12 community mental health centers, local public organizations that serve people regardless of their ability to pay, were set to lose $8.7 million. Phaedre Cole, the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers president and the executive director of a center that serves the Delta, called the unexpected terminations and restorations “whiplash.”
She said she was encouraged by the swift, bipartisan pushback to protect critical Mississippi mental health services that were already underfunded. But the previous 48 hours had left her and other executive directors frazzled.
“It’s terrifying to us because we know we are the place of last resort for thousands of people across the state,” she said. “If we are to disappear, we will not disappear quietly.”
Shortly after receiving notice that the Department of Mental Health’s grant had been restored Thursday, Bailey said the last two days had been a whirlwind. But she’s grateful Mississippi mental health providers can continue providing important services.
“We must remember that behind these dollars are services and supports that are being provided to our neighbors, friends, family members, and people throughout our communities,” she said.
Communicare, the community mental health center serving Oxford and the surrounding counties, was set to lose more than any other organization Bailey’s department heard from. Melody Madaris, Communicare’s executive director, said the losses would force her agency to cut back on preventing opioid overdoses, restructure services for school children and halt other planned programs.
Thursday morning, before she had officially heard that the federal government would restore her grant, Madaris said services funded by federal grants are often the ones most people don’t notice unless they need them — transporting people from rural homes to receive antipsychotic medications, working with food banks to deliver meals to patients and other resource-intensive services.
“Those are the things we do to keep our community healthy,” she said. “Without the federal funding, these are things that we won’t be able to do as much of.”
Right after the federal government sent her an email restoring the funds, she texted Mississippi Today: “A sigh of relief and back to work as usual helping the citizens of Mississippi struggling with mental health and substance use issues.”
Correction 1/15/2026: This story has been updated to show that Wendy Bailey's initial comments were made Wednesday night.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Rural Communities Stand With Somali-American, Other Vulnerable Neighbors Amidst ICE Siege on Minnesota
by Betsy Froiland, The Daily Yonder
January 21, 2026
President Donald Trump inaugurated his government’s massive ICE operation targeting Somali-Americans in Minnesota in early December by calling the entire group of people, among other racist and xenophobic slurs, “garbage.”
In his tirade, Trump blamed the entire Somali-American population in Minnesota, which includes about 80,000 residents across the state, for the actions of a few dozen Somali-Americans involved in a fraud scandal already adjudicated in court. He also echoed the erroneous claims of right-wing Internet commentators that stolen money was used to fund terrorism.
Not wasting any time, a clergy rapid response team gathered in a Minneapolis mosque the following weekend for an emergency press conference organized by statewide coalition ISAIAH. Rabbis, imams, and pastors from across the state gathered to collectively condemn the President’s hateful rhetoric and express solidarity with Somali-Americans in their state.
“No human being is garbage, Mr. President, and shame on you for saying so,” said Reverend Paul Graham, a pastor from rural Northfield, Minnesota, who was serving at St. Ansgar’s Lutheran Church in rural Cannon Falls, Minnesota, at the time. Hundreds of thousands of viewers watched a video of Graham’s speech after it was shared online and reposted by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker.
Graham told the Daily Yonder what troubled him most about Trump’s rhetoric: “as soon as leaders who have a lot of power start talking about a whole group of people as something less than human, that is a huge problem.” Not only does it dehumanize people, Graham said, but it authorizes and even emboldens political violence against them.
Indeed, since Trump’s “garbage” comment, his administration has unleashed thousands of ICE agents upon Minnesota, raiding homes, businesses, and workplaces across Minnesota and arresting over 3,000 people at the time of this publication, often violently and without legal reason or proper warrant.
While the hotspots remain in urban centers like Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the siege has spread to other parts of the state, including small towns like St. James, St. Peter, Detroit Lakes, Willmar, and Faribault.
Rural Minnesotans are not standing idly by. Faith leaders, community workers, and ordinary residents are coming together to protect their neighbors.
Somali-Americans are not new to Willmar, Minnesota, a town of 21,015 about two hours northwest of the Twin Cities. Somali refugees came to the town as early as the 1990s, according to Willmar Director of Community Growth Pablo Obregon, many resettling from the Twin Cities or other nearby towns. Obregon estimates that about 1,200 Somali-American residents currently live in Willmar.
And Somali-Americans are not the first immigrants to call Willmar their home. “Willmar has been an immigrant community for a hundred years at least,” Obregon said.
Before the wave of immigration from East Africa, there was a wave of immigration from Hispanic countries. Before that, a wave of immigration from European countries like Norway and Sweden.
No matter the country of origin, motivations for moving to Willmar have looked similar: job opportunities and the generally welcoming culture of the town.
Despite Trump’s baseless claim that Somali-Americans “aren’t people who work” or ““say, ‘let’s make this place great,’” Willmar’s Somali-American community has breathed new life into the town’s economy.
Beyond contributing to the workforce at the local Jennie-O turkey plant, many have started their own businesses, turning a strip of shuttered storefronts in a downtown previously in decline into a vibrant business district some call “Little Mogadishu” due to the number of Somali-owned restaurants and grocery stores thriving next to long-established businesses in the community.
“Many of our downtown businesses are now Somali-owned,” Obregon says, a story of resilience not only for the Somali-American business owners but also for the Willmar community as a whole.
“They’re paying rent, they’re paying taxes, they’re complying with Minnesota and federal requirements. And that benefits the entire economy of Willmar,” Obregon said. Safe to say, Somali-Americans have done much to make Willmar great.
For its part, Willmar strives to be a welcoming town for all residents. Obregon says there has been a sustained community effort to create stability and belonging for everyone in Willmar through equal access to wellness and health resources, children and youth programs, and leadership development opportunities.
Despite their contributions to the community, Somali-Americans and other immigrant groups are under attack in Willmar as ICE presses into greater Minnesota.
Willmar lies within Kandiyohi County, one of eight counties in the state that has agreed to assist ICE’s escalated operations in the state and one of three with a longstanding agreement with immigration authorities to detain people in local jails.
Just in the last few weeks, ICE has abducted several people in Willmar. On January 12, ICE agents violently arrested a 19-year-old Somali high schooler in downtown Willmar, dragging her into an unmarked vehicle as residents shouted in protest and recorded on their phones. On January 14, ICE agents ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant in town, left, and returned later that day to arrest its owners and a dishwasher.
Those are the arrests that made headlines. Longtime resident Julie Vossen-Henslin says that ICE has arrested many others too: a Somali woman taken outside her apartment complex, a woman taken in the parking lot of the local Goodwill, a person taken from their car, left damaged and abandoned in a snowbank.
“It’s horrific,” Vossen-Henslin said. “[My neighbors are] being treated like animals.”
The effect on the community has been palpable. The day after the 19-year-old Somali woman was arrested, 90% of Somali students did not attend school. Even before then, hundreds of children in Willmar have been missing school since December for fear of ICE.
“People don’t want to send their kids to school, or get out of their houses, or go grocery shopping, or to doctor appointments, or even to work,” Obregon said.
“And [it’s] not because they don’t have documents,” Obregon explained, as indeed the majority of Somali-Americans in Minnesota are U.S. citizens. Even citizenship has not proven to be enough for ICE, with agents arresting many U.S. citizens including a 20-year-old Somali-American citizen in Minneapolis last month.
Vossen-Henslin said that many of her Black and brown neighbors are afraid to do simple things like walk to their cars, whether or not they are citizens.
“The fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty is present,” Obregon said. “And that affects the mental health of the families – children, parents – and affects the economic life of our community as well.”
With a cloud over the community, Willmar residents are trying to build cover for each other.
Vossen-Henslin says that a group of Willmar residents – lawyers, church folks, and high-schoolers alike – have been working together to protect their neighbors, from watching and documenting ICE arrests in real time to picking up the pieces after an arrest, identifying abducted neighbors so they can alert their family members, return their cars and belongings, and care for the homes, pets, and children left behind.
Some residents are sending care packages to residents afraid to leave their homes to buy things like groceries and toiletries. Some have been sitting outside the local mosque almost everyday with orange whistles around their necks to alert the community if ICE agents show up. A 15-year-old resident has been checking in on classmates that have been missing school.
The community has also been protesting. After the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Willmar residents held a candlelit vigil honoring Good and protesting ICE’s actions in the state. One local performed ‘This Little Light of Mine’ on a harmonica. Another sang and played ‘This Land is Your Land’ on his guitar.
The day after the 19-year-old Somali woman was arrested, community members protested in downtown Willmar, holding signs with messages like “Jesus told us to love your neighbors, not deport them!” and “Stay warm, melt ice.”
“We’re energized to help, but the heartbreak is deep,” Vossen-Henslin said. She worries about what will be left of Willmar if and when ICE leaves the town: the experience has left scars that she doesn’t see going away anytime soon. “People are going to need help if this ever ends,” she said.
Still, the community is not relenting. “We are not letting [our Somali-American neighbors] walk alone during these challenging times,” said Obregon. “We are in solidarity with them. We work with them in their successes and we tell the stories about their successes. And these days, we are also working with them in their challenges. They are not alone.
Pastor Graham is also standing in solidarity with fellow Minnesotans faced with ICE attacks, living up to his words in his viral speech last December.
The key, he says: “sustained, local, strategic efforts.”
These efforts started long before Trump ever uttered the word “garbage” about Somali-Americans in Minnesota.
Since the dawn of the second Trump administration, Graham has been a part of a network of faith leaders from urban and rural parts of the state organizing through ISAIAH to resist Trump’s immigration policies. Just a month after Trump was inaugurated, hundreds of Minnesota faith leaders held a prayer vigil as Kristi Noem held a press conference at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.
“Many pastors and faith communities are saying, ‘we know this is wrong,’” Graham said.
To Graham, this kind of community action is important because, as he put it, “once that kind of power starts being taken, as we've seen with the current administration, they don't give it back voluntarily. It's got to be people that rise up and say, ‘we're going to use our democracy and put a stop to this nonsense.’”
Graham is not naive to the fact that things look grim in the state. But instead of falling into despair, Graham is falling into community.
At the end of December, Graham and other rural pastors visited an Islamic Center in Faribault, meeting with Somali-American faith leaders to express their support for the community during this difficult time.
The greater Faribault community is standing in solidarity with their Somali-American neighbors, too. As ICE has deployed more and more agents into urban and rural parts of the state in recent weeks, community members in Faribault have started taking to the streets.
Over 100 students walked out of Faribault High School on January 12 in protest of ICE’s actions in Minnesota. Days prior, residents held a protest on a busy downtown street corner with signs reading “I love my immigrant neighbor” and “Together we stand strong.”
“We are all interconnected,” said Graham. “We're all brothers and sisters. What's happening to Somali people is happening to my brothers and sisters.”
Bringing it back to his faith, Graham said, “It's not overly complicated. Jesus said, ‘love your neighbor.’”
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Minnesota detainees denied visitors at Fort Bliss following 3rd death at ICE facility
by Robert Moore and Cindy Ramirez, El Paso Matters
January 18, 2026
People attempting to visit detainees from Minnesota at the Fort Bliss immigration holding facility have been turned away in recent days following the death of a Nicaraguan man transferred from Minneapolis, according to multiple sources.
Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was found unresponsive in his room Jan. 14 at the nation’s largest immigration detention facility, and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful, the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release Sunday. The cause of death is presumed to be suicide, but the official cause of death remains under investigation, DHS officials said.
Starting the next day and continuing through Sunday, people seeking to visit detainees at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility known as Camp East Montana have been told they can’t see people brought from Minnesota, multiple people told El Paso Matters. They asked not to be identified out of concern they could lose their ability to visit detainees.
“I was told by the guards there, ‘Oh, are the people you’re coming to see from Minnesota?’ And we’re like, ‘Yes.’ And she's like, ‘They're not allowing the people from Minnesota to have visitors. They're out in Echo,’ which I'm assuming is part of the camp,” said a person who attempted to visit a detainee from Minnesota on Thursday, less than 18 hours after Diaz’s death.
Others who regularly visit detainees at the Fort Bliss ICE facility as part of a humanitarian response have also been turned away, including Sunday morning, multiple people told El Paso Matters. Families around the country have relied on the El Paso visitation response to check on people detained at Fort Bliss and other area detention facilities as the Trump administration has taken tens of thousands of people in custody to deport them.
ICE policies allow visitors to its detention facilities, including at Fort Bliss, but under tight controls. The prohibition on visitors to detainees apprehended in Minnesota did not occur before Thursday, multiple regular visitors to Fort Bliss said.
DHS officials didn’t respond to questions from El Paso Matters about whether they were denying visitors to detainees from Minnesota held at Fort Bliss or whether the Trump administration was making any changes at the facility after the third death at the facility in seven weeks.
Diaz was taken into custody Jan. 6 in Minneapolis as the Trump administration launched a massive effort to apprehend undocumented immigrants in Minnesota. Many of those being apprehended in Minnesota have been transported to Fort Bliss to prepare for possible deportation.
An aggressive ICE enforcement surge in Minnesota – marked by the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent – has triggered large-scale protests, legal challenges and a federal court order restricting how immigration agents can engage with protestors.
In El Paso, community, faith and civil rights leaders in El Paso gathered Friday and Saturday in Downtown to condemn what they call an “alarming escalation” of violent immigration enforcement and detention following the detainee deaths and immigration raids throughout the borderland.
Charlotte Weiss of the Texas Civil Rights Project said over the last month or two, detainees’ attorneys have been required to make appointments at least 24 hours in advance to see their clients at the Fort Bliss detention facility. That poses challenges when detainees have medical issues, she told El Paso Matters on Friday after the protest outside the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse.
“Because of the medical issues that I'm hearing – and I’m not getting emails daily since this week – for individuals that have severe health needs that are not being met, individuals who are not getting insulin, individuals who have broken body parts that are not being tended to, 24 hours could be enough for some cases, but it may not be for others,” Weiss said.
Diaz is the third person to die in custody of the immigration enforcement agency in El Paso.
Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, of Cuba, died at the Fort Bliss facility on Jan. 3. Citing a recorded conversation between a medical examiner’s office employee and Campo’s daughter, the Washington Post last week reported that the employee stated the cause of death would likely be listed as asphyxia – and the death would likely be ruled a homicide. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday that the autopsy report is pending and that it does not release preliminary information.
DHS in a news release said Campos was attempting to take his own life when security “intervened to save his life,” but that he stopped breathing and lost consciousness during the struggle.
On Dec. 3, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala, died in an El Paso hospital after months of illness and hospital visits while detained. ICE said in a news release that medical staff attributed his death to natural liver and kidney failure.
At least four other ICE detainee deaths have been reported by the agency since January, including a 34-year-old Mexican who died in Georgia; a 46-year-old Cambodian who died in Philadelphia; a 68-year-old Honduran who died in California; and a 42-year-old Honduran who died in Houston.
The deaths remain under investigation.
The Trump administration last year initiated a significant expansion of immigration enforcement, using U.S. military bases as detention centers – with Fort Bliss serving as the flagship facility.
The $1.2 billion tent facility opened Aug. 1 while it was still being erected and expanded, taking in about 1,000 people within two weeks.
The center averaged about 2,774 detainees per day as of November – the most than any other detention facility nationwide, according to the latest data available at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University. More than 65,700 people were reported being under ICE custody nationwide as of November.
The Fort Bliss center’s capacity is expected to grow to about 5,000 detainees, making it the largest federal detention center for civil detainees in the country.
The detention center has been under scrutiny since it opened, with an internal ICE inspection report obtained by the Washington Post in September showing dozens of violations of federal immigration detention standards.
The ACLU and other human rights organizations in early December after a site visit released a scathing report alleging detained immigrants were subject to beatings and sexual abuse by officers, as well as medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of access to attorneys.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Samantha Verrelli
Mothers, daughters, Girl Scouts traveled to Richmond to watch the first woman become governor of Virginia
“I am just so excited that our state is finally making this history-changing moment,” said a former history teacher from Wythe County who attended the inauguration.
by Samantha Verrelli January 17, 2026
Sue Sprano spent most of her 23 years as a teacher focused on Virginia history. She taught students about the first governor, “some good governors and some bad governors” in between and the first Black governor in Virginia.
Now she can tell students about Abigail Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia.
Girls and women like Sprano came to Richmond from across Southwest Virginia to witness the historic event firsthand on Saturday.
Sprano has been the school librarian at Spiller Elementary School in Wythe County for five years, after two decades of teaching.
“I am just so excited that our state is finally making this history-changing moment,” Sprano said in an interview prior to the inauguration weekend. “I have two teenage daughters, and I am just so excited that every little girl can see that they can do whatever they want to do, and there is no stopping them.”
She only had one ticket for the inauguration ceremony, but plans to bring her daughters to the Executive Mansion open house on Sunday so they can still experience the weekend, she said.
Spanberger’s three daughters sat behind her during her speech, beaming at her, as Spanberger addressed the historical importance of her election.
“On these steps, Virginia’s suffragists brought their cause to the General Assembly, session after session, decade after decade,” she said. “And though these brave women were voted down, time and time again, they refused to give up.”
Sprano, who said this was the first inauguration she has attended, said she’s worried about issues affecting women, like “our freedom to choose what we do with our bodies.”
She said while she likes to keep politics out of her conversations with students, she’ll definitely teach them about Spanberger — especially with Women’s History Month coming up in March.
Some kids at her school, Sprano said, are told things at home that “are not the way things are really done in democracy and in the government.”
“I try to be truthful with them and explain to them that there are politicians there that are working hard to make their lives better and to make Virginia a better place,” she said.
Sprano said later that she was “stunned” as she sat in the stands, watching the inauguration.
“She’s not afraid to say what she thinks. And I appreciate that,” Sprano said. “It was just wonderful.”
Nikki Williams, chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of Virginia Skyline, which covers the southwest part of the commonwealth, said the experience of being at the inauguration was educational “in and of itself” for the girls.
More than 200 Girl Scouts from across the state marched in the parade following the inauguration, and scouts from Southwest Virginia ran a booth during the Made in Virginia Market on Friday afternoon.
London Graham, a 9-year-old scout from Dublin, helped sell cookies at the market.
She said her favorite part of the Girl Scouts is selling cookies to make money to go on trips, like a recent trip she went on to a water park in Massanutten. When asked if she might like to be governor one day, she grinned shyly and nodded.
Williams said Spanberger has been “incredibly supportive” of the Girl Scouts, as she was a troop leader herself and her daughters were involved in Scouting.
She said the Girl Scouts can earn democracy badges and participate in Advocacy Day, where they learn about public policy and the government.
Participating in the inauguration weekend helps the girls understand “how connected we all are,” Williams said. “It really is united in all of Virginia and allows us to be a part of that, and feel like we’re all one big family.”
Meghan Carty, who lives in Bristol, said in an interview Wednesday that she’d be traveling almost five hours to witness the inauguration in person.
“I’ve been there and experienced it,” she said of events like this one, “and then looked at how the TV portrayed it and it’s just not the same. There’s just something really magical when you’re at an event and to feel all the excitement of the crowd. The excitement of a woman taking the highest office in our state is something you can’t really experience on TV.”
She compared that excitement to watching a favorite football team win the playoffs.
Carty brought her 13-year-old daughter, Caroline, who loves learning about history. This will be a memory “she can take with her forever,” Carty said.
“I work in a predominantly male industry, and those glass ceilings are really hard to break,” she said.
Carty said her daughter recently told her that during the election cycle, a boy at school said he didn’t want to have a woman as Virginia’s governor. Carty said she wishes the political landscape weren’t so “divisive.”
“I try to teach my kids to not demonize people for their beliefs,” Carty said. “Sometimes I think when we look and see where someone is coming from, it might make more sense and we can compromise more.”
Standing beneath the stage where Spanberger had been inaugurated just an hour before, Carty and Caroline were excited to have been in the stands when the new governor took her oath.
“It was amazing,” Carty said. “And I thought it would be a lot bigger. So it made it feel even more special.”
“It’s really exciting,” Caroline agreed, nodding and smiling as her mother spoke about the day.
Parents worried that proposed CO2 pipeline could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on nearby school, neighborhood
by Safura Syed and Eva Tesfaye, WWNO, Verite News New Orleans
January 15, 2026
As a resident of heavily industrial Ascension Parish, Kheri Monks is no stranger to living near petrochemical facilities. Monks has been living in Gonzales for more than a decade. In that time, she had three children. All of them have asthma and were born prematurely. Monks thinks that exposure to pollutants might have led to their health concerns.
“I just can't help but think, ‘Should I have not given birth here in Louisiana? You know, with all of the environmental concerns that we have?”’ Monks said. “I can't believe I'm living, like literally living in Cancer Alley.”
Monks’ home is in the middle of “Cancer Alley,” the petrochemical corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is home to more than 200 chemical-emitting industrial facilities, which many researchers and environmental groups have linked to disproportionately high rates of cancer, pre-term births and respiratory diseases.
Now Monks is worried about yet another petrochemical project in the works, one that would be built, in part, near her kids’ school.
For the past several years, Pennsylvania-based chemical company Air Products has been working toward building a new hydrogen plant in Sorrento. The plant will process natural gas, separating hydrogen from carbon dioxide. But instead of having excess carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere, the company would capture the byproduct greenhouse gas and pipe it through Ascension, St. James, St. John the Baptist, Tangipahoa and Livingston Parishes, before storing it underground beneath Lake Maurepas. Because of its relatively low-carbon footprint, the project is being promoted as a “green” energy solution.
Air Products declined an interview for this story. During a public meeting in November, Air Product's vice president, Andrew Connelly, said the project will, “dramatically reduce the world's potential impact on the environment and the surrounding community.”
The project would be the largest carbon sequestration and storage project in the world, according to Air Products, and will prevent most of the plant’s carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. But critics have said the pipeline project puts vital wetland, including Lake Mareupas, at risk.
Monks, though, worries about how the pipeline will affect her family. The hydrogen plant is being built near Sorrento Primary School, where her children are currently enrolled. The school, and the Orange Grove subdivision that it’s located in, would be just half a mile away from the proposed carbon dioxide pipeline if the project continues. And having a carbon dioxide pipeline can be risky — a report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that there are at least three carbon dioxide pipeline leaks every year.
Although the chemical compound is naturally present in the air, high concentrations of it can cause dizziness, headache, and in extreme cases, suffocation. In 2020, a leak in Satartia, Mississippi led to 45 hospitalizations and forced 200 residents to evacuate. Stricter regulations had been proposed to prevent future leaks near the end of Joe Biden’s presidential term, but those proposals were tabled when President Donald Trump entered office.
To continue, the project needs a coastal use permit from the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy and a Clean Water Act permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Air Products submitted the applications early last year. Representatives from both departments said they will consider the project’s impacts on the community when granting the permits, but are more concerned about impacts to coastal waters and wetlands.
Federal and state regulations require pipelines to avoid populated places like business, schools, and neighborhoods, said Patrick Courreges, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. But pipelines can still be within 50 feet of those populated places if they have additional cover to protect against surface ruptures. In fact, there are already two active hydrogen pipelines surrounding the school, one of which is owned by Air Products.
The potential adverse health effects and little documentation of Air Products’ plans in case of an emergency, prompted environmental law nonprofit Earthjustive to partner with a scientist who modeled the CO2 pipeline rupture in Satartia and commission a model of what a rupture could look like near Sorrento Primary School.
“What this report shows is that the pipeline would put these kids and teachers in harm's way,” said Earthjustice scientist Cyndhia Ramatchandirane. “There would be a very large cloud of CO2 that would cover the area, the houses, the school very quickly — within like 10 minutes.”
Because carbon dioxide is so dense, concentrations of it would be higher near the ground, where children are, Ramatchandirane said. The model predicts that the levels of carbon dioxide released could trigger respiratory distress and elevated heart rates in healthy adults, based on thresholds set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But it's unclear how the effects of CO2 exposure would be different for children who already have respiratory illnesses, such as Monks’ kids.
Even if a leak is discovered and the pipeline is shut off relatively quickly, the model still predicts “serious health effects” for those in the school and in the neighborhood, Ramatchandirane said. And emergency response could also be slowed down in the event of a leak, as high levels of carbon dioxide in the air prevent combustion engines, which need oxygen to work, from starting.
Emergency response is just one thing that parent Estefania Aultman, who has been working to inform her community about the plant to prevent its construction, worries about when it comes to the project. Aultman’s son attends Sorrento Primary School, and she said the town doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with a full response to a leak.
In an email to WWNO and Verite News, Air Products said it has engaged with local first responders through the Ascension Parish Community Awareness and Emergency Response group, a collection of chemical and industrial companies that have plants in Ascension Parish working with local government to prepare for industrial emergencies.
James LeBlanc, the group’s chairman and Ascension Parish’s fire chief, did not make himself available for an interview for this story.
As part of an effort to improve community relations, Air Products has also made a $280,000 donation to the River Parishes Community College to start a year-long afterschool STEM program at Sorrento Primary and Lowery Elementary schools. The program, which started this fall and currently serves third graders, is meant to boost career readiness so that students can one day join the energy industry.
Aultman said that students at Sorrento Primary don’t often have opportunities to pursue specialized afterschool programming. She has criticized the program and sees it as a way to keep parents from speaking out against the plant.
“Do you think parents really want to talk about how they're against Air Products if they just funded [this program]?” Aultman said.
Aultman and Monks said there has been little communication from Air Products and the parish about the project and its potential risks. Aultman said she’s reached out to members of the school board and Sorrento Primary’s principal, Honey Lundin, to ask if they’ve received information about the project from Air Products, but hasn’t received a response.
In a statement to Verite News, Ascension Parish Schools spokesperson Jackie Tisdell said the district is committed to providing safe learning environments and collaborating with community partners.
“Ascension Public Schools is focused on educating students and supporting their success,” Tisdell said. “We value our relationships with community and business partners who share in that commitment.”
Aultman, a former insulator at Exxon who used to patch leaks by tanks and pipes, said that a leak near the school would be “catastrophic.” It’s not a risk she’s willing to take. Aultman said her family will move if the project continues.
“We started looking for homes,” Aultman said. “We're willing to fight this, but if we can't get our voices heard and get enough community involved and engaged, like if it is just me speaking or a handful of people, it's just not gonna be enough. And I can't, I can't have my family here for that.”
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
10 things to know about measles as cases rise in North Carolina
by Michelle Crouch and Charlotte Ledger, North Carolina Health News
January 16, 2026
By Michelle Crouch
Co-published with The Charlotte Ledger
Measles, once considered eliminated in the U.S., is back in a big way.
Driven by declining vaccine rates and growing vaccine hesitancy, the United States experienced its largest number of measles cases in decades in 2025, with 2,242 cases reported across the country and outbreaks in Texas, New Mexico, Utah and South Carolina.
In North Carolina, seven cases have been confirmed since early December. Most are linked to a fast-spreading outbreak in Spartanburg, S.C., near the state border, where more than 430 cases have been reported.
Measles was also detected on Jan. 12 in Charlotte-area wastewater samples. It’s a sign the virus may be circulating in one of the state’s most populated metro areas, although no cases have been confirmed.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recently launched a dashboard that will be updated twice a week with new information about cases and sites where people could have been exposed. The state’s hospitals, clinicians and infectious disease experts are bracing for more infections, said David Wohl, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious disease at UNC Chapel Hill.
“It’s not a matter of if, it’s when,” he said. “This virus doesn’t care about state lines, and the outbreak in South Carolina is growing really at a rapid clip. We are going to get more cases and have to deal more and more with what to do about measles in North Carolina.”
Here are 10 things you need to know about measles as cases rise:
1. Measles spreads shockingly easily
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. Each infected person typically infects 12 to 18 unvaccinated others. It’s about 12 times more contagious than influenza, six times as contagious as Ebola, and three times as contagious as the original COVID-19 virus.
The disease is so highly infectious “that you can actually get it if the person with measles was in the room two hours before you entered,” said Amina Ahmed, chief medical director of pediatric infectious diseases at Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. “Given how contagious it is, you need a very high percentage of the population to be immune for it not to spread like wildfire.” (That number — called herd immunity — is 95 percent. Read more about herd immunity below.)
2. The measles vaccine is by far the best way to protect yourself
The measles vaccine is safe, effective and usually protects for life, with few side effects, Ahmed said.
In the U.S., the measles vaccine is part of a combination shot: either the MMR (which covers measles, mumps and rubella) or the MMRV, which adds chickenpox to the mix. There is no standalone measles shot.
One dose of measles vaccine is 93% effective, and a two-dose regimen is 97% effective at preventing infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unlike the COVID shot — which helps keep you from a serious case that can land you in the hospital but may not completely protect you from getting sick — the measles vaccine “is like a force field” that blocks you from getting infected in the first place, Wohl said.
Federal health officials recommend getting the first dose at between ages 12 months and 15 months and the second dose between ages 4 years and 6 years. If you’re unvaccinated, you can request the shot at any time.
You can get the vaccine from your health care provider or your local health department.
3. Yes, measles really is that dangerous
People who have never seen measles may think it’s a mild childhood disease, but it can have devastating consequences, Wohl and Ahmed said.
About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people in the U.S. who contract measles have to be hospitalized, with an even higher risk in children younger than age 5, according to the National Foundation of Infectious Diseases.
In addition, about one out of every 1,000 people with measles will develop brain swelling that can cause convulsions, deafness or permanent intellectual disability. One to three of every 1,000 will die, even with the best care.
And measles can delete your immune system’s memory of how to fight other types of germs, Ahmed said.
Doctors call it “immune amnesia,” and it leaves you more vulnerable to serious consequences other infections long after the measles rash fades. Recent research estimates that, historically, this immune deficiency contributed to increased childhood mortality from other diseases.
4. Measles may look like the flu or COVID at first
The rash that everyone associates with measles doesn't appear right away, so it can be easy to mistake an early case of measles for the flu or another respiratory virus.
Symptoms typically appear 10 to 14 days after exposure and include a high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Some patients develop small white spots inside the mouth on day two or three, Wohl said, but they can be tough for non-medical providers to identify.
The characteristic measles rash usually emerges three to five days after the first symptoms, starting on the face or forehead and working its way down, Wohl said. “It’s not something you see and say ‘I noticed it on my leg,’” he said.
There’s no early test for measles, Ahmed said. The tests are designed to work after the rash appears.
5. Most vaccinated adults don’t need a measles booster
Because the MMR vaccine prevents measles for life, anyone who got two doses of the vaccine doesn’t need a booster,according to the CDC.
If you were vaccinated before 1989, when health officials recommended just one dose, you are still 93 percent protected. However, the agency recommends a booster if:
- You were vaccinated between 1963 and 1967 and received a “killed” version of the vaccine that proved to be ineffective.
- You are a health care worker, college student or an international traveler, or are otherwise at high risk of exposure.
- You are a close contact of someone immunocompromised or you have HIV.
- Measles is circulating in your community.
NCDHHS offers a measles immunity checker tool that can help you work through some of these factors. (Note: Adults born before 1957 are presumed to have natural immunity, because measles was so widespread before the vaccine was introduced, that they don’t need a booster, either.)
6. Verifying your vaccination status might take some digging
If you were vaccinated before the late 2000s, when electronic medical records became common, finding your records may be a challenge. Here are some places to check:
- Check your state vaccination registry: If you grew up in North Carolina, you can ask your health care provider to check the state’s vaccination registry. You can also reach out to the health department in the county where you resided. However, you might not be in the registry even if you’re fully vaccinated, because the system didn’t launch until the 2005, and the state doesn't require physicians to enter immunizations in the registry, NCDHHS said. Most other states maintain similar registries.
- Ask your parents: They may still have an old vaccination card. You can check baby books and camp records.
- Check with previous health care providers and schools: Many keep vaccination records indefinitely. You can also check military records.
7. If you’re unsure of your vaccination status, you may want to get a booster
Some people are asking their doctors for a blood test, known as a titer test, to measure antibodies.
However, health officials typically don’t recommend the tests for vaccinated adults, because a low antibody level doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not protected. The test doesn’t measure the other parts of your immune system (such as B cells and T cells) that respond if you’re exposed to measles, Wohl explained.
If you can’t determine your vaccination status, there is no harm in getting a booster, even if you already had two doses, Wohl and Ahmed said.
“If you have any question about it, get the vaccine. Then you don’t have to worry,” Wohl said.
8. You can look up the vaccination rates in your community
Because measles is so contagious, about 95 percent of people in an area need to be immunized to keep it from spreading. That’s what’s known as “herd immunity” — when enough people are protected that the virus runs out of targets.
While North Carolina is close to that threshold with a 94.2 percent overall statewide vaccination rate, the problem is that many smaller areas within the state have much lower rates, Wohl said.
To see what’s happening in your neck of the woods, you can look up the estimated measles vaccination rates for the schools in your area. North Carolina has published the rate for every elementary school in the state, broken down by grade level.
9. There is no cure for measles
There are no antivirals or other drugs for measles. Treatment focuses on managing the symptoms with fever reducers, plenty of fluids and rest.
While vitamin A supplements are sometimes recommended to reduce the severity of the illness, the CDC emphasizes that they do not prevent infection and are not a substitute for vaccination.
If you’ve been recently exposed to the measles and aren’t immune, getting the vaccine within 72 hours of exposure or receiving a dose of immunoglobulin can sometimes help prevent the virus from taking hold.
Parents should be on alert for a worsening cough (pneumonia is the most common complication from measles) and/or severe headache and sensitivity to light, which could indicate development of a type of brain inflammation called encephalitis.
10. The U.S. is in danger of losing its measles elimination status
With so many outbreaks, health experts believe the United States could soon lose its measles elimination status. That status, which the U.S. received in 2000, confirms that a country no longer has continuous transmission of measles.
Losing it isn’t just a blow to American pride; it could mean travel bans or other countries requiring proof of vaccination from American visitors, Wohl said. More importantly, it represents a major setback in the collective effort to keep preventable diseases at bay.
“The reason we are seeing measles right now is not because of a mutation of the virus. The measles vaccine is still safe and effective. Nothing is broken,” Wohl said. “The only reason we are having this problem right now is that fewer people are getting vaccinated.”
This article is part of a partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting. You can support this effort with a tax-deductible donation.
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Building on a legacy of nonviolent faith-based activism in NC
by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
January 16, 2026
Susannah Tuttle is a realist: whatever North Carolina faith activist groups have been doing hasn’t been working.
Tuttle, North Carolina Council of Churches eco-justice connection director, never thought it would get this bad. Christian nationalists in the top circles of power. A conservative overhaul of the federal government guided by Project 2025. Minnesota ICE protests turning violent.
Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a celebration of a faith activist who helped lead the modern civil rights movement with nonviolent resistance. The state’s faith activist groups are marking this anniversary by considering how to build a similar movement in a different age, one where social media, near-unlimited campaign money and political polarization may obscure their message.
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It’s a long game, Tuttle said. Almost everything needs to change. However, a few starting blocks may coalesce around another holiday, Valentine’s Day.
Locally, the NC Council of Churches is helping voters send Valentines to state lawmakers, with the hopes of forming a relationship built upon mutual respect. From Feb. 11 to 14, a group led by Repairers of the Breach President Rev. William J. Barber II will walk from Wilson to Raleigh in the “This is Our Selma” march, culminating in a Raleigh rally. Nationally, a group of Buddhists travelling 2,300 miles from Texas to Washington D.C. on a Walk for Peace will complete their journey around the holiday.
“Just knowing that that's happening feels magical,” Tuttle said. “It's a different way of doing something.”
Faith helping build moral courage
In the 2012 elections, Republicans won both chambers of the North Carolina legislature and the governor’s office. Not long after, the united government began passing a wave of conservative legislation including abortion restrictions, social program cuts and a voter ID law.
Then-NAACP leader Barber launched a statewide Moral Monday movement in response. Each week, masses of North Carolinians entered the legislative building to pray, sing and chant during sessions. Many were arrested for trespassing after refusing to leave.
Overall, the movement drew hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters. Ever since, Barber’s faith group, Repairers of the Breach, has been a visible force in North Carolina politics.
On a different, much more recent Monday, about a dozen clergy and faith leaders sang “This Little Light of Mine” outside the North Carolina General Assembly. In between speeches about the impact of legislative inaction on healthcare, education and voting rights, they prayed and sang.
They were led by Rev. Floyd Wicker, founder of the People’s Fellowship of North Carolina. The group launched in 2021 with a vigil for peace and nonviolence in light of the pandemic and recent police shootings of Black Americans.
Wicker said organizing the event was exhausting. It took six meetings. Nobody showed up to the first one. One person came to the second. Five people made it to the third meeting.
“I feel like I'm having to persuade you to advocate for people in your community when I'm thinking, this is a part of the Bible,” Wicker said. “This is a part of faith.”
Not everyone understands why it’s so important for people of faith to protest, to hold public prayer or write to lawmakers, Wicker said. Some people don’t factor that into their faith experience. But it’s “theological,” he said. It’s the outward expression of an internal faith.
“I come from a more prophetic tradition where the spiritual and the political, the social, the economic, all of those are integrated, and they're not compartmentalized,” he said.
Wicker wants to return to the energy of 2013. It will require more public action, but above all else, moral courage.
“I think people of faith have to come out of their silos; they have to come out of their temples and churches,” he said. “To follow in the footsteps of Jesus and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is going to require courage.”
"To follow in the footsteps of Jesus and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is going to require courage."
the Rev. Floyd Wicker, founder of the People's Fellowship of North Carolina
Tuttle wholeheartedly agrees. People of faith might volunteer to pack backpacks every week so kids have something to eat at lunch, for example, but there’s a need for a greater level of advocacy in the places where decisions are made.
“That's very charitable,” she said. “But is that creating transformational change in the community, is that solving the hunger issue?”
Building relationships
State legislators are no stranger to protests and marches. But they mostly look the other way. After all, nobody wants to listen to someone who’s yelling at them.
“I have spent the majority of my life protesting, and I stand firm that whatever we've been doing isn't working,” Tuttle said.
But not all hope is lost. Tuttle is working on a new approach: building mutually respectful, genuine relationships with lawmakers. They already have an in: many lawmakers are people of faith.
While groups like the NC Council of Churches tend to align with secular progressive groups, they come at it from a different angle, Tuttle said. Their values are grounded in Scripture.
Recently, she hosted a webinar on advocacy. About 80 people showed up. She advised attendees to invite their representatives to their congregations’ events and ask for meetings during the short session to get to know them on a human level.
“If we just go in and talk about the policies with elected officials and decision makers, we're not getting to the source of the core values of why they're making the decisions that they are,” she said.
Voters who build relationships with their lawmakers are more likely to be heard, or at the very least, get an explanation when a lawmaker votes against their preference.
Wicker doesn’t believe lawmakers are fully following their faiths, particularly the commandment to love their neighbor. If they were, he said they wouldn’t pass legislation cutting SNAP or Medicaid, for example.
“The disconnect is power, greed, racism and capitalism,” he said. “Those are hard things to fight.”
Wicker sees his job as less about influencing politicians and more about building a broader social consciousness that will eventually infiltrate politics.
But for now, both Tuttle and Wicker are thinking about the Buddhist monks. Tuttle watches their progress every day; while they aren’t calling it faith-based advocacy, she said walking that far in the cold and rain for peace is a political statement in itself.
It’s also proof of concept for Wicker. The monks aren’t saying much. They’re not protesting or calling for any policy in particular. But still, they’ve drawn people’s interest and attention with their presence alone, he said.
“If we build capacity, we’re building truth and unity and solidarity, and our presence will speak, because we can't match lawlessness,” Wicker said. “We can’t match artillery or weaponry. We can’t fight racism and poverty with those weapons — we’ve got to have a much stronger weapon, and that weapon is nonviolence.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Duke Energy Plans to Build a Massive Natural Gas Power Plant in Davidson County. But Where, Exactly?
The powerful North Carolina utility is cagey about the exact location, but there are clues, and environmentalists want to know. In any event, a fossil fuel buildout is on.
By Lisa Sorg
January 15, 2026
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Duke Energy could build a 1,360-megawatt natural gas power plant on company-owned land in western Davidson County, which, if approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission, would add tons of climate-heating greenhouse gases into the air each year.
The 1,600-acre site at 3714 Giles Road is about eight-and-half miles west of Lexington and abuts the Yadkin River.
Duke Energy spokesman Bill Norton said the company has “made no final decision regarding the location of the next combined cycle facilities,” and “has considered multiple potential sites in multiple counties.” Combined cycle facilities use both gas turbines and steam turbines to increase efficiency.
Duke’s revised Cluster Study Phase 1 report, dated December 2025, specifies that a natural gas project, known as CC4—which stands for Combined Cycle 4—could be built in Davidson County. Potential sites for CC4 have not been previously reported.
A summary on the utility’s website also notes a plan for another plant, CC5, whose location is not listed.
Both projects would require Utilities Commission approval.
Large natural gas plants require hundreds of acres of land, which narrows Duke’s options. The North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. owns a 430-acre tract near the Transco natural gas compressor station northwest of Lexington that is large enough to accommodate such a facility.
But an NCEMC spokesman told Inside Climate News the cooperative “has no project planned” for the site.
The NCEMC is an electric cooperative that buys electricity from Duke and other wholesalers and provides power to its two-dozen member cooperatives. NCEMC also owns a stake in several of Duke’s nuclear and natural gas plants, including another new natural gas unit under construction in Person County.
Maggie Shober, a transmission expert and research director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, uncovered the potential Davidson County sites. Environmental advocates and the public usually learn of major energy projects only after utilities have announced them. By that point, the companies have already prepped regulators behind the scenes, Shober said, which puts opponents at a disadvantage.
“Having as much information as we can—and as early as we can—is really important,” Shober said. “We have huge concerns with this project.”
Duke has attributed the need for more energy—including solar, battery storage, nuclear power and natural gas—to the proliferation of data centers, which are voracious consumers of energy, as well as to new manufacturing plants, the growth of the life science industry and population increases.
The potential Davidson County plant is part of a vast natural gas expansion in North Carolina that includes pipelines, compressor stations and a liquified natural gas facility.
But unlike Duke’s seven other proposed natural gas plants, which would be co-located at existing facilities, the Davidson County project would be built on undeveloped agricultural and timber land.
“These two different types of land use simply are not compatible,” said Shelley Robbins, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s senior decarbonization manager. “It will be expensive, it will be loud, it will be ugly, it will be huge, it will pollute, and it will require water resources, likely from the nearby Yadkin River, that will no longer be available for agriculture.
“And it isn’t even needed. All this complex will do is turn methane gas into combustion pollution and move money from ratepayers’ pockets into shareholders’ portfolios.”
Duke purchased the Giles Road property in 1995 from the company’s former real estate division, Crescent Resources, according to county deed records.
Crescent Resources is a legacy of the utility’s previous foray into land development. In the 1960s, Duke Energy acquired approximately 300,000 acres of land in rural North and South Carolina, according to court records. In 1969, the utility contributed the acreage to the Crescent Land and Timber Co., which became a real estate company, Crescent Resources, a Duke subsidiary.
Duke is no longer affiliated with Crescent.
In addition to land, natural gas plants are often located close to pipelines in order to access the fuel. Transco’s 10,000-mile interstate pipeline traverses across the southeastern corner of Duke’s property, according to maps analyzed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Two high-voltage transmission lines also run three to four miles from the tract.
Transco is also expanding 10 miles of the pipeline as well as a compressor station in central Davidson County, near Lexington.
The site’s proximity to the Yadkin River could also provide the necessary cooling water for the facility.
Natural gas plants emit less carbon dioxide than coal-fired units but release exorbitant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more potent in heating the atmosphere over a 20-year period. In addition to carbon dioxide, burning natural gas also releases hazardous and toxic air pollutants that can harm local communities.
Duke’s Asheville Combined Cycle Station, which burns natural gas, emitted 1.1 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, as measured by carbon dioxide equivalent, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. A carbon dioxide equivalent is a unit of measurement that accounts for the varying global warming potential of different greenhouse gases.
The Asheville plant is relatively small, with a generating power of just 560 megawatts; CC4’s would be two-and-half times greater.
Natural gas infrastructure—plants, pipelines, compressor stations and liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities—also emit other air pollutants, including fine particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. Parts of Davidson County already rank among the 80th to 90th percentile for toxic air pollutants, as compared to federal and state exposures, according to the EPA’s EJScreen.
Several major state and federal policy decisions have incentivized the continued use and growth of fossil fuels. Last July, the Republican-majority state legislature passed Senate Bill 266, which eliminated Duke’s interim decarbonization goal of 70 percent by 2030. The utility still has a benchmark of net-zero by 2050.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode it.
The law also allows the utility to pass its financing costs of new energy projects, including natural gas and nuclear, onto ratepayers before the units are built.
The new plants will hike customers’ bills in two main ways, Shober said: through the costs of construction, which can increase over time, and the gas, whose price is unpredictable.
“Even if Duke were somehow able to keep the construction costs contained, they’re locking customers into fuel costs for decades to come,” she said.
Under state law, every two years Duke must file with the state Utilities Commission an updated CPIRP, short for Carbon Plan and Integrated Resource Plan. It lays out the proposed energy mix, demand and costs projections, including the impacts on ratepayers. The commission can approve, amend or deny it.
The commission will hold the first public hearing on the latest plans on Feb. 4 in Durham. The commission is scheduled to rule on the CPIRP by the end of the year.
Duke Energy’s 2025 carbon plan devotes several pages to enhanced liquified natural gas, known as ELNG. While traditional LNG is used to meet peak energy demand, such as during extremely hot or cold days, ELNG is more nimble. The technology allows utilities to access the gas during off-peak times to balance daily and hourly supply and demand.
This requires access to the gas via a pipeline and the construction of enormous holding tanks.
The 485-acre Moriah Energy Center under construction in Person County will be a traditional LNG plant operated by Enbridge. It will have at least one 25-million-gallon storage tank, with room for a second. The center will emit as much as 64,000 tons of greenhouse gases, according to company estimates, but also carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and hazardous and toxic air pollutants.
It is unclear if a Davidson County site would include ELNG.
“Any projections about price, fuel supply or storage capacity” at CC4 and CC5 would be “premature,” Norton said.
There is not a firm timeline for when Duke could formally announce the locations of CC4, CC5 and its plans for ELNG. The two plants could be operating as soon as 2032 and 2033, respectively, according to utility documents.
The Trump administration has incentivized fossil fuel production and generation while stripping incentives from—or attempting to halt altogether—renewable energy projects. President Donald Trump has also announced his intention to withdraw from international agreements intended to combat climate change.
This week, the EPA announced it would amend Clean Water Act regulations to limit the authority of states and tribes to regulate water quality through their respective permitting processes. The purpose, the EPA said: to streamline the permitting process for large energy projects, including pipelines and natural gas infrastructure.
