In Our Backyard Podcast

In this episode, Perrin will discuss the UNC coal plant and why we should be more alarmed about the lack of action being taken to remove it or at least reduce the emissions. Coal plants are not just an issue contributing to the climate crisis but also to public health and endangered species. And Perrin works as an attorney on these matters in North Carolina.  Coal contains trace amounts of na...

Today we are speaking with Dr Tim Johnson. A common argument against renewable energy is the perceived unreliable nature of it, the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. Luckily, we have those issues being solved by people like Dr Johnson. He works in the more logistical side of renewables, conducting research on systems planning and management on resources. He also spends hi...

This week, we are bringing back one of our previous podcast that follows the theme of our season, Road to Renewables. We chatted with Brianna Kinsley who has a degree in sustainable development and works for Appalachian Voices assisting the people of East Tennessee to address the energy efficiency needs. This podcast looks further into how Appalachian Voices is assisting in energy democracy, the l...

Micheal Walton, Executive Director and Gabrielle Chevalier, Director of Marketing and Community Outreach with Green | Spaces. Green | Spaces a nonprofit working toward regional sustainability by progressing the way we live, work, and build in Chattanooga and the surrounding region . They have a focus on making awareness and application of sustainable practice accessible to the wider community. In...

Sandy Kurtz is co -president of BREDL’s board of directors and she works with numerous other environmental organizations. We will be discussing how renewable energy has changed and advanced within her lifetime and all the work she has been doing along the way. And from the beginning BREDL has supported communities and organizations, big and small, in making internal changes to achieve their renewa...

Jovita Lee is with the Center for Biological Diversity. By applying law, science and creative media, the Center for Biological Diversity believes that to fight the climate emergency and extinction crisis, we must revolutionize our world to be entirely powered by clean, renewable, wildlife-friendly and democratic energy. They wage innovative legal and grassroots campaigns to drive this urgent trans...

John Farrell works with the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a national research and advocacy organization fighting corporate control to develop the intersection between the economy and the environment. John Farrell is the director of their Energy Democracy Initiative, which, as the name suggests, is a movement to allow more public choice in energy source consumption. The cause hopes to take the...

Maggie Shober is the Director of Utility Reform at Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Maggie works to speed the clean energy transformation in the Southeast through analysis and advocacy. She has expertise in renewable energy, energy efficiency, coal retirements, energy market modeling, and transmission. In this episode, we unpack and identify the key concepts, goals, and logistics in moving towa...

Hello all! It’s your host, Jenn Galler bringing you new season called The Road to Renewables. We will be learning the basics of renewable energy. As well as acknowledging the progress we have made and the steps we still have to take to achieve clean energy from our renewable resources. Before we get started, so we are all on the same page, I would like to identify our renewable resources. Firstly...

Court Lewis is President of the Executive Committee of Unicoi Clear. The asphalt company, Summers-Taylor Materials Corp. has revised its application for an air quality permit to expand operations at the former Construction Asphalt Paving Services plant in Unicoi, TN. The town of Unicoi joined in the request for a public hearing in June following a Unicoi Planning Commission meeting in which town r...

Elizabeth O’Nan is Chair of Chapel Hill Organization for Clean Energy or CHOCE for short. Despite past promises by UNC to cut coal by 2020, the administration reneged on that promise a few years later and they are still burning dirty coal. UNC Chapel Hill is the only institute of higher learning in North Carolina still operating a coal-burning plant. Now, North Carolina’s Division of Air Quality o...

Debra David* is President of Concerned Citizens of Richmond County. They formed to stop Enviva - a biomass wood pellet facility that is riddled with asthma-inducing health impacts. It threatens to destroy natural hardwood forests and is a terrible environmental injustice. Enviva is the world’s largest exporter of wood pellets ,and they are threatening the livelihoods of communities, forests, and t...

Hope Taylor is Executive Director Emerita at Clean Water for North Carolina. Their vision is to have clean, safe, accessible water for all North Carolinians, protected by empowered, educated communities and a publicly accountable government and economy. Campaigns they work on surrounding clean water include: fracking and fracked gas pipelines, water justice, coal ash, and factory farms. CWFNC’s Ho...

Nick Trombetta is an organizer with the Sunrise Movement in Chapel Hill, NC. The Sunrise Movement is a youth movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. They’re building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the...

Cathy Buckly who founded the Raleigh, NC chapter of the Climate Reality Project. In 2006, former US Vice President Al Gore got the world talking about climate change with the Academy Award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth . It was just the beginning of a climate revolution. Later that year, he founded what would become The Climate Reality Project to move the conversation forward and turn awarene...

Maya van Rossum is Executive Director of Delaware River Keepers whose mission is to champion the rights of our communities to the Delaware River and tributary streams that are free-flowing, clean, healthy, and abundant with a diversity of life. The Delaware is the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi, flowing freely for 330 miles as it travels from New York state, through Pennsylvania, N...

Brianna Knisley is TN Field Coordinator for the Energy Democracy Program at Appalachian Voices. Bri’s passion for rural solutions was formed through her upbringing in a community struggling with economic, social and environmental issues faced by many rural places across the U.S. In the episode we talk about, “Energy Democracy” which is local people having control of how their electricity is produc...

John Runkle who is a retired Attorney at Law. Over the many years, John shared his legal skills to many BREDL campaigns  – with communities all over North Carolina. Including landfills, coal ash, nuclear plants and more. Some fights were won, others lost, but John was there to make sure folks had legal protection against being trampled by polluters or various government agencies. Our Executiv...

This episode we honor Judy Hogan who is retiring as President of Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump. She has played a critical role in BREDL campaigns with CCAAD which includes victories such as Dec.16, 2020: the Administrative Law Judge Melissa Owens-Lassiter reversed her decision which had allowed coal ash to be disposed of in Chatham and Lee Counties, the communities are announcing another...

Sam Tesh is BREDL’s co-president of the board of directors of BREDL Sam has been a part of BREDL for several decades and now serves as our Board of Directors Co-President. He has been a critical part of past BREDL campaigns such as fighting ThermalKEM’s hazardous waste incinerator He’s also worked with organizations such as GreenPeace and Sierra Club. With Sam we discuss his background within the...

Cathy Cralle Jones is a Senior Litigation Associate at the Law Offices of F. Bryan Brice, Jr. She focuses her practice on environmental litigation and has represented many property owners, business operators, and citizen groups in matters involving mold, groundwater and soil contamination, regulatory compliance, toxic torts, and land use matters. Her experience includes cases involving CERCLA, RCR...

Michael Arnold was front and center in the campaign to halt ThermalKEM’s incinerator. On May 22th, 1989, North Carolina Senate Bill 324 (Hazardous Waste Management) was ratified by a bipartisan majority of elected representatives. North Carolina joined a five-state compact that would commit the state to site – and build – a hazardous waste incinerator for ThermalKEM, a private company. This occurr...

Doc Ellen Tinsley who is a photojournalist. She is a retired veterinarian of equine medicine (horses), who’s best known for her Jordan Lake bald eagle photos and videos. The Bald Eagle's recovery is an American success story. Forty years ago, the bald eagle, our national symbol, was in danger of extinction throughout most of its range. Habitat destruction and degradation, illegal shooting, and the...

Laura Olah is Executive Director of Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger. The mission of the group is to support, unify and strengthen citizens concerned for the safety of water resources in and around the Badger Army Ammunition Plant; to effect expedient cleanup of any contamination caused by negligent handling of toxic waste; and to exercise means as necessary to guarantee water resources are t...

Jane Williams is Executive Director with California Communities Against Toxics who are inspiring and building a sustainable , healthy , and just future for the East Bay, California, and beyond. We discuss California’s economy in relation to polluting industries and their GDP last year was $3.2T, representing 14.6% of the total U.S. economy. California's economy is so big that if it were a country,...