LUMBERTON, N.C. – Hurricane Maria is expected to impact weather on the North Carolina coast at the top of next week, and the rainfall expected to follow will be another strain on already struggling communities.

Some counties only now are receiving Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars almost a year after Hurricane Matthew.

While cleanup and rebuilding still are ongoing, there is a growing concern about the infrastructure in place in the event of future extreme weather.

Larry Cahoon is a professor of biology for University of North Carolina Wilmington who has studied waste management. His verdict: The state isn't prepared for the next big storm. His verdict: The state isn't prepared for the next big storm.

"We have a compelling set of problems creeping up on us,” he warns. “They don't appear as dramatically as potholes in roads or bridges that fall down, but again, this is about public health, ultimately."

Nationwide, in a report released this week Environment North Carolina estimates a 271-billion-dollar backlog in wastewater system project needs.

The current 2018 budget proposed by President Donald Trump includes a 31 percent decrease in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and with that, programs that protect water quality and coastal areas.

Adrienne Kennedy of Lumberton lost her car after Hurricane Matthew, and now helps others trying to rebuild. She says relief from Matthew has been slow to come, as is assistance on how best to rebuild.

"The timeline just doesn't add up for us, especially for rural towns and communities that just have no idea what to do,” she states. “So we're left to try to pick up the pieces.

“To me, and to a lot of people that come to my disaster relief center, we feel like the hurricane happened yesterday."

Cahoon and multiple bodies of scientific research point to sea levels rising along the Atlantic coast, largely due to climate change.

He says with water collection systems already antiquated and unable to keep up with extreme weather, the problem will only get worse.

"If the groundwater levels are coming up because sea level itself is rising, then we have an increasing problem to face, and we're going to have to figure out how to fix that or find some other approach," he stresses.

North Carolina currently receives $2.5 million in grants that help communities to protect their coasts. Those funds would be eliminated in the current Trump budget.

Reporting by North Carolina News Connection in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the Park Foundation.


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The Trump administration's long-term plan for artificial intelligence could have far-reaching environmental impacts across the country.

His strategy calls for the removal of land use rules considered prohibitive to the construction of AI data centers. Last year, then Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Microsoft would invest $1 billion to establish a new AI data center in Laporte to generate cloud computing infrastructure.

Ben Murray, senior researcher for the advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said fossil fuel plants are already being reopened to help meet high energy demands.

"We just need to be aware that anything that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuel is going to increase the problems that we're seeing from the climate crisis," Murray explained.

Murray argued high-tech progress should not come at the expense of increased household energy prices. Residents' support is low due to concerns about increased traffic and noise near the centers. The Trump administration said environmental and permitting regulations will only slow America's dominance in the AI field.

A report last year found emissions from data centers owned by Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft were more than seven times higher than officially reported. Computer servers using AI require far more energy than those without. A ChatGPT query, for example, can use up to 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search.

"These companies can seem as if they're decreasing their emissions and meeting net-zero goals but in reality, the emissions are amping up faster than ever for these companies," Murray pointed out.

Murray noted the push for more data centers is already leading Big Tech companies to backtrack on their climate goals. It is possible to power AI services with renewable energy sources, he added, but doing so requires political will.

As of June 2025, a 1,200-acre corn and soybean field just outside of New Carlisle has turned into eight Amazon-led AI energy centers. The tech giant plans to construct a total of 30 at the site.


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After one year, Washington's first comprehensive bee survey has documented 15 species that have never been collected in the state before.

The project is cataloguing native bees, which includes nearly all species in the state, but excludes honeybees.

Karla Salp is a communications consultant with the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Washington Bee Atlas program, which conducted the survey.

She said the data will serve as a baseline to track bee populations.

"The reason why this is happening in the first place is to answer the question, how are pollinators doing in Washington state?" said Salp. "And the answer is we don't know, because we've never actually looked at even what bees we have throughout the state."

Salp said the project also involves compiling a list of plants that each bee species pollinates so residents can make their yards more attractive to these beneficial insects.

As honeybee numbers continue to decline rapidly, Salp explained that native pollinators may become more important to Washington's agriculture.

"Knowing what native pollinators we have and how we can support them is really a sustainability issue" said Salp, "to make sure that whether we have honeybees here or not, there are options for pollination."

Volunteers collected over 17,000 bees on more than 600 different host plants.

Salp said the process of identifying them is slow because each one must be viewed under a microscope, and there is still considerable work to be done.

"We're expecting to find a lot more species" said Salp, "that are either rare or even new to the state. "

If people are interested in volunteering, an online application for the Bee Atlas program is available on the Washington State Department of Agriculture website.




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The Trump administration wants to overturn a conservation rule that had garnered more public comment than any in U.S. history up until that time.

Commonly known as the Roadless Rule, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvesting on nearly 60 million acres of national forest land.

Sarah McMillan - the senior attorney and director of the Wildlands & Wildlife Program at the Western Environmental Law Center - said before it was adopted in 2001, 1.5 million people submitted comments, with the vast majority in support of the rule.

"This was a rule that was carefully, thoughtfully developed," said McMillan. "There was a long process of inventorying these roadless areas and identifying these remote, often mature and old-growth trees. This didn't happen overnight."

A rollback of the rule would allow more logging and drilling on federal lands, which McMillan said would worsen climate change, harm wildlife & vital ecosystems, jeopardize water quality, and negatively affect recreational opportunities.

The Bush administration attempted to repeal the Roadless Rule in 2005, but lost in the courts.

In announcing the proposed rollback, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins claimed more logging would improve forest management, which would in turn decrease forest fires.

But McMillan said that argument is disputed in a 2020 Wilderness Society study that found just the opposite.

"The truth is, un-roaded areas burn at a significantly lower rate than areas with roads," said McMillan. "So, fires start near roads."

McMillan said it doesn't make sense to allow private developers to log more trees when the planet is undergoing a biodiversity and climate crisis - especially because old-growth trees create a buffer against climate change.

Forests cover almost 30% of New Mexico's land area.




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