In a move more than a half-century in the making, the Town of Canton has announced the pending purchase of a key parcel of land where it plans to construct a new, state-of-the-art flood-proof wastewater treatment plant — ending a long chapter of dependence on a private system operated by the now-shuttered Pactiv Evergreen paper mill and setting the stage for a bold economic redevelopment of the historic site.

Ellen Pitt has dedicated the last two and a half decades to combatting drunk driving in Western North Carolina, and the one of the latest fronts in that fight involves her quest to get courts to use continuous alcohol monitoring bracelets for defendants in “high-risk” DWI cases. 

When Hurricane Helene slammed into Western North Carolina in late 2024, public attention focused on damaged homes, washed-out roads and the rigid bureaucracy meant to help with recovery, but the widespread physical damage was closely followed by a slow-moving economic catastrophe unfolding among the region’s small businesses, farmers and local governments. Now, eight months later, help may finally be on the way. 

Republican Mike Clampitt, currently serving his fourth term as District 119 House Rep., tells The Smoky Mountain News he plans to run for reelection in 2026 despite recent health concerns. In April, Clampitt announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare, serious form of blood and bone marrow cancer known as Myelodysplastic syndrome. 

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote a column for this space. Instead, we’ve been fortunate enough to print your opinions. 

I take it as a sign of a newspaper’s health relative to its relationship with readers when we have a lot of letters to the editor or guest columns coming to my inbox.

On March 6 Jackson County Representative Mike Clampitt filed a local bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives to make the Jackson County Board of Education election a partisan race. If the bill passes, partisan elections for the school board would begin with the 2026 election.  

To the Editor:

I was dismayed to learn that Jackson County’s all-Republican commissioners voted to approve a resolution to make local school board elections partisan.

A group of law enforcement officers, elected officials and concerned citizens is renewing its years-long effort to get a series of new laws through the General Assembly this year. 

After decades of paying for hurricane recovery operations along the North Carolina coast, Western North Carolina taxpayers finally had a reason to ask the rest of the state to return the favor in the wake of Hurricane Helene. On Dec. 11, the rest of the state answered with a resounding “no.”

To the Editor:

I’m writing to thank Rep. Mike Clampitt, Rep. Karl Gillespie and Rep. Mark Pless for siding with the people of Western North Carolina in voting against Senate Bill (SB) 382.