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Beverly Perdue
North Carolina Lt. Governor |
Mitch Lewis:
"You've also been a clean air and water advocate. What do you see
as some of the challenges facing North Carolina in trying to make
sure that we have clean water and a sustainable environment?
Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue:
"Wow, good questions you're asking me. I think the biggest challenge
for us in these early years of the 21st century is a lot like what
we have challenged from the Progress Board. We need to figure out
what we want to look like in 25 years. And in 50 years, after all
of us today are long gone, what do we want to have in North Carolina?
And that's how you have to determine what the sustainable environment
regulation or requirements are going to be. I think every local
government should, as we speak, actually be involved in deciding
as a community through local input, how many strip shopping malls
you want, how many developed acres you want, how much coastline
do you want pristine? Only folks who live in those communities can
make those decisions. But right now I'm a bit troubled that I don't
hear a lot of the conversations going on. And it takes a decade
once you talk about changing the way we look to make that happen.
And clean air and clean water, you can never have enough of it.
The Clean Smokestacks Act is working in the mountains and we're
all so proud of that. The urban pollution, you know, we live right
here in a red and orange ozone area about half of the summer. We
all need to figure out a way to do more mass transit. Clean water,
at the end of the state where I live, at the coast, is obviously
important to me and every time I see a new shopping center built
and see the runoff that's going down the road and ends up in my
backyard in New Bern in the river, I get mad; so I think we just
all have to be better stewards. You know, again it's one of the
privileges we have of being an American is to have also the responsibility
of living in a State like ours with it's good environment. We need
to keep it good.
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