Clean & Green

Dr. Mike Loomis clenches his hand around a satellite telephone and breathes heavily into the receiver. After five days of trailing a heard of African elephants across the grassy plains of Cameroon, Loomis, chief veterinarian at the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro, has just darted one of the giant animals with anesthesia. As he waits for the elephant to drop groggily to the ground, Loomis relays the play-by-play half a world away to a group of seventh-graders at Perry Harris Middle School in Chatham County.

If the sleeping animal is successfully tagged with a radio collar that allows scientists to monitor its movements, students back in North Carolina and around the world will be able to track the elephant's signals online on their computers and hear Loomis's daily audio diary through a unique web site created by Carrboro-based webslingerZ.

“Kids are much more motivated to conserve and protect the environment when it's made more personal to them,” says Loomis, an internationally respected exotic animal veterinarian. “The web site adds a whole other dimension to what we do to teach students about conservation of animal habitats and protecting the environment.”

The zoo's message of animal habitat conservation was spread to thousands of students in all 50 states, where teachers downloaded lesson plans and other information from the site, which was created through hundreds of hours of donated time by webslingerZ to support the zoo's mission.

“Education and the environment really go hand in hand, and this project was one that could really take full advantage of the web,” says Jeffrey Hoffman, president and CEO of webslingerZ. While the Zoo Society is also a paying client, webslingerZ has donated significant time and resources. “We saw it as a way to step up to the plate and make an impact where we could,” Hoffman says.

WebslingerZ's efforts on behalf of the environment are but one example of how North Carolina corporations are giving green to make our state green. And it's not only financial contributions that corporations are giving. From banks to power companies to boat-builders, North Carolina companies are donating hundreds of hours of volunteer time, bequeathing land and throwing their considerable political power behind environmental causes to protect and improve the state's natural resources.

Causes that North Carolina corporations have taken up include efforts to create a new state park, clean our waterways, promote growth that is in harmony with the environment, educate students about animal habitat protection and create new wildlife sanctuaries.

Giving to the environment is about more than sporting a “green image.” Surveys and focus groups show that quality of life is a major factor in business relocation decisions, and the health of the environment here cuts to that issue.

One of North Carolina's leading industries is tourism, and the environment is an engine of that industry, says Keith Burwell, executive director of The Environmental Federation of North Carolina. “It's not the environment vs. jobs anymore,” he says. “It's the environment and jobs.”

While many environmental advocacy groups shun corporate dollars to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest, others are accepting corporate contributions from companies who see their causes are closely aligned to those of their business or themselves personally.

To recognize every instance in which a corporation and its employees are working to leave their communities better protected from the long-term effects of development would be akin to keeping a rein on Loomis in Cameroon.

Here, however, we'd like to recognize a few whose gestures help to preserve the quality of life they and their employees enjoy and their businesses count on.

Cleaning Our Waterways

On the third Saturday of each September, as many as 15,000 volunteers don their grubbiest clothes and rubber shoes and dip their arms elbow-deep into North Carolina's rivers and tributaries. Last year during Big Sweep, they pulled out some 600,000 pounds of trash — including two bowling balls — among an assortment of cans, paper and plastic. One in every 15 of those volunteers is from First Citizens Bank, one of the first major North Carolina corporations to roll up its sleeves when the event started a decade ago, and today its biggest corporate champion.

First Citizens has Big Sweep coordinators in every county where it does business, and in recent years its financial contribution has been as great as $50,000.

“It's about cleaning up our waterways and supporting our environment, which is critical to our state's quality of life,” says Noel McLaughlin, manager of corporate communications for First Citizens.

Judy Bolin, president of North Carolina Big Sweep Inc., says the event wouldn't be the same without First Citizens' support. In the weeks of planning leading up to the day focused on ridding the state's waterways of trash, First Citizens offers the use of its courier service to spread event news to county coordinators. Getting that kind of word out has helped the event break its own record for volunteer services in 2000.

“This is truly a win-win situation for everyone,” Bolin says. “We get everyone thinking about the river basis as a whole system of waterways that need to be kept clean, and the companies get great exposure. One company tells another company what we do and our support grows.”

Making a Safe Home for Wildlife

With help from such corporate benefactors as F&M Bank in Granite Quarry, The LandTrust for Central North Carolina purchased the largest undeveloped tract of land in Rowan County and placed it under permanent conservation easement. Preserving the land will allow Catawba College to create a wildlife refuge.

The South Yadkin Wildlife Refuge, as it has come to be known, is seven miles north of Salisbury on Highway 601 at the meeting of Second Creek and the South Yadkin River. The refuge will protect more than 1.5 miles of river frontage and nearly 300 acres of wildlife habitat. Equally important is the use of the property by Catawba College's Center for the Environment as a teaching tool for students studying wildlife management and land conservation.

“This is a true partnership in every sense of the word,” says Jason Walser, associate director of The LandTrust for Central North Carolina. “Some hardcore environmentalist groups are sometimes isolated from corporations. Without private foundations and corporate giving we wouldn't be able to do what we do.”

The bulk of the money for the $850,000 purchase of the land came from a $500,000 grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund. One couple, Fred and Alice Stanback, made a substantial contribution, as did several local foundations, including F&M Bank.

“We're in the banking business, but we're also in the quality of life business,” says Paul Fisher, F&M's president. “If we don't tend the fields we work, we won't be able to harvest.”

A closely held institution with some 300 shareholders, the large majority of whom live in Rowan County, Fisher says it's the duty of such banks to work to make their communities better. That's why it contributes to other environmental causes, including a new Riverside Park near the Rowan and Davie county lines.

Growing Smart to Protect

Air, Water Quality

One of the major challenges facing the Charlotte region is how to continue growth without damaging the natural resources that have attracted so many people.

That's the focus behind Charlotte's Voices and Choices program. It's the environmental initiative of Central Carolinas Choices, a regional collaborative serving 14 counties in North and South Carolina. Its mission: to develop a consensus on issues affecting the environment in the region and to work toward solutions.

Voices and Choices held a regional environmental summit in 1998 that brought together representatives from government and industry to outline environmental priorities. What came out of that summit was a plan to concentrate on four areas of the environment: protect the Catawba River, the area's largest drinking water source; create a plan for open spaces; protect air quality and focus on recycling programs.

“There is no question that corporations are recognizing that maintaining a good quality of life is increasingly important in economic development,” says Betty Chafin Rash, executive director of Central Carolinas Choices. “Companies have supported us with volunteers in leadership roles and through in-kind contributions.”

Some of Voices and Choices' biggest corporate sponsors have been Bank of America, Duke Energy, First Union National Bank and The Charlotte Observer.

Candy Skarlatos, senior vice president for environmental initiatives for Bank of America, says the bank provides not only money but lends its power to leadership positions on such issues to ensure the health of the communities where it operates.

“If we're not at the table when environmental issues come up, others are going to find solutions that aren't right for business,” Skarlatos says. “Quality of life issues can be a big drag on our economy, and banks certainly depend on our economy to do well.”

Removing Dam Opens Spawning

Carolina Power & Light received national attention three years ago when it removed the Quaker Neck Dam from the Neuse River, making it the first dam removed both voluntarily and solely for environmental benefit.

The 260-foot dam had been used for cooling for CP&L's Lee Plant near Goldsboro. But the dam was no longer needed, and CP&L saw an opportunity to benefit the environment. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt attended a ceremony at the dam site and praised CP&L for the removal, which opened 75 miles of river and 925 miles of tributary spawning grounds for fish, such as American and Hickory shad, striped bass and short-nosed sturgeon.

Since then there have been shad caught as far west as Raleigh that were previously not seen in the area, says Mike Hughes, a spokesperson for CP&L.

“The demolition of the Quaker Neck dam was the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of agencies and individuals, all of whom had the environment's best interests at heart,” Hughes says. “We were pleased to be the first company to demolish a dam purely for environmental benefits, but we're even more pleased that it became a catalyst for others to follow suit.”

For its efforts toward the environment, the N.C. Wildlife Federation named CP&L a recipient of the Water Conservationist of the Year award in 1997.

Creating New Parks

Duke Energy's 1999 gift to the state's citizens came in the form of plunging waterfalls, river gorges and sheer rock walls. Together Duke Energy and the state announced the creation of Gorges State Park, which has been heralded as one of the premier conservation examples of the decade.

Through a partnership between industry, the environmental community and the state of North Carolina, 9,760 acres of the Jocassee Gorge in Transylvania County near Cashiers was placed into public ownership. The property was purchased by the state from Duke Energy Corporation, creating the state's first park west of Asheville. The property was purchased for approximately $8.6 million, including a $5 million appropriation from the General Assembly and $2.6 million from the National Heritage Trust Fund and a $1 million private donation. The property was valued at $21 million, and the difference in value was a gift to the state's citizens from Duke Energy Corp.

The park, now called Gorges State Park, should open to the public — with its first trails winding along spectacular scenery — in the spring. A citizens advisory committee is working to develop a master plan.

“Duke Energy's contribution is invaluable because there's no way we would have had the money to create a park without them,” says Phil McKnelly, director of the state's Division of Parks and Recreation. “They certainly could have had more revenue for themselves if they sold the property on the open market, but they came to the state first.”

Duke Energy bought the land 50 years ago but no longer needed it for business reasons. The land includes one of the greatest concentrations of rare and unique species in the eastern United States. It has rainfall in excess of 80 inches per year, creating a temperate rain forest that supports an extensive collection of waterfalls.

Protecting Coastal Estuaries

Canoes are their classrooms. North Carolina's more than 4,000 curving miles of coastline and inlets is their curriculum. But the North Carolina Coastal Federation, heralded as a watchdog for the coast and one of the state's most effective environmental advocacy groups, needs financial backing from corporate citizens like Eddie C. Smith Jr. of Grady-White Boats Inc. in Greenville, to keep North Carolina school children learning about protecting our coastal estuaries.

Grady-White Boats, makers of fiberglass sport fishing boats, is a regular supporter of the federation's Clean N.C. — Children Linking Across the Nation program, which puts students in canoes for day-long on-the-water field trips to learn about protecting natural resources. The program brought 2,000 students onto the state's coastal estuaries last year, where 90 percent of all commercial fish caught on the east coast are spawned.

“The economy of the coast depends on our environment,” says Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation in Ocean, near Morehead City. “The enlightened businesses realize that it's not an either/or situation of business or the environment. The consequences of not being good stewards will be devastating to the economy.”

Smith, of Grady-White Boats, says it make perfect sense for his company to support organizations that are working to preserve the state's natural coastal resources. The company was one of the first corporate givers to the North Carolina Aquarium and sponsored the shark tank at the facility in Manteo.

“For any company, especially a privately owned company, giving toward the environment is a reflection on the ownership,” he says.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. This article first appeared in the December 2000 issue of the North Carolina magazine

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