20080868 Ver 2_N&O State Oks Mining in wetlands_20090116

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2009
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It plans a discount mortgage
program and high-interest
checking accounts. PAGE 5B
www.newsobNerver.com/news
New life
for RBC
eatery
After more than a year and half
of sitting empty and dark, it looks
as if the Damon's Grill by the RBC
Center in Raleigh will finally get
new life.
Lance Wheeler; a pharmacist
who owns the Medicap pharmacy
in Garner, is
RETAILING hoping to re-
open it in a few
months as The
Backyard
Bistro.
The restau-
rant will main-
tain the sports
theme that
Sue Stock Damon's had,
which makes
sense given its proximity to the
home arena of the Carolina Hur-
ricanes.
It will likely be a welcome ad-
dition for Canes fans, who have
been without a nearby restaurant
or watering hole since Damon's
closed in 2007.
The only other dining option
in the immediate vicinity is a
Wendy's attached to a gas station
down the road.
The opening may close a tu-
multuous chapter for the build-
ing at 1235 Hurricane Alley Way.,
Damon's opened there in March
2004.
It proved a popular spot, with
Canes fans shelling out between
$4,000 and $8,000 a night there.
During the Canes' Stanley Cup
run in 2006, fans packed the
restaurant to the tune of $11,000
a night.
Despite the obvious popularity,
Damon's suddenly closed in mid-
2007, following a court order.
The company that owned the
restaurant, Scranton, Pa: based
Trinity Road Restaurant Associ-
ates, had violated its franchise
agreement, according to court
documents.
At that time, the company owed
nearly $343,000 to the federal
government and an additional
$307,000 to Damon's Eastern
Carolinas, which controls the
rights for Damon's franchises
here.
The restaurant was put up for
sale in early 2008, but no buyer
has stepped forward until now.
In Durham, there's more fall-
out from the recession.
A landmark pizza parlor, The
Pizza Palace on Guess Road, has
closed after 45 years serving pies.
Owner Faye Rodenhizer said
traffic has slowed. But she also
didn't rule out a return to business
one day. .
Rodenhizer is the daughter of
former Durham Mayor Harry Ro-
denhizer, a man who served two
terms as mayor and is largely
credited with keeping the Bulls
baseball team in Durham.
Harry Rodenhizer purchased
The Pizza Palace in 1978, and the
restaurant moved from Ninth
Street to Guess Road in 2004.
In-Raleigh, Judy Geiger and her
daughter, Lisa Swiger, have
moved their home business into a
retail shop in the Quail Corners
shopping center at Falls of Neuse
and Millbrook roads.
Blooming Balloons specializes
in balloon arches, columns, cen-
terpieces and other decor items..
They decorate for special events
State OKs mining in, wPhosphate of Aurora now
awaits approval of its plans
by the federal government.
BY WADE RAwLiNs
STAFF WRITER
PCS Phosphate of Aurora.moved closer
to getting the go-ahead to expand its min-
ing of phosphate ore along the Pamlico
River, even though the mining would'cause
massive damage to wetlands and creeks
feeding the waterway.
A revised state permit, issued Thurs-
day by water-quality regulators, allows
the company to mine about 11,000 acres
adjacent to its current open-pit mine in
Beaufort County over 35 years.
The impacts to 4.8 miles of streams and
more than 3,900 acres of wetlands repre-
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
sent the largest destruction of wetlands
ever permitted in North Carolina, though
regulators scaled back the original plan.
Under federal law, the mining company
must restore up to two acres of wetland
for each acre destroyed, and it must in fu-
ture decades reclaim the mined area.
"It's a very large impact," said John Dor-
ney, supervisor of the wetland program at
the state Division of Water Quality. "'There
is no way to sugarcoat that one.
"They are staying away from the best
wetlands," he added.
The rich deposit of black phosphate
rock, left by ancient oceans and buried
100 feet beneath the surface, has been ex-
tracted from the site by various companies
for about 40 years. PCS Phosphate, part
of an international company headquar-
tered Saskatchewan, Canada, has worked
Co. Springs
Fuquay
the mine since 1995 to produce phosphate
for fertilizer and animal feed supplements
and for use in food additives such as phos-
phoric acid, a flavor enhancer in Coca-
Cola and jellies.
The United States is one of the world's
largest phosphate producers, and 85 per-
cent of the total domestic output comes
from North Carolina and Florida. In the
last 15 years, the Aurora mine has pro-
duced 3.5 million to 6 million tons of phos-
phate a year.
The mining now takes place in a 300-
acre canyon 100 feet deep, in which huge
cranes with buckets the size of two-car
garages scoop ore mixed with sand and
clay 24 hours a day.
The state's approval. is a key step in the
process of acquiring a federal permit from
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to con-
Two fires, two lives lost
Johnston, Chatham homes burn, cause of fire in Chatham investigated
FROM STAFF REPORTS
Two people died early Thurs-
day in separate house fires in
Johnston and Chatham counties.
Authorities had not released
the names of those killed as of
late Thursday, nor had they an-
nounced how the fires started.
But on the same day, state fire
officials warned that home fires
peak during cold weather like
the arctic blast now gripping the
state. Across North Carolina last
year, 24 people died in nearly
5,000 building fires, Insurance
Commissioner Wayne Goodwin,
who also serves as the state fire
marshal, announced Thursday.
The Johnston fire destroyed a
home at 830 Woodall Dairy
Road near Benson, said sheriffs
spokeswoman Tammy Amaon.
Deputies were summoned to the
home at 6:58 a.m. by the Eleva-
tion Fire Department, after fire-
fighters found the body.
The Johnston Sheriffs De-
partment did not know a cause
or the identification of the de-
ceased, Amaon said.
The Chatham fire was re-
ported about 2 a.m. at a single-
story frame house on Luther
Road, off N.C. 751.
Chatham local fire depart-
ments were dispatched after a
passing motorist saw the home
fully involved in flames, accord-
ingto the Chatham Sheriffs De-
partment. About 6 a.m., fire of-
ficials found a body inside the
residence and contacted sher-
iff's investigators.
Late Thursday, deputies were
attempting to identify the body
and determine the cause of the
fire. SBI fire investigators were
called in to assist, the sheriffs
department said. Evidence from
the scene had been sent to the
SBI lab in Raleigh for analysis.
It was initially unclear whether
the fire was intentionally set or
caused by accident, the sheriffs
THE COLD, COLD FACTS
The Triangle awoke this morning to the coldest weather in three years. And
temperatures tonight into Saturday, morning will be even colder.

Cd f
Ul lington'#
A
department said.
The sheriffs office is not re-
leasing the name of the home-
owner until positive identifica-
tinue mining. Under federal law, a com-
pany can destroy wetlands if it shows its
plan minimizes environmental harm and
is the most economically viable.
"That is what we have been waiting
for," said Penny Schmidt, a spokeswoman
for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Representatives of the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency have expressed
concerns about the mining expansion, but
they acknowledged the revised alterna-
tive was less destructive than the earlier
proposals. Their primary concerns involve
the adverse effects to wetlands and streams
flowing into the Pamlico estuary over
decades. These waters provide nursery
habitat for a large percentage of the com-
mercial and recreational fish found along
SEE PHOSPHATE, PAGE 46
Clayton
JOH STO`;
830 Woodall
Dairy Rd.
'. Benson;;
The News.& Observer
tion could be made.
The body was sent to the Of-
fice of the Chief Medical Exam-
iner in Chapel Hill.
KEEP. SAFE AROUND FIRE AND HEATERS
Some fire prevention tips from the State Fire Marshal's Office:
0 Keep anything that can burn at least 3 feet away from heating equip-
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Law
tougher
on child
killers
More parents who
kill serving time
BY MANDY LocKE
STAFF WRITER
RALEIGH - Grown-ups who kill
the children they're supposed to
care for are facing tougher charges
in North Carolina.
About three-quarters of the
caregivers and parents accused
of killing a child in 2005 and 2006
were charged with first-degree
murder, according to, data col-
lected by the Office of the State
Medical Examiner and the North
Carolina Conference of District
Attorneys. That compares to
about 60 percent of similar sus-
pects in 1998 cases analyzed by
Action for Chil-
dren, a chil-
dren's ad- - a
vocacy
group in 7
Raleigh. 3.- -
Officials ! r
credit the
enhanced
charges to better
training of law en-
forcement officers and prosecu-
tors on how to handle child homi-
cides, efforts launched when
advocates found wide disparity
in how people were punished for
killing children.
A News & Observer investiga-
tion in 2005 found that 40 per-
cent of those those who shook ba-
bies to death between 1999 and
2004 never went to prison. In a .
quarter of these cases, no one was
ever charged. Many of those that
were charged faced only an in-
voluntary manslaughter charge,
a crime that allowed many to
avoid prison entirely.
By contrast, none of the care-
takers convicted of killing children
in 2005 and 2006 avoided prison.
Complicated cases
"I'm hopeful this says that our
system is less willing to accept
probation as a punishment for
killing a child," said Tom
Vitarrlinne_ n seninr felinw at Ar-
An SBI arson investigator, left, talks with a Chatham sheriff's deputy in the ruins of a house at 1232 Luther Road in
eastern Chatham County. The fire was reported at 2 a.m. Thursday, and a body was found in the house at 6 a.m.
STAFF PHOTO BY HARRY LYNCH