Chief US District Judge Terrence Boyle, a New Jersey-born jurist known for his bristly disposition and barbed wit, asked a simple but loaded question in a Raleigh courtroom yesterday: "Who's going to teach these wolves to swim?"

The legislature expedited its first round of disaster relief funding for the state's critical recovery needs after Hurricane Florence, but the more complex portion of the aid package -- environmental resilience -- could run into political roadblocks.

For more than four months, the Guilford County school system failed to disclose critical information about high lead levels in three of its schools -- not only from the public, but also from the respective principals, according to documents obtained under the Public Records Act.

Three feet of rain. 140 mph wind gusts. 39 people dead, and thousands more displaced. An estimated $1.1 billion in direct and indirect losses to agriculture. Hurricane Florence, which hit at peak harvest season, was indeed an unprecedented storm for the state.

This story is part of a series, including maps and blog posts, about the predicament and environmental threat of industrialized swine farms that lie within the 100-year flood plain.

Prospect, North Carolina, population 690, is quilted by farms, churches, modest homes and an elementary school on less than 3 square miles in northwest Robeson County. The Goins family, which like most residents of Prospect is Lumbee, has lived in this community for at least four generations, and as part of their heritage, has long honored the land and the sky for its gifts to the people.

Matthew Starr had paddled only a half mile of a stretch of Neuse River near Duke Energy’s HF Lee plant in Goldsboro when he saw initial signs that something had gone very wrong. “There was exposed coal ash on trees, floating in the river, on the road,” said Starr, the Upper Neuse Riverkeeper. “There was coal ash lying the ground. We scooped it up out of the water.”

Hurricane Florence has laid bare the environmental justice issues that are often masked by sunny news of a record-breaking stock market, low employment (but stagnant wage growth) and tax breaks for the über-wealthy. In Eastern North Carolina...

Having devastated the southeast coast of North Carolina, Hurricane Florence is now a tropical depression, making a beeline toward the mountains. Rain and wind could uproot trees and unleash land- and mudslides on steep terrain, including places where they occurred earlier this year.

Thousands of animal waste lagoons, hazardous waste sites and other repositories of toxic material lie in and near the projected path of Hurricane Florence, increasing the risk of breaches or leaks of dangerous chemicals into the environment.