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Army Navy Outlet
6416 416 Wilkinson Blvd Blvd. • Belmont Belmont, N NC Main Street Crossing Shopping Center MONDAY-SATURDAY 10-7 • ARMYNAVYOUTLET@GMAIL.COM
Volume 80 • Issue 22
Thursday, June 4, 2015
✪ Ammo ✪ ✪ Tactical Gear ✪ ✪ Military Supplies ✪ ✪ Clothing ✪ ✪ Survival Supplies ✪
Serving Belmont • Cramerton • Lowell • McAdenville • Mount Holly • Stanley
©CommunityFirstMedia
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Coal Ash being removed Beloved teacher and coach Stanley Dudko from Riverbend retires after 52 years at Belmont Abbey The first truck of excavated coal ash left the retired Riverbend power plant near Charlotte recently, marking the beginning of the end for ash storage at that site as Duke Energy relocates ash to a fully lined landfill. “We share our customers’ urgency for closing ash basins, and we’re glad to get this important work under way. We started moving ash just a few days after receiving the necessary permits,” said John Elnitsky, Duke Energy’s senior vice president for ash strategy. “We’re managing this project in a way that meets the highest standards for safety.” Riverbend excavation will start with 10 truckloads a day to pilot the process and minimize impacts on neighbors. Ash will be sent to a fully lined landfill in Homer, Ga., and will be transported moist, in covered and washed trucks, to control dust. This landfill is an interim step as the company works with an outside company to permit two fully lined structural fill projects proposed for North Carolina’s Chatham and Lee counties. The Riverbend work initiates the first phase of excavation that the company announced in November 2014. The project will remove about 1 million tons of ash from the ash stack, a dry storage area on the property. Additional permitting and preparations are needed before water can be removed from the primary or secondary ash basins. The Riverbend site has about 4.5 million tons of ash. The Riverbend plant, located in Mount Holly, ., began serving customers in 1929 and was retired in 2013. It was one of four plants identified in the North Carolina Coal Ash Management Act of 2014 to be excavated by August 2019, with material relocated to a fully lined facility. Riverbend is the second site in the Carolinas to begin ash relocation in recent weeks, following closely on the work begun May 14 at the W.S. Lee plant in South Carolina. The company continues to move ash from the Asheville Plant to a nearby fully lined structural fill project at the Asheville Regional Airport, which has been ongoing for several years. see more COAL ASH page 2
By Alan Hodge
alan.bannernews@gmail.com
You can't say that 81-year-old Stanley Dudko's life has been dull, and a couple of weeks ago yet another chapter was added to it when he retired after 52 years as a teacher and coach at Belmont Abbey College. “I served under 21 presidents, seven abbots, 15 academic deans, 14 department chairs, and got along with all of them splendidly,” Dudko said of his tenure. Dudko’s story goes back to Feb. 3, 1934 when he was born in Rowno, Poland. World War II came along and as a child Stanley was forced to work in a Nazi tank factory. Once he accidentally started a tank engine and “drove” it into a river. Somehow he survived the war, often eating scraps from trash cans. Time marched as did the Allied soldiers, the war came to an end, and Stanley was liberated. He came to the US and graduated Greenville, SC High School in 1954- no mean feat because he had not learned to read and write until he was 11 years old. He became a naturalized US citizen on November 13, 1954 and was drafted into the Army the very next day. After two years in the service, he entered Belmont Abbey College as a student and in 1960 he received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with a minor in Philosophy. But that was just the beginning of Dudko's long association with the Abbey. After getting his M.S. in Economics and Business Administration from Auburn in 1962, and teaching there for a spell, Dudko also taught at Charlotte Catholic High and CPCC before returning to the Stanley Dudko, 81, recently retired after 52 years teaching and coaching soccer at Belmont Abbey College. Photo by Alan Hodge see more DUDKO page 2
Historic downtown Belmont bank building getting some TLC By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail.com
One of Belmont's most historic structures, the 1925 Bank of Belmont building at 32 N. Main St., is getting some much needed tender, loving, care. Currently home to Wells Fargo Bank, and several other businesses, the building was erected just as the Great Depression was looming. However, even during that catastrophe, it never closed its doors. The building has had several owners over the decades and is currently the property of David Dorsch of Charlotte and his partners who have been striving to bring its former glory back up to speed. “We've restored almost all of the original hardware in the building such as elevator controls, bathroom fixtures, electrical plates in the hallways, etc.” he said. “Last year we pressure washed it to get rid of 90 years of grime on the exterior. Another feature is we put historic pictures up in the hallways. “We got them from Allen Millican around the corner on Catawba, to show off the history of Belmont as we also look to its future.” One of the top projects connected with the building is restoring the hand painted decorative archway Lisa Jenkins (right) and her assistant Ashley Valentine have been working hard on medallions in the front entrance. The medallions were done when the building was first constructed nine restoring the decorative painted medallions inside the historic Bank of Belmont decades ago and over time had become faded and dingy. building. Photo by Alan Hodge see more BANK page 2
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