Challenges to the River
Stopping GSX
A combination of events made the need for protection more urgent. In 1984, SCA Services, Inc. (later GSX Services, a subsidiary of Genstar Corporation) sought to build a hazardous waste treatment facility near the Laurinburg-Maxton Air Base in Scotland County. The facility’s siting had been encouraged and blessed by the N.C. Dept. of Commerce. When news of the plant being built near the banks of the Lumber River surfaced, public concern quickly grew and the LRBC found itself allied with citizens and elected officials from Laurinburg, Wagram, Pembroke, Maxton, Lumberton, Orrum, Fair Bluff, and surrounding areas. A hastily-formed group, Sensible Concerns About Toxins (SCAT), came together in Scotland County to seek legal counsel and oppose the project. Members included Laurinburg’s mayor, Ann Slaughter, pediatric physician Jim Smithwick, Dr. Barbara Winn, John McLaurin and others.
Lumberton was fortunate that the city had an energetic Director of its Public Works Department, Johnny Hester, who recognized the threat to the river and public health should the plant become operational. He had the support of the Lumberton City Council and Mayors Coble Wilson and David Weinstein. Hester and Raymond Deese, Superintendent of the Robeson County Water System, submitted a joint statement addressing the risks to area water resources posed by SCA/GSX.
Billie Britt, Al Connor, Kelly Rowan, and Larry Crumbliss of Cardinal Health, helped to organize, print, and circulate notices of meetings. Cathey R. Blake, Chairman of the Cardinal Health Board, outlined the
agency’s health concerns in a letter to Gov. James G. Martin. GSX, a large out-of-state corporation seeking to bring hazardous waste from afar, evoked pushback of “Not in my Backyard” (NIMBY).
There were many allegations of SCA/GSX ties to organized crime in New York and New Jersey with gangland style murders, disappearances and racketeering reported (Charlotte Observer). The Mecklenburg County Commissioners passed a resolution for Governor Hunt to “hold in abeyance any further proceedings on SCA’s permit until the United States Congressional investigation and a New Jersey criminal probe are completed.” Eventually the company picked up and set its sights on the industrial park at the Laurinburg-Maxton Air Base in Scotland County.
Attorneys and chemists were enlisted to review data relating to the health risks associated with exposure to multiple chemical compounds destined for the facility. According to “Comments Of Sensible Concerns Against Toxins On The Draft RCRA Permit For GSX, Inc.” read at a Public Hearing May 4, 1987 in Laurinburg, NC, “The Proposed GSX facility will initially handle at least 127 different listed hazardous wastes, some of which can safely be treated and recycled, others of which will be essentially diluted at the facility. An additional 144-plus wastes can be added if analytical methods can be found.” (John Runkle, an attorney with the Conservation Council of NC, described an impending catastrophe for the region and river in a letter to then Gov. James G. Martin.)
In the same document, Bill Bright of the Fayetteville Regional office of the Division of Environmental Management called the aquifer an “extraordinary resource” and “extremely valuable.” The proposed site would have been in an area of porous sandy
soil with no solid or underlying clay. It was just across the river from a well in Robeson County described as having "the highest yield of any well in NC, at 1140 gallons per minute", raising concerns of pollution of the public’s drinking water.
Meetings with elected and politically appointed officials convened in Scotland, Robeson County Courtrooms, Lumberton’s Carolina Theater, the Robeson County Public Library, and the Cardinal Health Agency. On June 2,1985, an overflow crowd of 3,000 agitated people gathered at the, then, Pembroke State University’s Givens Performing Arts Center to express vehement opposition to the GSX plant.
A wave of anger and indignation roiled normally peaceful communities situated along the river and its tributaries. Lively rallies generated imaginative responses to the perceived threats to air and water quality from the facilities. Basin Committee members contacted and engaged many who would become supporters of river protection efforts. U.S. Representative Charlie Rose, State Senators Mary Odom of Wagram and David Parnell of Parkton, and NC Representatives Danny DeVane, Bill Hefner, and Sidney Locks supported their constituents’ efforts to protect the river, and their homes and businesses. Locks led the audience in chanting “We don’t want it, we don’t need it, and we refuse to accept it.”
Opposing US Ecology
Additionally in 1984, the N.C. Department of Commerce again demonstrated it valued revenue over public safety when it encouraged U.S. Ecology to look at a site east of St. Pauls. The department thought it had identified the ideal location for a facility to incinerate low-level radioactive waste brought from medical and university labs, and from manufacturing sites. Something played in the minds of area residents for their rural communities to shoulder the burden of treatment and disposal of radioactive waste from across the nation when no more than a few atoms-worth was produced locally. Opposition developed quickly with the formation of the Coalition Against the Radioactive Incinerator (C.A.R.I.) when residents discovered that trucks would be passing along NC Hwy. 20 through the middle of St. Pauls.
LRBC members joined in opposition to the plant along with Claude Fulghum, Mayor of St. Pauls, Joe Loflin, Town Manager, Sarah Hay, City Councilwoman, and Louise Storms, Hooker and Mary McDonald, Attorney Kay House, Dr. Roland and Attorney Dina Lingle, Attorneys Pitt and Lannie Dickie, and Mac Legerton, Donna Chavis, Rod Johnson of Robeson County Church and Laity Concerned.
Residents and government officials of Bladen, Cumberland and Robeson counties signed petitions and passed resolutions opposing the construction of a facility that had the potential to contaminate tributaries of the Lumber River via the Great Marsh and Big Swamps. Particulates and gaseous by-products from incineration would be disseminated over a wide area depending on prevailing winds.
One obstacle in the path of the opposition was the threat of being denied membership in the Southeastern Compact Commission for disposal of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). However, both North and South Carolina chose alternative solutions to the compact, with N.C. building its own facility in Wake County. South Carolina continued to send its waste to the state's disposal facility in Barnwell County near the Savannah River Nuclear power plant.
Some elected leaders needed to be educated about the risks and shown another side of the vaunted economic benefits being touted by GSX and U.S. Ecology, e.g., environmental cleanup costs and decreased property values. Johnny Hester and Raymond Deese raised objections based on their combined expertise in water quality and waste disposal. By the late 1980s and early 90s, opposition reached a critical mass to force abandonment of the proposed GSX and US Ecology sites in Scotland and Robeson Counties, respectively. The river and its environs had been protected for a time. People informed themselves, and those who governed them, in their quest for safe and healthy communities.
Continued Vigilance
Safeguarding the natural world takes no vacation. Pollution from lawn and garden pesticides and fertilizers, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) for poultry and livestock, farming, and urban pavement, mostly described as non-point sources, diminishes water quality. It is unclear if the water quality measures enacted with the designations can be sustained considering the burden placed on them by CAFOs that have appropriated the resource.
Power generating facilities pose threats to water quality throughout river basins via ash and cooling ponds. On February 2, 2014, a collapsed stormwater pipe beneath a coal ash slurry impoundment at the Duke Energy Dan River Steam Station near Eden, N.C. resulted in a huge spill at that facility. A total of 39,000 tons of ash and 27 million gallons of ash pond water containing a witches brew of toxic and hazardous materials including unburned carbon, arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium and zinc spilled from the ruptured pipe. For five days there was no one who seemed capable of halting the release of coal ash into the Dan River. The ash mingled with river sediment as far as 70 miles downstream.
In 2014 the Winyah Rivers Alliance initiated an effort to have Duke Energy remove toxic coal ash from its retention pond at the decommissioned Weatherspoon Steam Electric Plant adjacent to the river in Lumberton. Concerns arose about the potential for the earthen dam around the pond to give way and discharge its toxic contents into the river. (Winyah Rivers, along with support from the Center for Community Action, has been the primary environmental advocate for the Lumber and Little Pee Dee Rivers in the 21st Century.)
A few months later the N.C. Legislature passed Senate Bill 729, The Coal Ash Management Act of 2014, which required Duke to clean up four sites located in Eden, Charlotte, Wilmington and Asheville. Christine Ellis of Winyah Rivers, with support from Mac Legerton, Donna Chavis, David Scott, Jefferson Currie, Colin Osborne, and others, led the effort to have the Weatherspoon Plant included. Four local members of N.C. The House of Representatives sent a letter to John E. Skvarla, Secretary of the N.C. Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources, requesting removal of the coal ash. Another challenge was met on June 23, 2015 when Mrs. Ellis received word from David McNeil, District Manager for Duke Energy, announcing plans to fully excavate the Weatherspoon coal ash basin and 11 additional coal ash basins in North Carolina.
Recently, a controversial technology to create green energy using a pelletized wood product in a process called Coal Switch was marketed as a sustainable energy source to supplement or replace coal and oil. Active Energy Group, headquartered in London, England, proposed to import this product from processing facilities in the state of Maine and in Lumberton, North Carolina with the aim of providing a greener source of power for Great Britain, other European, and Asian countries. Claiming to replace or supplement coal with pellets made from residual wood that would "otherwise rot on the forest floor", the company was having difficulty meeting air emission and water quality standards set by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. There was concern that more residual wood, termed feed-stock, would need to be generated by dropping more carbon sequestering trees onto the forest floor and replanting as pine monoculture. On March 31, 2022 the company withdrew its application and abandoned that project. Enviva, the world's largest biomass company with 3 locations in Eastern North Carolina, also produces pelletized wood biofuel, falsely claiming to "mostly use scrap and waste from lumber mills and cut sites", like clear-cut wood lots. In 2023 Enviva was financially "near collapse".
In all of the foregoing, Nature presented the major challenges to the tranquility of the region with the arrival of hurricanes, Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018 respectively. Flooding was described as being 500 and 1,000 year events. Homes and businesses were without power and water for days, and weeks in some areas. In 2016, the flooding closed I-95 for nearly a week. An emergency field hospital was delivered to Southeastern Regional Medical Center to provide urgent care and some minor surgical procedures. Water was brought in by tanker trucks, and the facility's backup generators provided power. Predictions are for more such occurrences as the frequency and intensity of weather events establishes a new normal. The roadbed for I-95 over the river corridor is being raised to 13 feet to prevent another closure of that crucial highway. With an increased volume of flood water free to flow under the new bridge, riverside property downstream will be at greater risk.
Lumber River enthusiasts have work to do ensuring that a repeat of threats from the past, and those as yet unknown, won’t degrade the resource. Sections of the waterway might receive more protective status from the NC State Parks System and from the National Parks Service through the National Heritage Areas and the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Programs. More evidence of local engagement with cleanup and observance of best management practices that enhance the riverine ecology would be needed. Those who strove to exalt the river have left a framework for action.
Invasive Species
With innocuous sounding names like Zebra mussels and Apple snails, two invasive non-native mollusks threaten the ecological balance of waterways, lakes and ponds in the United States. Without predators to control their population, these animals crowd out and injure native species of animals and plants which they overwhelm by sheer numbers. They also prey on indigenous species to the point of threatening their existence. The large snails are prolific enough to clog storm drains and municipal water intakes.
Apple snail egg clusters have been identified along the Lumber River. The NC Wildlife Resources Commission recommends crushing them, and their parents, with a paddle or stick , avoiding contact with skin to prevent irritation to it and to the eyes caused by a neurotoxin in the masses. Rat lungworm parasite can be transmitted in handling or consuming the snails and cause a fatal form of meningitis.
One ally in combating this scourge is a wading bird, the Limpkin, with its long beak and its dietary preference for apple snails.
