Didn't matter, they said, wasn't anyone back there anyway.

PART ONE:
A Done Deal

            Back where the trees grow in the water, where the distant whistle of a bobwhite and the palunk of a turtle sliding off a log might be the only sounds, it's easy to think nobody is paying attention.  Back there, when the only footprints besides one's own are the dancing tracks of deer, the slithering tracks of snakes, the scuttling tracks of bobcats, the stick-drawing tracks of birds, it's easy to imagine that the solitude of the Green Swamp means that it doesn't matter.  Easy to presume that one could build a mountain of garbage, and nobody would care.

            That's what the folks at Riegel Ridge, LLC thought.  They were joined by certain Columbus County commissioners who agreed it would be the perfect spot for a lucrative landfill that would serve several states.  They made their agreement, called it a done deal before anyone else even knew about it.  Didn't matter, they said, wasn't anyone back there anyway.

            Grady Simmons was back there.  His property adjoins the site where Riegel Ridge and the county commissioners wanted to raise Mount Trashmore.  His house sits on a slight rise off Highway 211 where Brunswick and Columbus counties meet.  In years when the rainfall was heavy, he could paddle his rowboat from his back yard into the swamp.  In flood seasons the water around his house submerged the Highwy.  Grady lived his entire life in the swamp, he hunted and fished there, and knew every bird call and animal track.  He and his wife, Gerri, were among the first people outside of Riegel Ridge and the Columbus County commissioners who knew about the proposed landfill.  But he was sort of like a turtle who surfaces out of a marsh pond, tastes the air, recognizes a threat; but thinks he's alone because the surface of the pond is still.

            It's hard to say exactly who was the first in the formal opposition to the landfill, because time has revealed that the turtle with his head poking out wasn't alone.  Other turtle heads were poking out here and there, thinking they, too, were alone.  But the pond was full of turtles.  It was only a matter of time before they discovered each other.

            Ironically, two of the earliest voices heard in opposition to the landfill weren't in the Green Swamp, or even in the state of North Carolina.  The loudest clamor came initially from Tennessee and Texas.  Debra (Malpass) Wint and Dr. Bert Little, were cousins whose families have been in the Green Swamp for generations.  They grew up there when Venus flytraps, sundew, and pitcher plants grew around ponds close to their houses, when the canals at the edges of their yards were deep enough to fish in.  Perhaps because they now lived elsewhere, the changes in the swamp were keenly noticeable to them when they visited.  They noticed how Lake Waccamaw has gotten shallow, how their favorite pond has dried up, and that you have to go further into the Green Swamp to find the carnivorous plants that are unique to that area.  The Green Swamp was getting smaller because of the ditches which drained the farm lands and pine tree plantations had grown more numerous as prosperity hit the area.  Yet there are still times when the area is flooded.  A little extra rain and the land disappears underwater.  A lot of extra rain and you have a flood.  Wasn't all that long ago Bert's mother was rescued from her home with a rowboat after a hurricane went through -- and that was in Whiteville.  But the ecosystem is fragile.  The changes of decades show this.  In the early 1900s it had seemed impossible to hurt the swamp; people barely held it back in order to make their living off the land.  But now it was vulnerable.  

There was a stirring 
in the depths.

PART TWO:
Tennessee and Texas care...what about
 Columbus County?

              In the spring of the new millennium, Debra heard about the proposed landfill from their uncle, John Wagner, who with his wife, Doris, has been a lifetime resident along Hwy 211 north of Grady Simmons.  He expected to see it rising above the loblolly pines on his horizon within a year.  During her short visit, Debra realized that most of the people she visited with didn't know about the landfill plans.  She emailed her cousin in Texas to find out if he knew about it.  Together they wondered what would happen if it became common knowledge before it was truly a done deal.  Decided to find out. 

            Using their combined knowledge about the Green Swamp, Debra built the multi-layered website around a single concept: What's So Special About Green Swamp, NC?  The website served as an information resource about the Green Swamp - its history, ecology, why it was an unsuitable place for a landfill, why it mattered.  The earliest version of the site included sample letters and contact information for local and state representatives.  The opposition had a presence now, even if there wasn't a group yet.  The website link began to be listed in the news stories that started occurring more frequently after Bert flew in from Texas and began contacting people personally.  A landmark walk in the Green Swamp with Grady, Bert's son, Britt Little, and Lee Hinnant of the News Reporter was one of the earliest stories that treated the subject seriously.  But the first stories hinted at a doubt that there was an issue.  As one reporter put it, why is it that of the three people we're hearing from, one of them is in Tennessee and one in Texas?

       Except for those three, the pond was still.

            But not for long.

            There was a stirring in the depths, and other names started to appear attached to letters to the editor.  Jeff Lane.  Doug Skipper.  Tesa Bush. Sheila Moore. Carolyn Malpass. Steve Smith.  Cathy Nielson.

The opposition to the landfill was official now, and it was definately local...

PART THREE:
Together we will win!

              Grady was galvanized with the knowledge that he wasn't alone in his concern, and inspired by the publicity their walk had gained, he invited Jeff Lane to a meeting of concerned citizens.  By February 2001, Jeff and Becky Lane, Cathy Nielson, Charles Hickman, and Mary Mac Wilkerson joined together as the formal leadership of Friends of the Green Swamp (FOGS).    Together we will win!  was the watchword of FOGS' first chairman, Jeff Lane.

            The opposition to the landfill was official now, and it was definitely local, for Jeff and Becky lived on Carolina Avenue, which intersects Hwy 211 a couple miles north of Grady.  FOGS began communicating with BREDL (Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League) who give their experience and support to community-based grassroots groups, and who have an amazing success rate.  Ultimately, FOGS became a chapter of BREDL.  Other groups also had interests which intersected with that of FOGS, including the Waccamaw Riverkeepers, whose interest would be directly impacted by anything befouling the waters that run out of the Green Swamp.

            Now the cautious tone in the news stories became skeptical in a new way. 

  Swamp defenders fight trash mound; Opposition to dump comes late in the game.  was the headline of Brian Feagans' news story that was published February 3, 2001 in the WILMINGTON MORNING STAR.  There was scoffing among the Columbus County commissioners who continued to insist that the business with Riegel Ridge, LLC had been finalized at least a year before anyone objected.  A host agreement had been signed very quietly in 1999, and all that stood in the way were a few technicalities. 

      The Columbus County commissioners also came under the scrutiny of FOGS.  All but one of the six commissioners were committed to the landfill.  Despite the increasing uproar from their constituents, they stood their ground.  The story was that it would save Columbus County a lot of money and that the savings would eventually trickle down to the residents.  But there was more to the story.

We will not go away!

PART FOUR:
Funny Business

            Riegel Ridge wasn't exactly forthcoming with the information that the proposed landfill wasn't to be an ordinary landfill serving a single county, but a leviathan that would absorb the trash from states as far away as New York.  The dimensions  varied, but at its shortest, it would crest at nearly 200 feet!  Nearly twice as tall as a standard fire tower (110 ft.), of a height with Cape Hatteras Light House (192 ft.), the proposed landfill would stand out like the Pyramid of Giza in the flat landscape.  (The tallest figure mentioned by Riegel Ridge was 278 feet with a footprint of 107 acres.)    All this was to be on land that any local could tell you was frequently underwater, depending on the caprices of nature.  

            FOGS worked feverishly to get the new information about the size of this project to the public.  There were meetings with the town boards of Lake Waccamaw, Bolton, and East Arcadia.  There were public meetings at the Lake, the Ransom Center, Whiteville, Buckhead, and other locations.  People who had previously held the notion that "trash has to be dumped somewhere" changed their minds when they understood magnitude of the project.  Among these was Mason Malpass who had recently returned to the area after an absence of thirty years.  At first unaware that his daughter had created the website which was now the online home of FOGS, he and his wife, Carolyn, joined the opposition.  Their letters to the editor were among the first citizen letters on the subject.  Carolyn coined the name "Mount Trashmore" and suggested that the heads of the county commissioners should be carved upon it like the presidents on Mount Rushmore. Mason's series of letters to the editor provided a running documentary on the new developments.  Along with his opposition to the landfill, he encouraged Columbus County to consider alternative disposal systems, such as recycling.  He and Carolyn were among those who swelled the ranks of citizens at several county commissioners' meetings, leading to the public hearing at Bower's auditorium in Whiteville that had a turnout of over 400 people.

            The pond was no longer still.

We hesitate to call it a done deal in light of what happened to their done deal....

PART FIVE:
Passing the Torch

            In 2005, four years after the Done Deal, there was still no landfill in the Green Swamp as the opposition continued to clog the works of any permitting process with formal petitions and legal maneuvers.  Jeff Lane, who had piloted the opposition over its roughest spots, and  his wife Becky were exhausted.  Cathy Neilson, Mason Malpass, and Marjorie Council temporarily took the helm until 2006, when Steve Smith came in as chairman.  Mason understood that this transition time was a dangerous time for FOGS to lose its momentum.  He kept up a steady stream of letters to the editors and continued the FOGS tradition of having regular meetings whether or not there was anything new to report.   FOGS continued to be very visible in the community, manning booths at such events as the Bolton Pine Tree Festival, the Pecan Festival in Whiteville, the Wildlife Action Cookoff Arena at Lake Waccamaw, and a whole week with the Columbus County Fair.

The same year that the torch was passed to Steve Smith, a one-year moratorium was passed that stopped any work on proposed landfills in North Carolina, during which time new rules and regulations would be developed that would make it harder to build landfills in unsuitable places.  It seemed that FOGS was not only holding its ground, but perhaps gaining ground.   By 2007, it was a full six years since Riegel Ridge and the county commissioners had tried to quietly insert a mega-landfill into the Green Swamp.  The fact that it hadn't happened was more encouraging every year, but so far nothing in terms of the enforcement of regulations was prohibiting it.  The permitting process had been slowed down by the efforts of the citizens of Columbus County (and beyond), and the moratoriums looked encouraging if vaguely worded, but as long as the commissioners and Riegel remained committed, it could still happen. 

            Then in the summer of 2007, Riegel Ridge ran into an unexpected complication.  A regulation had been signed by the governor which had nothing to do with wetlands, endangered species, or any of the many other issues which should singly or jointly have nipped the project in the bud back in 1999 before anyone ever imagined it was a done deal.  The new regulation put a moratorium on the construction of any landfill that was within a mile of North Carolina State Game Lands.  The Nature Conservancy had just that year leased their property to the state for game lands.      

            As of this writing, in the fall of 2007, Friends of The Green Swamp remain cautious about declaring a victory.  Said one FOGS spokesperson, "We would hesitate to call it a done deal in light of what happened to their done deal."

            Whether or not this is the final chapter on Mount Trashmore, FOGS is no longer a single-interest group interested only in preserving the Green Swamp in Columbus County.  The vision has widened to include the concerns of other communities who, like FOGS, have formed chapters in BREDL, committed to preserving unique and valuable resources throughout the Carolinas.  Association with the Riverkeeper organizations have expanded the view beyond the Waccamaw River and Juniper Creek to an entire connecting network of rivers and wetlands. 

-- D. W.     October 2007