Environmental Justice:1980s Campaign to Halt Construction of A Waste Facility on the Lumber River (2008)
Undergraduates: Alexandra Blackwood, Brian Hicks, Brandon Jones none Jonathan Frederick, Mac Legerton
Faculty Advisor: Flora Lu
Department: Anthropology
In 1984, a multi-national corporation, GSX, began the process of building and operating a toxic waste treatment facility at the site of the Laurinburg-Maxton Airbase in Scotland County, North Carolina. The company planned to process up to 50,000 gallons per day of the waste, received from ten states across the Southern and Mid-Atlantic US, dumping the treated waste into the nearby Lumber River._x000D_
Downstream from the proposed treatment site is the town of Lumberton, in Robeson County, a community that heavily relies on the Lumber River for drinking water. Robeson County is one of the poorest rural counties in the United States, with a population largely made up of African Americans and Lumbee Indians._x000D_
Immediately upon the announcement of GSX’s intentions, the residents of the nearby communities rose up in protest and formed community organizations in an effort to organize the people to resist the building of the plant. These groups focused on using non-violent techniques of protest, even having young children discuss why they were opposed to the construction - they did not want their environment destroyed because they wanted a happy, healthy future that they could share with their own._x000D_
Senate Bill 114 was composed to limit the amount of waste that could be discharged into a NC river, making the it economically infeasible for GSX. The US EPA threatened that passage of the bill would prohibit NC’s authority under RCRA. However, in June of 1987, Judge Nissen ruled that North Carolina did indeed have control of citing waste treatment facilities and that the US EPA could not interfere._x000D_
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