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The Sandy Mush Community Center kitchen is currently being used to cook for a kids’ camp, but Terri Wells, a local farmer turned impromptu community archivist, remembers that around 1986, it had a different purpose. It was regularly filled with the smells of potluck dishes and the sounds of voices debating what to do about a confusing situation — a proposed federal nuclear waste dump.
“They had to get organized very quickly,” Wells said as she looked around the space. The community was used to meetings — there was a monthly general meeting in the community center already — so there was some precedent. Back then, most of the residents of Sandy Mush were farmers, growing tobacco and livestock; some families had been there seven or eight generations.
Wells was only 14 at the time, so she didn’t go to the meetings, but she remembers when it was all anyone could talk about around the kitchen table. Her cousin, farmer Bill Duckett, was a leader in the campaign. So when he passed away, she reached out to his granddaughter to see if he had held onto any memories.
“I reached out to my cousins and said, ‘Could you please dig around and find those materials?’” Wells said. “And thankfully they did.”
Jessica Duckett had watched her grandmother save many newspaper clippings and photographs of her grandfather over the years, and exhaustively shelved flyers and memorabilia from the anti-waste dump campaign.
She donated these to Terri Wells, who turned it over to Buncombe Special Collections. The collection memorializes an anti-nuclear waste campaign from the ‘80s, one Terri Wells hopes is remembered as its original activists begin to pass on. As the federal government launches renewed efforts to store the nation’s radioactive waste, residents and archivists are learning from history.
As she spoke with BPR, Wells rifled through an old copy of a now-closed local newspaper called West Neighbors. On the front page, three women smiled at the camera. Wells read the article aloud:
“It is the belief of many local people that the U.S. Department of Energy came to North Carolina ill prepared with facts that were not well documented,” she read. “Betty Duckett of Big Sandy Mush community in Leicester puts it more kindly: ‘They came here with incomplete information.’”
So the community collected information. Residents made a brochure about the community and counted 640 springs on their own — a concern due to potential groundwater contamination. When federal officials came to visit, they distributed pamphlets they made about their community. They also developed satirical pieces of artwork, like a map of the tourism hotspot Asheville could become if the region were only to become the dump’s final resting place.
“DON'T LET THIS SATIRE BECOME REAL. GET INVOLVED TO STOP THE DUMP. PROTEST TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES - - SPEAK OUT~,” reads the text below the map.
Nuclear waste is notoriously difficult to deal with.
To this day, the nation doesn’t have a permanent deep burial repository for the waste, which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Nevada rejected a proposal for a permanent site at Yucca Mountain, leaving the federal government searching for other sites, perhaps in the East, near most of the nation’s nuclear plants. But, the problem is, it has to go somewhere. And in 1986, some thought this western North Carolina community was where it should wind up. It seemed like a convenient location, but when state geologists actually mapped the area, they found something different.
“The basic factual data accumulated during the study reveal that local geologic conditions do not meet the Department of Energy's stated criteria,” said Leonard Weinstein, who was one of the lead geologists on the project.
He found that the amount of groundwater and type of rock in the region made it less than ideal, and after weeks of passionate public comment, the dump was cancelled.
Jessica, Bill’s granddaughter, finds that these pieces of history have reframed their understanding of their family and community.
“I would hear my grandparents talk about it, but it was always just like, my grandmother had a picture of him with George H.W. Bush hanging up and it was like ‘that's when your papaw met the president,’” she said. “I didn't know what a nuclear waste dump was.”
Terri Wells hopes this history will be remembered. Even outside of a major concern like a waste dump, she says it’s important for communities to stay organized.
“Instead of somebody coming in and telling your community what's important. It's like, okay, what do the people in the community think is important?” Wells said. “And then it bubbles up from there.”
The materials are available by request from Buncombe County Special Collections, and can also be accessed for free online.
