If you know your presidents, you’ll
remember Calvin Coolidge was the 30th commander-in-chief to occupy the Oval
Office. To my knowledge, Jay Erskine Leutze
has no aspirations to be president of the United States. However, Leutze is a modern-day example of
one of President Coolidge’s more famous quotations:
“Nothing in the world can take the
place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost
a proverb. Education will not; the world
is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On,’ has solved and always
will solve the problems of the human race.”
Jay Leutze is a well-educated,
non-practicing attorney in North Carolina whose “genius” might have gone
unnoticed if he had not been persistent in his fight to save Belview Mountain, which
is in panoramic view of his family’s cabin.
And I wouldn’t have known about Leutze if someone hadn’t sent me his
book: Stand Up That Mountain.
If you are one of the original
doubters in Wayne County’s fight against toxic coal ash, you need to read all
387 pages of Leutze’s “battle to save one small community in the wilderness
along the Appalachian Trail.” The odds
were stacked against Leutze and his band of rural neighbors. A rich mining-company owner cared little what
the locals thought. After all, he had a
state-issued mining permit and a public-be-damned attitude.
But wait a minute.
Neither the North Carolina environmental
agency nor the deep-pocketed miner had counted on the public awareness or the
36-months-long stink brought about by a determined group. “The Dog Town Bunch,” as they were labeled,
knew the value of Calvin Coolidge’s “Press On” slogan. With little initial money, but plenty of
mountain-bred moxie, the Dog Town Bunch began a hellhounds-on-the-heels fight
for environmental justice.What happened in Avery County, N.C., is different,
but it is the same as what we have in Coastal Georgia. You can see the
David-and-Goliath parallels in Wayne County. A powerful company maneuvers, in
the shadows, to get needed permits. Clark
Stone Company had a 99-year lease to allow its destruction of a piece of the
environment which had been millions of years in the making.
Beginning to sound
familiar?
Even though toxic coal ash wasn’t
threatening the community’s air and water, there was plenty of dust and noise
pollution. Clark Stone could operate its
monstrous rock-crushing machinery 24 hours a day, 365 days per year for almost
a century. Over time, a scenic mountain
would become a mammoth crater. While
corporate pockets would be stuffed, the pristine Appalachian Trail—a national
treasure—would gain nothing but an ugly eyesore and a monument to greed.
The rape of Belview Mountain was already
under way when Leutze and his neighbors started gnawing at the heels of those
responsible. Public hearings,
negotiations, courtroom skirmishes and tedious bureaucratic delays stretched
over three years. The winning, then
losing and ultimately winning made for an emotional roller-coaster ride. When the North Carolina Supreme Court
declined to review the Court of Appeals’ verdict in favor of the Dog Town Bunch,
the persistent group could go to the top of their beloved Belview Mountain and
joyously howl.
I am not interested in gloating or
howling, but maybe someone will write a book about how Coastal Georgia found
inspiration from its North Carolina environmental soulmates. Leutze and the Dog
Town Bunch proved the value of Calvin Coolidge’s admonition. That’s why we must
press on against toxic coal ash.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
