In recent years, Western North Carolina -- and in particular areas in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- have become an environmental battleground. When I returned to the mountains in 1980, I expected to find the kind of relatively clean air, clean water and undeveloped landscape of my youth. Instead, I found myself in the midst of the beginnings of an all-out war on the ecology of the region, which, today, has escalated and manifested itself in a number of issues. This battleground does serve, however, as an instructive microcosmic model for the rest of the country. The issues range from an EPA Superfund site in Haywood County to the “Road to Nowhere” controversy in Graham and Swain counties.

Like modern-day Paul Reveres, a growing number of watchdog environmental organizations in the region have seen ecologically-based issues arrive -- by land, sea, and air -- like invading armies, and have hung out their warning lanterns in the belfries of public concern.

By land
The 1980s and 1990s saw battle lines drawn between environmentalists, the USDA Forest Service and the logging and timber companies in the region. The differences have concerned clear-cut logging (especially on Forest Service land), chip mills and the permanent preservation of wilderness (best evidenced in the “Blue Wall” Duke Power sale). More recently, the DOT, boards of county commissioners and businesses have drawn their respective lines in the dirt with environmental groups and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee over the issues of a major land swap between the Eastern Band and the National Park Service, as well as the controversial “Road to Nowhere” -- a paved road that is cutting a giant swath through the Smokies as well as threatening a portion of the Fontana watershed in Swain County.

By air
The air quality issue has raised its ugly head here in the mountains in recent years, with the nitrogen oxide readings threatening to reach levels as high as any in the entire country, including such record-setting metropolitan areas as Los Angeles. This is necessitating the creation of a variety of quality control organizations as well as such grassroots activist environmental organizations as the newly-formed Canary Coalition, which is working to coordinate existing environmental groups and to organize media events such as a concert featuring high-profile stars from the worlds of music, entertainment, business and politics.

By sea
There is the lingering Pigeon River controversy, a hard-fought battle between what was Champion International (now Blue Ridge Paper) and a coalition of river awareness and preservation groups in the western part of the state as well as eastern Tennessee. In addition, there are several community and county-based quality control groups monitoring rivers and streams, development impact, and town water systems.

While land, culture, history and community have always been important cornerstones of life here in the Smoky Mountains, never has the debate been hotter or the threat greater to the very existence of these natural themes of rural mountain life. While there has always been a certain amount of conflict involved in the history of the mountain South, never before has the landscape been so littered with controversy of an environmental nature. At every turn we see communities at odds with one another over the question of the bottom line versus preservation of the environment. In this respect, the Great Smokies can be seen as something of a microcosm for the rest of the country with regard to not only the escalation of existing environmental issues, but the multiplicity of issues now, collectively, coming to a head in the region.

While the residents of Big Cove over on the Qualla Reser-vation are feuding with the Swain Coun-ty Board of Commis-sioners (reminiscent of the Indian/Euro-pean conflicts from the 19th century, and before) over the land-swap deal with the National Park Ser-vice, and while the “Road to Nowhere” fast becomes a paradoxical metaphor for local comic relief, everyone is breathing some of the foulest air in the nation -- a phenomenon already having documented health-related repercussions on all ages of the population.

“We’re like the canary birds in the coal mines,” says Canary Coalition Director Avram Freidman of Sylva. “Without being asked, we’re all being used as canaries while our air is being eroded by the power and coal companies and the auto industry.”

While the various battle lines are being drawn and sides taken, the landscape, culture, history and sense of community here in the Western North Carolina mountains is changing -- rapidly and forever. One can only hope that these kinds of changes are not fatal to the unique and long-standing cultures, along with plant and animal populations indigenous to the Smokies, and that such recent action as the All-Taxa Biological Survey being carried out in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will provide the necessary information, leading to a baseline model and antidotes for the waning ecosystem health of what is a true treasure-trove of biodiversity. Let us hope that this widening road of conflict will not, in the end, be known only as a road that led nowhere, but will become, instead, a road that will be perceived to have led to somewhere. Somewhere beautiful. Again.

(Crowe lives in Jackson County.)

 

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