NAVASSA — A Brunswick County town ticked off another box on its checklist to revive a culturally significant piece of its ancestry.
Council members chose a land donation area Thursday night to dedicate for Navassa’s Moze Heritage Center and restoration project.
The town had its choice of eight land plans. Greenfield Multistate Trust are the current property owners overseeing the adjacent Superfund site’s remedial action along with the Environment Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. The site’s soil and water were found to be contaminated in 2010, prompting the environmental agencies to step in.
READ MORE: Navassa Superfund site one step closer to development
Per the plan, the Multistate Trust would donate around 31 acres for the project aimed at commemorating Navassa’s Gullah Geechee roots, which trace back to the area’s rice plantations. Many Gullah Geechee people came from the rice-growing region of West Africa and were enslaved on plantations along the lower Atlantic coast. They have distinctively influenced American art, music, agriculture and food and retain a deep cultural legacy in the southeast.
“I am very proud of the work we’re doing to support this project,” said Claire Woods, director of environmental justice policies and programs at Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust.
As part of the restoration, the town and Natural Resource Trustee Council will rehabilitate a rice field dike to demonstrate how rice was grown there in the past. They will also build a walking trail, a pier with a viewing platform and conservation for wetlands. According to a presentation given by Multistate Trust last month, the project’s goals are to conserve the area’s riparian buffer, enhance and preserve wetland habitats and educate the public on Navassa’s history.
The engineering, design, permitting and construction is budgeted for $241,500, to be funded via National Fish and Wildlife Foundation sponsorship.
The donated land would also go toward building a Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center in the future. The town would be responsible for its funding.
The plan includes the potential option for a bike path connecting the site to Navassa Road, but no plans for that have been finalized.
The town chose option 2A, on the right, which allows them to retain ownership over the river access point, compared to option 2B, which would not. (Courtesy Greenfield Multistate Trust).
The land borders state-owned marsh on one side and Navassa’s Superfund site to the west, however, the town selected a plan that would only contain land from the uncontaminated portion of the property.
The land also includes potential access to the Brunswick River near the top of the site. Some plan options not selected reserved a 200-foot buffer for future developers instead of including it in the land donation.
In the meeting, Mayor Eulis Willis said excluding the buffer could draw in more developers, which Woods agreed with. He explained the developer would be responsible for the upkeep and management of the access point, which town council could request to use.
“We discussed that the 200-foot access would be a carrot, if you will, to whoever wants to develop there,” Willis said.
Council member James Hardy wanted the opposite.
“Why can’t it be the other way? Why can’t we retain that buffer for public use and give the developer a right-of-way to use it?” Hardy asked.
He said he was against any options that gave away the river access.
Ultimately, council voted 4-1 (Ernest Mooring dissented) granting the town potential access ownership, with the caveat to remain open for future developer access.
The move marked another step in redeveloping Navassa’s Superfund site, 246-acres formerly owned by Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp, which closed four decades ago. It and its subsidiaries operated a creosote-based wood treatment facility on the property from 1936 to 1980. Kerr-McGee transferred 92 acres of marsh to the state in 1991.
The corporation relayed ownership to its spinoff company, Tronox, in 2006, but the property changed hands again three years later when Tronox filed for bankruptcy. In its settlement, the 150 acres were given to the Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust, the trustee of the Multistate Environmental Response Trust.
In 2010, the EPA placed the site on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List because of contaminated groundwater, soil and sediment caused by dumped wastewater, although the agency had been studying the area before that. The EPA presented the first part of their remedial action plan last year.
The site was segmented in order to gradually allow different parcels to be removed from the priorities list. There are four parcels organized in order of ascending contamination severity — OU1, OU2, OU3, and OU4 — with the OU standing for “operable unit.” There is an OU5 parcel, which is the property’s groundwater. OU3 is the only state-owned portion. The trust also owns another piece, the eastern upland area, that was never contaminated.
Twenty acres along Navassa Road in OU1 were found to be free of contamination in September 2021. The plan for OU2 was unveiled on May 26 and the EPA is set to start work this fall on its 16 acres. Woods said she expects that process to take two to three months.
Afterward, Woods shared the trust hopes to sell in one transaction OU1, OU2 and the 66 eastern upland acres not used in the heritage donation. She hopes OU2 will reach its remediation goals so the town can decide how to use the land. Any developer would be expected to create a plan for the parcels in line, with three scenarios approved by Navassa’s Reuse Advisory Council last month. Navassa’s town council would have to approve of the property’s rezoning from heavy industrial and sign off on any planned unit development.
For now, the trust will start surveying the 31 acres to outline exact property boundaries. The land will require a restrictive covenant or conservation easement before transfer.
Woods anticipates neither would restrict the town from building its center on the property. When the trust finishes its survey of the area, it will be ready to sign a deed with the town.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com
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