Saving Waterfalls

Twenty years ago, DuPont Forest, located outside of Brevard, North Carolina, close to the South Carolina line, was a ring of three ragged concentric circles. DuPont Forest was the outer ring which included three waterfalls: Hooker, Grassy Creek and Wintergreen. In 1997, DuPont Corporation, which had locally manufactured first silicon and then X-ray film since the 1950s, sold 7,700 acres at bargain prices to the state. The rest of the land and the plant itself went to Sterling Diagnostic, which continued making X-ray film. But Sterling was never slated to stay long at the Brevard plant. They sold the film plant to Agfa, a Belgium company. The new owners bought only about 476 acres, just what they thought they needed to run the plant. But what about the rest of the land?

I fell in love with DuPont Forest only a few years after its creation. If the six iconic waterfalls in DuPont State Recreational Forest were more difficult to reach, if they involved a long backpack, they would be featured in National Geographic magazine. But in the year 2000, High Falls and other waterfalls and lakes were in serious danger of being part of a high-end housing development instead of public land.

Fight for the Falls

The middle band of land, 2,223 acres, was known as the “waterfall tract” because it held three major waterfalls: Triple, Bridal and High Falls. The waterfall tract was sold to Waterfall Investment Group, owned by Jim Anthony, a real estate developer of the Cliffs Golf communities. Anthony planned to build the Cliffs at Brevard.

Anthony, a former lineman for the telephone company, bought the highly desirable property for $6.35 million from Sterling Diagnostic in a one-shot, closed bid sale. The State of North Carolina, with the help of The Conservation Fund, bid $5.5 million. It’s still unclear why the owners would sell the land without giving the state a chance to make a counteroffer. The developer immediately began building roads.

At first, Anthony said that he planned to use the land as a private retreat. The land deed stated that he could not build houses but could use it for “private recreational uses such as fishing, hiking, hunting, boating, camping and private cabin lodging.” What was private cabin lodging? Was the housing ban even enforceable? By the end of 1999, Anthony confirmed that he was going to build up to a hundred houses on the property after all, arguing the project would provide jobs to the local building trade. Those who knew the beauty and value of the waterfalls were appalled. 

At the time, Chet Meinzer, the DuPont Corporation property manager, told Anthony that the plant was still operating and that there was always the possibility of chemical leakage and emergency procedures. “It didn’t seem to faze Anthony,” Meinzer remembers. “Maybe Anthony didn’t fully appreciate the potential problems of putting high-value homes next to a working chemical plant.” 

At this point, savvy locals understood that houses were going to crop up around the three waterfalls. DuPont employees already knew about the beauty of the waterfalls because they and their families were able to hike and camp on the land. When DuPont Forest was created, it quickly became popular with hikers, bikers, and equestrians. People outside the area only knew about the waterfalls from the 1992 movie “The Last of the Mohicans.” 

People in Transylvania and Henderson counties mounted a campaign to encourage the state to buy the land from Anthony. Jim Hunt was the governor of North Carolina at the time, the longest-serving governor in the history of the state. In the year, 2000, an election year, some Democratic politicians from Eastern North Carolina were looking to promote an issue in the western part of the state; saving the waterfalls seemed like a good one.

For a brief while, this issue made national news, as the New York Times and Baltimore Sun covered the dispute. A core group of farsighted residents formed Friends of the Falls to advocate for saving the whole property. Jeff Jennings, a mechanical engineer by now working for Agfa, had helped DuPont Corporation sell the first parcel of land to the state. Jennings had started work at DuPont Corporation in 1985 and rotated through several company locations. When Jennings arrived from Wilmington, Delaware, in 1991, he fell in love with the area. “I was stunned by the beauty of the place,” he says. Jennings, now in his 50s, exudes an athleticism and agility of a much younger person.

In the 1990s, Jennings was sent on a business trip to Germany for several weeks and he came back an environmentalist. “I think the biggest impact was that in Germany, they had better access to nature with greenways and bike paths. They had more than ten times the number of trails compared to our population density. People were healthier and happier living in walkable communities. I came to see our lack of public access for walking and biking as a type of poverty, even if we didn’t recognize it as such.”

Aleen Steinberg, with a house in Cedar Mountain just outside the forest for over 50 years, had led hikes on DuPont land before it was public. Her groups included locals, summer people and teenagers. Early on, she understood the unique features of the DuPont land. These leaders felt that they were going to be more excluded from the cherished waterfalls than when DuPont Corporation owned the land.

Forest activists wrote articles and letters to the newspapers. They emailed their legislators. Friends of the Falls put an advertisement in the Hendersonville Times-News encouraging readers to mail the ad to Governor Hunt. A map of DuPont Forest showed the affected area right in the middle of the forest. The ad said:

We have a unique opportunity to protect and make available to everyone these natural wonders.

Do we want to lose these world-class waterfalls?...

If you want these falls added to the heart of DuPont State Forest, tell Governor Jim Hunt.

Ken Shelton, a radiologist at a local hospital, wrote an op-ed in Henderson Times-News encouraging readers to write to the North Carolina Council of State. In the op-ed, Shelton, an avid mountain biker and outdoor enthusiast, listed every member of the Council of State along with their contact information. The Council of State comprises the senior state government officials, including the lieutenant governor and the secretary of agriculture. 

Meetings were packed with silver-haired seniors and young bikers, as Steinberg describes them. The group sent 4,000 emails and letters to Governor Hunt. “We just kept at it.” A bearded man spoke in favor of saving the land. “If a bearded Republican wants this, it could work,” Steinberg thought.

Property rights advocates also mounted their fight, denouncing condemnation of the land as abuse of power. Many locals anticipated construction jobs in Anthony’s housing plans. Transylvania County said that it needed the extra property taxes.

Chuck McGrady, a former national Sierra Club president and a Republican state representative who worked on the first land acquisition, worked with Sam Neill, a Hendersonville attorney, to come up with a compromise. They thought that Anthony could build homes on most of his property. But maybe McGrady thought the area around the waterfalls would be included in the state forest. 

Alan Hirsch Remembers the Fight

In 2000, Alan Hirsch was the deputy attorney general working under Attorney General Mike Easley. When Jim Anthony announced he was going to build houses on the land surrounding the waterfalls, he had created a brochure. One day, Easley called Hirsch into his office and showed him the brochure. “Go save the land,” Easley said.

Hirsch quickly learned the story. He called Anthony and said, “We need to talk.” This started several months of conversation between Hirsch, Anthony, and Anthony’s lawyers.

Anthony was already discussing public access with the Department of Natural Resources. At the time, DENR was responsible for the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation; since then, DENR has been reorganized into the Department of Environmental Quality. Under the agreement, the public would be able to see the waterfalls from a narrow corridor for a few hours a day. Hirsch saw the importance of total access.

Hirsch talked to Anthony for several months, but they made little progress. Each week, Hirsch would say, “I’m going to take the land.” Anthony didn’t believe it. They were getting nowhere. It was a staring contest. Who was going to blink first? “I will talk until you start building,” Hirsch said. “Then I will have no choice but to take the land.” They repeated themselves week after week and tried to get an agreement where Anthony would have a much smaller development.

DENR and Hirsch went to Governor Hunt to try to resolve their differences. Hirsch remembers going into the study on the first floor of the Governor’s mansion. They spread out the maps on a large circular table. Hunt was not aware of the issue at this point. DENR and Hirsch each made their case on how to save the waterfalls for the public.

Hunt looked at the maps and saw the importance of the land immediately. “This is what the people of North Carolina will have forever,” Hunt said. The governor looked at the big picture. “The governor’s wishes did not automatically translate to eminent domain, but that was the backup plan,” Hirsch now says.

In the meantime, Hirsch was talking to Jeff Jennings once a week. Jennings, still working at the Brevard plant, kept him abreast of what was going on the ground on the DuPont land. Anthony kept saying that he’s ready to build. “If you build, the negotiations are off. I’m going to take the land,” Hirsch told him.

One Monday morning, Jeff Jennings called Hirsch. “The bulldozers are moving and they’re taking down trees.” Hirsch called Anthony’s lawyers: “We’re going to take the land.” 

Just by coincidence, the Council of States was meeting the next day. Hirsch went to Governor Hunt to explain the situation. “Go ahead and talk to the Council of States,” the governor said. Alan Hirsch made the presentation, explaining the whole story right up and including the bulldozers taking down trees.

The Council of States meetings are public, so anyone can come and listen. Easley made a motion to take the land. The governor said he supported the attorney general’s position. The Council of States took a vote, and it was unanimous. Within days, the state owned the property, and Anthony had to stop bulldozing and remove his equipment.

“Once it happened, it went fast,” Hirsch recalls. 

Those who had sent cards, letters and emails to the governor received a letter from Mike Easley, the attorney general, concerning the fate of the three waterfalls:

The Council of State voted to acquire the forest property that had been slated for development. The action followed many long months of negotiations by my lawyers, who had the difficult task of fully exploring whether a voluntary agreement could ever be reached to achieve the State’s goals of adequately protecting water quality and preserving the watershed and waterfalls for the people.…The State’s only choice was to acquire the threatened property by the power of eminent domain and thus make the DuPont Forest whole.

Then Anthony and the state started negotiating the price. Anthony had built the covered bridge at the top of High Falls and a second bridge on Conservation Road at the outflow of Lake Julia. The current visitor center was going to be the sales office for the housing development. It was partially built when the state acquired the waterfalls tract. The state paid the developer $24 million, almost four times the price. But the public had an intact forest—well, not quite. Agfa was still operating on 476 acres, in what has become known as the donut hole.

In 2001, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation chose Friends of the Falls to receive the Governor’s Award as Conservationist of the Year. This honor came in recognition of the Friends’ efforts in saving this land from commercial development. Friends of the Falls morphed into Friends of DuPont Forest.

Steinberg continued her involvement with the forest. She was on the board of Friends of DuPont for 12 years, and on the DuPont State Forest Advisory Committee. 

The Aleen Steinberg Visitor Center opened in 2013. “I have no idea how it happened. Someone wanted to honor me. It came as a surprise,” Steinberg says. “It’s very humbling.” The 2,600-square-foot center is located in a handcrafted log building that once was slated to serve as a sales office for the defunct development.

Steinberg, who just turned 90, keeps taking daily walks. “The joy is in the journey.” She quoted Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

DuPont Forest: A History by Danny Bernstein published by The History Press