AHOSKIE — Between 35 and 40 protestors gathered on a downtown street corner Saturday to call attention to the proposed reopening of the Rivers Correctional Facility in Winton as a federal immigrant detention center.

While the number protesting was modest, they were buoyed by the overwhelmingly supportive response from passing drivers.

The 257-acre, 1,450-bed facility shuttered in 2021 is being considered as a facility to house people seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and suspected of not being in compliance with U.S. immigration law. The facility is owned by international private prison company GEO Group, “the largest detention services provider to ICE, with nearly 40 years of operational experience under ICE contracts,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU on Jan. 29 released the information it had obtained via a Freedom of Information Act process, and within three weeks, during the Hertford County Board of Commissioners Feb. 16 meeting, at least 10 people spoke out against the prison plan.

One individual, while not expressing support, noted that the decision about the fate of the Riverside prison was in the federal government’s hands, leaving county officials little, if any, recourse.

County commissioners, as of this publication, had declined to take a position on the property. Soon after the Feb. 16 commissioners meeting, Coastal Review asked County Manager Bill Shanahan whether he had been contacted about reopening the facility.

“I can tell you that the county manager has not been contacted,” he said, indicating that he had no more to add.

In an email following Saturday’s protest, Shanahan said nothing had changed.

Caroline Stephenson, who helped organize the protest, told Coastal Review that while she opposed ICE moving in, she had also been thinking about the “implications for citizens and residents,” she said. “I think the implications are not great.”

She said the facility would overwhelm the sheriff’s office, emergency medical services and hospital. “We’re a really small, rural county in terms of the amount of capacity that we have,” she explained.

Hertford County had fewer than 22,000 people when the last census was taken, and the official estimate was fewer than 20,000 as of 2024. Its population is roughly 58.4% Black, 36% white, 6.7% Hispanic or Latino, 1.9% Native American and 1.2% Asian. Nearly 23% of residents live in poverty and the per capita income is less than $29,000.

Walking along the protest line, Bobby Riddick used his cellphone to record the protest, planning, he said, to use it on his Facebook page. As cars passed by honking in support, he talked about the challenges of organizing a protest in Hertford County.

“It’s a very small area. A lot of people here have been here all their life,” he said. “They’re not used to protesting. They’re not used to fighting for their rights.”

Stephenson agreed, telling Coastal Review, “A lot of people, I think, are unsure or afraid of using their First Amendment rights and any of their rights that are provided under the Constitution. I think it’s important to educate people about their rights, but also about the dangers of not speaking.”

Standing with two friends behind a sign reading “ICE Out,” C.S. Brown High School senior Bird Lashbrook spoke clearly about her feelings.

“I have a voice that should be put to use, and I’m happy to give my support,” she said.

In 2021, President Biden, citing Justice Department reports that found private prisons were often less safe and had lower safety standards, as compared to publicly managed facilities, ordered the Justice Department to no longer renew contracts with private prison companies.

A Hometown Heritage marker telling the story of the Atlantic District Fairgrounds in Ahoskie was dedicated last month as part of a Juneteenth celebration.

The fairgrounds were, at one time, the cultural centerpiece of the region’s African American community.

But those times are gone. The track established in 1920 where trotters pulled sulkies for almost 90 years is overgrown and covered with grass. The brick grandstand, built in the late 1950s, is still there and from a distance looks intact, but the roof of the building next to it that once housed the stables is sagging and the paint is peeling.

The fairgrounds haven’t been used since 2010, but, for most of the nine decades it was in operation, it was a place where people of color in Hertford, Bertie, Gates and Northampton counties had the opportunity “to submit items of work and pride: preserves, needlecraft, woodcraft, cooking, livestock and art for possible prizes. It was rare for people of color to have such opportunities and rewards: to win a ribbon along with a dollar or two,” wrote Marvin Tupper Jones, executive director of the Chowan Discovery Group in a grant application for the nonprofit William G. Pomeroy Foundation.

The marker was unveiled June 14 at the R.L. Vann School Community Resource Center at 415 Holloman Ave. in Ahoskie, located beside the historic fairgrounds, during a Juneteenth program.

The Chowan Discovery Group works to preserve the history of the Winton Triangle, a 280-year-old landowning community of people of color. The Pomeroy Foundation was established in 2005 and offers several grant programs to help communities honor their history.

For a brief time during segregation, there were two fairs in Hertford County. The Hertford County Fair in Winton was first held 1918.

Prominent African American business owners and educators from Ahoskie and surrounding areas formed the Atlantic District Fair Association in 1920 after being denied access to the Hertford County Fair in the county seat.

“The Atlantic District Fair Association, incorporated, Ahoskie in Hertford county, to conduct a district agricultural fair and to promote agriculture, authorized capital $20,000, with $1,000 paid in by Augustus Sessoms of Ahoskie, C.D. Nichens, Winton and many others,” the Greensboro Daily News reported in February 2020.

The fair proved an immediate success, with the Hertford County Herald reporting on Oct. 28, 1921, “Since Tuesday, the opening day of the Atlantic’District Fair (colored), immense crowds have paid daily visits to the grounds…The opening day witnessed the smallest crowd of the 3-day fair. Wednesday’s and today’s crowds have met the expectations of the officials of the fair, who have been making extensive preparations for their initial fair.”

For three years, 1921-1923, the two fairs took place within a few weeks of one another.

But, according to the Ahoskie News Herald, by 1923 the Hertford County Fair was in financial trouble.

“The Hertford County Fair Association has called a meeting of the stockholders of the association … next Thursday, December 6. At that time a report of finances will be given and records of this year’s fair given. On account of the quick change in weather and postponing of the first day of the fair this year, the final report shows the association to have lost money, to the extent of about $350 this year (approximately $6,600 in 2025). This leaves the association worse off financially than before, and the meeting at Winton will probably decide the fate of the organization for another year,” the paper reported.

No further references to a Hertford County Fair was found in area newspapers.

Yet the Atlantic District Fair thrived throughout the 20th century. As the 32nd annual fair got underway in 1954, the Gates County Index reported in its Oct. 7 edition that, “President Clarence Chavis (had) received from Commissioner of Agriculture L. Y. Ballentine a letter in which the Atlantic District Fair was described us the third ranking fair in the state in the amount of agricultural exhibits and premiums, thus only one other fair besides the NC Stale Fair ranked higher than the Roanoke-Chowan’s Atlantic District Fair which in all its history has been promoted and managed entirely by Negroes.”

The paper did not identify the fair that ranked second.

Almost 40 years later, the fair continued to thrive. In a 1993 addendum to “History of the Atlantic District Fairground Association Incorporated … A.D. 1919 – A.D. 1991” wrote author Clarence Newsome, vice president of the association. “The 1993 episode of the Atlantic District Fair … was one of the most auspicious events in the recent history of the association.”

Paid attendance totaled nearly 8,000 people.

If 1993 was an auspicious year, there were storm clouds gathering.

“The population of the area started declining. A lot of the people active in the fair were business people. In the 70s,” Jones explained to Coastal Review. “We weren’t creating new retailers. We weren’t creating any more stores and business people and business people know how to run things.”

The population of Hertford County and Ahoskie have been in decline for more than 50 years, but the past 10 years have seen some of the more significant declines. From a population of almost 25,000 in the county in the 2010 census, the population is now estimated at less than 20,000. Ahoskie’s downtown district, which was at one time a thriving railroad transportation hub, reflects the broader changes seen countywide.

The entire downtown is a historic district, architecturally seemingly frozen in time between 1900 and 1940.

“The range of architectural styles found in Ahoskie is limited due to the relatively short period of the most of the town’s development,” wrote the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in documents creating an Ahoskie Historic District.

Today, however the downtown is almost entirely deserted, many of the buildings empty and in disrepair. Not all of them though. Toward the west side of town, The Sweets on Main opened in May after renovating a 1948 building that had once housed a doctor’s office. The watermelon sorbet was perfect on a hot summer day, according to this reporter.

Yet even if there are a few businesses trying to bring the downtown back, Jones isn’t sure if there is enough of the same spirit that had once created a bustling, viable downtown Ahoskie.

“I don’t know if I see a new generation of leaders,” Jones said. “In the late 60s, 70s and up, we were trying to hang on to what our parents and grandparents…had passed down to us, but we don’t see a generation behind us that’s going to bolster what we’re doing.”

This story has been updated. A previous version misidentified the date of the harness racing photo.

Update Feb. 20: The dedication ceremony scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 22, has been postponed due to inclement weather.

A grassroots civil rights attorney from Hertford County is being recognized by the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program.

The marker commemorating the late James Robert Walker Jr. is to be installed at the intersection of U.S. Highway 13 and N.C. Highway 42 in Ahoskie. The dedication ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at the New Ahoskie Missionary Baptist Church, 410 West Hayes St., Ahoskie.

The Highway Historical Marker Program is a collaboration between the North Carolina departments of Natural and Cultural Resources and Transportation.

The first of eight children, Walker was born in 1924 and died in 1997. He was reared in Ahoskie in a family of educators with advanced degrees and the grandson of a preacher.

He served in World War II and, after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, he earned his bachelor’s degree from North Carolina College, now North Carolina Central University, according to a press release.

He was the first of two Black graduates from any program at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, graduating from its law school in 1952. He returned to northeastern North Carolina where he fought for voting rights in Halifax, Northampton, Warren, Bertie, Hertford and Gates counties.

Walker was the principal organizer and president of the Eastern Council on Community Affairs. The organization advocated for Black representation in local and state governing bodies, including town councils and state legislatures, and opposed bills for school separation or segregation, the press release continues.

Walker became the first Black member of UNC Chapel Hill’s Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, the school’s debating and literacy society, and the oldest student organization on the campus.

The state’s NAACP also recognized him with its Distinguished Service Award for his efforts in civil rights. In 1961, he was the keynote speaker for the National Lawyers Guild in Detroit, Michigan, and in 1978, was named Lawyer of the Year by the same organization.

The Meherrin Tribe that settled in northeastern North Carolina in the late 1600s is set to be recognized with a historical highway marker.

The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker dedication ceremony is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Meherrin Tribal Grounds between Ahoskie and Murfreesboro.

The Meherrin, whose traditional name Kauwets’a·ka means “People of the Water,” was formally recognized by the North Carolina government in 1986, the state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources announced Monday.

The marker is one of nine being dedicated this year that highlights American Indian culture and history in North Carolina. Historical markers were approved for the Coharie, Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbee, Meherrin, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi, Sappony and Waccamaw Siouan tribes. Historical markers were approved for the East Carolina Indian School and the Buie Mound sites, as well.

The North Carolina American Indian Heritage Commission staff worked closely with tribes in the state to complete the applications to be considered historical marker program, organizers said.

The Meherrin Tribe was first documented by in 1650 English merchant and explorer Sir Edward Bland, who visited the Meherrin village of Cowonchahawkon near present-day Emporia, Virginia. In the years that followed, European settlements began to encroach on native peoples, including the Meherrin, forcing them to move to other parts of Virginia. In 1691, they moved to present-day North Carolina where their tribal territories are found in Hertford, Bertie, Northampton and Gates counties.

A new Pleasant Plains Indian School was built in Hertford County in 1920 to replace the original school built in 1866. It was the second Rosenwald-funded school in the county. The school closed in 1949 and was converted into a community center to serve Indian and mixed families in 1950.

In 1975, Meherrin descendants reorganized the tribe and reclaimed its identity under Chief Wayne Mackanear Brown. They created a modern tribal government, led by a chief and seven elected council members. The tribe holds an annual powwow during the first week of October on the tribal grounds. A more complete history of the Meherrin Tribe can be found at www.meherrinnation.org.

The Highway Historical Marker Program is a collaboration between North Carolina departments of Natural and Cultural Resources and Transportation. For more information visit the website or call 919-814-6625.

A wood pellet production facility in Ahoskie has to install new air pollution control devices to reduce pollutant emissions under a newly issued modified air quality permit.

Under the newly modified permit, Enviva Pellets’ flagship plant in Hertford County must install a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer to cut volatile organic compounds, or VOC, and hazardous air pollutants, or HAP, emissions.

A thermal oxidizer creates heat that converts emissions into carbon dioxide and water.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday that the permit modifications will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and particular matter, including fine particulate matter.

The Title V permit allows the plant to increase its pellet production from 481,000 oven dried tons to 630,000 oven dried tons per year and the production of softwood pellets to a maximum of 100%, according to a DEQ news release.

Enviva Pellets Ahoskie began manufacturing pellets in November 2011 and it has been considered a major source under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, one established by Congress to prevent significant environmental impacts on regions where air quality meets the protective health standards under the Clean Air Act.

After the controls are installed and tested, the company will be a minor source under the program. The permit restricts the facility’s VOC emissions to less than 250 tons per year and hazardous air pollutant emissions to less than 10 tons per year.

The facility will be required to conduct stack testing if monthly softwood content or the production rate increases by more than 10%.

The permit updates follow a public hearing and comment period held last year on a draft permit for the facility.

Under the modified permit, the plant must submit a new fugitive dust plan to the Division of Air Quality within 90 days of installing new control devices to show how it will maintain and operate equipment while preventing dust from drifting beyond the property’s boundaries.

Residents concerned about dust at Enviva Pellets Ahoskie should contact the division’s Washington Regional Office at 252-946-6481.

Enviva Pellets Ahoskie operates 24/7 and has a production capacity of about 410,00 metric tons, according to the company’s website.

The final permit and other documents related to the permit are available online.

The state has put on hold final action on a controversial draft air quality permit for Enviva’s Ahoskie Plant to increase its wood pellet production by more than 30%.

Enviva submitted the request to increase its output from 481,800 oven dried tons to 630,000 oven dried tons per year in August 2020. The draft permit went before the public in July of this year.

The deadline for action on the air quality permit was Nov. 28, but after hearing concerns, particularly about air pollutants from the plant and its location in the economically distressed Hertford County, from the public and the DEQ Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Board, Division of Air Quality officials said the deadline no longer applies. 

No final action had been taken as of Monday, Dec. 5, Shawn Taylor, public information officer for the division, told Coastal Review.

“In response to questions raised by the board, DAQ determined that our rules did not require final action by Nov. 28, as we had earlier stated,” Taylor explained. He continued that the division is considering the concerns raised during the specially called environmental justice board meeting held Nov. 17 in Raleigh before taking final action.

“DEQ appreciates the Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board’s attention to this issue and the board providing an additional forum where community voices can be heard,” he continued. “Through its permitting and compliance programs, the Division of Air Quality has required significant reductions of dust and other air pollution emissions from all the Enviva Pellets facilities in North Carolina. The Division will continue to use permitting and non-permitting methods to address concerns raised by residents in Ahoskie and other communities near these facilities.”

The division first permitted Enviva Pellets, LLC – Ahoskie Plant in 2010 and it began manufacturing in November 2011. The plant in Hertford County is one of four Enviva plants in the state with the others in Sampson, Richmond and Northampton counties. 

All four are designated Tier 1 counties, or economically distressed, by the N.C. Department of Commerce, the board explains in a letter dated Sept. 27 to the Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser about the proposed permit.

“Every North Carolina biomass facility is in a community that is at least 25% non-white with slow growing or declining populations and high poverty rates,” the letter continues. Hertford County is home of the Meherrin Tribe and is 60% African American. The census area the facility will be located in is 69% African American. Hertford County has a poverty rate of almost 22%, ranking in the bottom 25% of counties for health outcomes determined by the commerce department, and has a death rate that exceeds the statewide death rate.

Enviva in North Carolina

The state Division of Air Quality received on Aug. 28, 2020, a permit modification request from Enviva to increase production from 481,800 oven dried tons to 630,000 oven dried tons per year at the Ahoskie plant. 

The division requested more information on the Title V renewal with modifications. Enviva submitted an addendum in December 2020. In December 2021, the company submitted a new Title V renewal and modification application to replace the first draft permit with additional proposed changes, Air Quality Division Director Mike Abraczinskas, said during the special meeting.

Abraczinskas explained that each Enviva plant in the state holds Title V permits, required by the Clean Air Act. The permits are legal documents that include pollution control requirements from federal or state regulations that apply to a source, according to the EPA. The federal agency’s regional offices oversee the state programs that issue these permits.

Air pollutants from wood pellet manufacturing include particulate matter emitted from multiple parts of the manufacturing process, as well as volatile organic compounds, toxic air pollutants and hazardous air pollutants, primarily emitted from drying and milling operations. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released from drying operations, and greenhouse gasses are emitted by pollution controls such as thermal oxidizers that burn other pollutants to destroy them, according to the division.

Abraczinskas said some of the original permits under Title V, or major source, for the facilities were developed in 2010 and began production in 2011. Once facilities began operating and executed some testing required in the initial permits, the division saw that the emissions in some cases were higher than what was anticipated, and were major sources for prevention of significant deterioration and hazardous air pollutants.

“Those emissions being higher caused a problem from our perspective. In some cases, they were not in the right permit. In some cases, they were in direct violation of the permit that we had issued,” he said. Staff pursued a variety of enforcement actions for the four facilities to get the right permit and install proper controls to reduce air pollution at the sites. 

After a settlement with Enviva in 2019, facilities were required to apply for and install equipment to control emissions. After the new controls are installed as scheduled in their permits, each facility will be minor sources under the state prevention of significant deterioration permitting program or below major sources for hazardous air pollutants thresholds.

Because the division required Enviva to install more stringent controls to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, hazardous air pollutants and particulate matter, emissions have declined even as production increased, Abraczinskas said. The facilities requested production increases in most cases. 

Most recently, the division drafted a modified air quality permit for Enviva Ahoskie, the last plant of the four undergoing adjustments necessary to address compliance, Abraczinskas explained. The draft permit would require the facility to install the same pollution control devices already required at the other three Enviva facilities in the state.

Abraczinskas said when the draft permit went to public comment July 13, the division began an outreach effort in collaboration with the DEQ’s environmental justice team, including the public hearing in Ahoskie Aug. 16, public notices, and community outreach.

As a result of the public input process, Abraczinskas said the division made some changes to the draft permits, including a requirement to update the fugitive dust plan to develop strategies to control fugitive dust emissions from all new sources. The division also added hydrogen chloride stack testing requirements for hazardous air pollutant emissions and conditions to limit hazardous air pollutant emissions. Also, the plant will be required to test during the construction phase of the project.

These changes were made to the draft permit before the start of EPA’s 45-day review period Sept. 29. EPA had no further comments in its Nov. 9 response, Abraczinskas said.

“I’ll emphasize no final action has been taken at this time. But after updating the draft permit based on the recommendations from both the hearing officers report and all the comments received during the comment period, and after EPA’s 45-day review, which just concluded with a response of no further comments or concerns with the draft permit,” he said.

The division’s engagement with facilities like Enviva don’t end when the permit is issued, but is the beginning, he explained. The division makes unannounced inspections of these types of facilities every year, which he said is more frequent than what EPA requires. The permit also requires the facilities submit reports for staff to make sure data is in line with monitoring parameters and metrics in the permit. 

Abraczinskas explained that for noise complaints, the division does not have the authority to put anything in the air quality permit for those but they do see what ordinances exist in the area to include in the response. 

Community voices 

Dr. Ruby Bell, a Sampson County resident, presented to the board on behalf of The Impacted Communities Against Wood Pellets Coalition.

The coalition is a group of residents impacted by the pollution, dust, noise and forest destruction of the biomass wood pellet industry, and the forest protection and environmental justice organization, Dogwood Alliance, she said. Coalition members have been studying the impacts of the wood pellet industry since the first plant opened in Ahoskie in 2011.

The wood pellets industry does not advance North Carolina’s clean energy economy, “Yet NCDEQ has continued to approve permits to expand wood pellet production in North Carolina. Enviva has received nearly $10 million dollars in subsidies in North Carolina,” Bell said.

The current Enviva permit application under consideration for the Ahoskie plant requires the installation of air pollution controls, but is also allowing the plant to greatly expand production, “resulting in more dust pollution, foot traffic, forest destruction and the increase of some harmful toxins.”

Enviva should install these air controls at Ahoskie, but their request for expansion warrants further consideration, Bell explained before sharing with the board the coalition’s eight recommendations, beginning with denying Enviva’s permit to expand production at the Ahoskie plant, and require them to install pollution controls.

Other recommendations include requiring Enviva to install fugitive dust plans at all facilities and strengthen their existing fugitive dust plan in Ahoskie, install air quality monitoring within a quarter-mile of the facility, install continuous emissions monitoring to capture fluctuations in emissions, and acknowledge and measure the greenhouse gas emissions of industrial logging and the wood pellet industry in the state. 

Additionally, the coalition recommends addressing noise pollution through limiting Enviva’s nighttime operations and/or coordinating with local towns to address noise ordinance violations. 

DEQ should recognize their obligation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to consider disproportionate impacts, and deny permits such as this one that adversely impact communities of color and require Enviva to consult with the Meherrin Tribe prior to any issuance of a permit for expansion, Bell said.

La’Meshia Whittington, a member of the advisory board and the North Carolina Black Alliance deputy director of programs, said, “We have to understand that Tier 1 counties have been the target communities by which these corporations.”

The counties are chosen for the natural resources that many community leaders work to maintain and protect, “but also because it’s economically distressed, meaning that that community and its local leaders are going to choose a corporation because it’s the promise of jobs, even though, unfortunately, it comes with health disparities that our community members don’t deserve,” she continued. 

The Department of Commerce ranks health impacts and health factors annually in addition to economic distress. The two different ranking systems provide the measure of overall current health and health outcomes of each county. The 2022 health factors and health outcomes have the four counties where Enviva plants are ranked in the bottom 50 for both systems.

“We have to understand when assessing environmental justice communities, cumulative impact means that if your environment is contaminated, it leads to diseases and cancers you wouldn’t have had,” she said.

An extensive body of scientific evidence shows that long- and short-term exposure to fine particulate pollution, also known as fine particulate matter, can cause premature death, harmful effects in the cardiovascular system, including increased hospital admissions and emergency department visits for heart attacks and strokes, and links to respiratory effects like asthma attacks, Whittington explained.

Major pollutants in Hertford County include nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide exposure can lead to serious tissue damage, nitrogen oxide exposure can lead to respiratory infections and asthma, and sulfur dioxide is causing an increased risk of hospital admissions or emergency room visits.

She said she acknowledges that the reality is there are policies and red tape that prevent state departments from being able to engage with the permitting process beyond what they’re doing. 

She recommends engaging with local elected leaders and asking how long the industry is committed to staying in the area and providing jobs, because wood pellets are not a long-term industry. Rather it’s a short-term industry subject to international market demand. 

Enviva response

Enviva provided the following email response Monday to a request for comment:

“At Enviva, we understand being a successful business includes more than providing well-paid jobs and creating a positive economic impact; it entails being an integral part of the communities we call home and demonstrating environmental leadership, including in the way we operate our facilities and engage with our communities. We invest in our plants and make them the most environmentally controlled facilities in the industry, with best-in-class emissions control technology to minimize any impact from our operations on neighbors and communities.

“We test our facilities regularly with a third-party expert and those test results are made available to the public by the state regulatory agencies, in addition to air monitoring performed in the vicinity of our plants, which all confirm that the air quality in our communities is in compliance with strict environmental laws and regulations, including the U.S. Clean Air Act.   

“As part of our community relations efforts, we engage with our communities in advance of any of plan for new plant construction or expansions as well as in the course of our continued operations, to answer questions and address any concerns from our neighbors while also providing our support to the communities’ needs. We also work closely with state regulatory agencies throughout the entire permitting process to involve broad public participation and educate our communities about our plans, permitting process and operations.

“Specific to Ahoskie: We are currently waiting to receive the Air Quality Permit for our Ahoskie plant following a thorough review by North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ) and the EPA. This permit would authorize us to begin installing and operating additional state-of-the-art emission control equipment—including a regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO), and a regenerative thermal or catalytic oxidizer (RTO/RCO)—to support the expansion of our plant.”

This post has been updated, statement from Enviva added.

A wood pellet manufacturing plant in Hertford County has submitted a draft permit asking to increase production.

Plant officials want to increase production from 481,800 oven-dried tons to 630,000 oven-dried tons.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality is to hold an an in-person public hearing 6 p.m. Aug. 16 on the request and others in the draft Title V air permit renewal for Enviva Pellets Ahoskie plant.

The meeting is to take place in Roanoke-Chowan Community College gymnasium, New Student Services Center, Room 101, 109 Community College Road, Ahoskie.

Title V permits are to comply with permitting requirements under Title V of the federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

In addition to increasing pellet production, the proposed permit requires the installation of air pollution control equipment and operational limits to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOC, and total hazardous air pollutants, or HAP. To reduce volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants emissions, the draft permit would require the facility to install a regenerative thermal oxidizer and a regenerative catalytic/thermal oxidizer.

The draft permit limits the facility’s VOC emissions to less than 250 tons per year and HAP emissions to less than 10 tons per year of any one HAP and less than 25 tons per year for all HAPs combined.

The public is invited to attend the hearing and provide its comments on the proposed action. Signup will be available upon arrival. Oral comments at the hearing should be limited to 3 minutes.

Written comments may also be submitted during the hearing or by email to DAQ.publiccomments@ncdenr.gov with the subject line “Enviva Ahoskie.20B.” Comments can be left by voicemail at 919-707-8430.

The public comment period ends at 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19. Division officials said all public comments will be considered before a final decision on the proposed permit is made.

Enviva communications team provided July 14 the following comment to Coastal Review:

“In consultation with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NC DEQ), Enviva submitted a draft Title V permit for our Ahoskie wood pellet production plant to renew the existing air permit with modifications to enhance the plant in terms of efficiency, environmental performance, and production. A major highlight to the permit application is to install additional state of the art air quality control equipment to further reduce emissions. The requested expansion permit would bring total permitted production capacity to 630,000 oven dry tons of pellets per year, up from the current permitted 481,800 oven dry tons of pellets per year. Enviva will install the new air quality controls before being allowed to pursue the higher level of production.

“This type of investment of capital and our company’s resource allocation demonstrates our strong environmental and compliance leadership in the industry, as the world’s largest wood pellet manufacturer. It is also representative of our company’s core values of caring for our people and forests, accountability, and integrity.”

Copies of all data and the application submitted by Enviva Pellets, LLC – Ahoskie Plant are available for public inspection on the DAQ website or in person by appointment only at NC DEQ Division of Air Quality, Air Permits Section, 217 West Jones St., Suite 4000, Raleigh, or Washington Regional Office, 943 Washington Square Mall, Washington.

Sometime this summer, there is to be a new highway marker placed at the New Ahoskie Baptist Church in Ahoskie.

The marker, part of North Carolina’s Civil Rights Trail program, is to read, “New Ahoskie Baptist Church in Ahoskie, North Carolina, where church members led 1960s civil rights efforts. Their word expanded access to public offices, resources, and employment.”

Two short sentences that hint of a time of turmoil, fear and change. And it was not just in Ahoskie. The call for equality, for voting rights, for equal access to schools, jobs and medicine swept across northeastern North Carolina, forcing change upon a society that had been inexorably stripping Black Americans of basic rights for more than 90 years.

The North Carolina Civil Rights Trail is an initiative of the African American Heritage Commission, a division of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Plans call for 50 highway markers to be placed between now and 2023 in counties throughout the state, “highlighting and acknowledging tireless civil rights efforts that are well known and, in some cases, unsung,” according to the African American Heritage Commission website. The commission partnered with the North Carolina Office of Archives & History and Visit NC for the marker program.

The New Ahoskie Baptist Church has been at the center of the Black American community in the Hertford County town since it opened its doors in 1866. When the Rev. Dr. John L. Scott arrived in 1963, he arrived just in time to dedicate the new building the parishioners had built and paid for, but that is a small part of his legacy.

Scott had just graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary near Chester, Pennsylvania, but he had grown up in Roanoke Rapids in Halifax County, just to the west of Hertford County. Even during his time in the seminary, he had already been active in the area. In December 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King spoke at the Edenton Armory within 50 miles of Ahoskie. Scott was there as King’s plane landed outside Elizabeth City.

“King flew in from Rocky Mount in a single-engine plane out on an unlit running strip where we were asked to put our cars together, opposite each other on either side to light up the runway, so that the airplane could see how to land. I said to myself, ‘My God almighty. What nerve.’ Because he got off that plane, wasn’t shaking a bit. I’d have been scared to death,” Scott recently recalled.

And Scott was an important part of King’s appearance at the event.

“I remember being one of the people who introduced him,” he said.

He is now the pastor at St. John’s Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, but when Scott took to the pulpit in Ahoskie, he knew it was time for change.

“When I came, I knew that I would have to be directly involved,” he said. “So, I hit the ground running … on fire.”

Ethel Tyree, now 88, recalled the first steps Scott took to force the change that was needed.

“He and all of his members, I got to give credit to his deacons and all of those who went to the Ahoskie Chamber of Commerce and told them if they did not hire some Black folks, we were going to take our trade other places,” she said. “My husband was in that group and his name was Gerald Edward Tyree.”

Local merchants were being challenged throughout the small towns of northeastern North Carolina. The stores were willing to sell clothes, shoes and hats to their Black clientele, but trying on the clothes was prohibited.

Norm Brinkley, whose father was the first head of the Edenton Chapter of the NAACP, remembers what shopping was like.

“We had to catch the bus to go get clothes from Norfolk (Virginia) because they wouldn’t let you try it on, the clothes. You bought it, you had it,” he said recently.

There were other restrictions as well, and a childhood memory of one of them may have contributed to Scott’s activism.

“I remember walking down Main Street in Roanoke Rapids (as a boy). At that time, Gene Autry and Dale Evans were very popular, and I wanted to go to the movies. And my father said to me we couldn’t go. I wanted to know how come I couldn’t go. He said ‘because we have color. We are not allowed to go.’ So I told him, ‘Daddy when I become a big boy, I’m going to do everything in my power to break it up,’” he recalled.

In Edenton, Golden Frinks was one of 12 national field secretaries for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was instrumental in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. But if Frinks’ footprint was national, his activity was local.

“Mr. Frinks started to group young people to march and make a difference and just decry segregation,” said Emma Bonner, who has a doctorate in education. “We were not allowed to go to the movies unless we sat in the balcony, and they did not allow us to go in the drugstore and sit down. All of that I experienced.”

And so, they marched.

“I was one of the ones marching to open up the movie and then stop segregation,” she said.

And they were arrested, often by people who seemed to have less education than the marchers had.

“I was arrested by a policeman who couldn’t even spell the words ‘picketing without a permit,’” she said.

The effects of segregation were felt beyond the streets of the towns, beyond the stores, movie theaters and drugstores.

When the Roanoke-Chowan Hospital opened in 1948 it was segregated, and it was still segregated when Marvin Tupper Jones went in for surgery in 1964.

“I woke up from surgery at 12 years old, in the hallway after appendicitis surgery. And the reason why I woke up in the hall from surgery was, there was no more room in the colored section of the hospital,” he said.

His experience was not unique.

“A year later … my older cousin woke up from surgery in the hallway,” he added.

It may have been the cousin waking up in the hallway that finally triggered the threat of a lawsuit.

“His father is working with Reverend Scott,” he said. What Scott realized was that the hospital was taking federal money for its operations, but federal law prohibited discrimination.

“He told the hospital director that because the hospital is getting federal funds, they can’t discriminate like that, they can’t keep one area separate,” Jones said.

Scott went to see the CEO of the hospital, hoping to avoid filing the suit.

“I said we don’t want to file this suit and everything, but we cannot take this oppression in any longer. He pulled off his glasses and said to me. ‘Preacher, if you think I’m going to injure the health of white people by putting Black folk in their room you got another thought coming.’”

The case proceeded and, as a result, the hospital was desegregated in 1966. After the suit had been settled, Scott got a phone call from the hospital’s CEO.

“‘Thank you,’” Scott was told. “‘By God, you had to do it. And I’m glad you made us do it, because if I’d have voluntarily done it on my own, they would have run me out of town.’”

While a court order could force the hospital to desegregate, not even a Supreme Court decision seemed to move local school districts to integrate their schools. It was not until 1970 that the schools were fully integrated.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka held that separate-but-equal facilities were inherently unequal. For the students growing up in segregated communities, the inherent inequality was readily apparent.

Brinkley played football in high school, and his memory is still vivid of how unfair the system was then.

“In Edenton they had the stadium, and we could play football in the stadium. But they had a dressing room that was paid for by taxes and everything, and we couldn’t even use that,” he said.

For North Carolina schools, integration was a slow process, and in Ahoskie, Ethel Tyree was in the middle of it.

“I can tell you when the school integrated because I worked at the school the summer before. We did not integrate until September of 1970,” she said.

With integration came the skills of the Black educators and opportunities for them. For the Ahoskie schools, what Tyree offered was invaluable. With a degree in history and graduate degrees in library science and education, she brought needed skills to the district when she moved to the high school.

“I was a full-time librarian. I worked at that for 10 years. And then I went to central office, where I was over all of the libraries. Then I was the testing coordinator,” she said.

But the journey to professional accomplishment began when no one dared challenge segregation.

“I was one of the ones who had to get up and move to the back on the bus because I rode the bus back and forth to North Carolina Central from 1952 until 1955,” she said.

Perhaps no battle for equal rights was as difficult as the right to vote. Beginning with the end of reconstruction in the 1870s, North Carolina legislators began creating carefully crafted laws specifically to limit the ability of Blacks to vote.

Blacks faced literacy tests that were not required of white voters, and the tests were arbitrary and changed from place to place.

Dr. Ben Speller, an officer with the Edenton Historical Commission, former first dean of library sciences at North Carolina Central University and whose leadership in preservation is cited as inspiration in creation of the African American Heritage Commission, grew up in Bertie County and remembers what it was like in northeastern North Carolina.

“Over in Bertie they would pick the hardest thing in the Bible, and you would read it, and then they would make you interpret what that meant, and you know the Bible can wind you up if you’ve not read it right,” he said.

Scott has memories of that time as well.

“They would ask us how many bubbles were in a bar of soap. I mean, ludicrous … It had no intelligence in it at all. It was all a means of suppression,” he said.

When the Voting Acts Right of 1965 was passed, it opened the door for participation, but participation called for education, telling people how to register and where to vote, and Scott was motivated to get out the vote.

“George Wallace was running for president. And they had a big sign there that said George Wallace for President,” he said. “That’s why I led that voter education campaign. We met about 15 churches a week. I wasn’t married at the time, so I was free to get about … and fortunately George Wallace did not carry Hertford County.”

The fight for voting rights continues, Scott believes, as states look to limit voting access and early voting.

“It is a backward move. It is a repressive move. It is a move to indirectly shackle the Black church,” he said.

Bonner, looking back over her time bringing change to Edenton, agreed.

“Of course, it’s an ongoing issue. You know the story of the United States. It is an ongoing issue. They’re trying to suppress voting rights, so it is an ongoing issue,” she said.