Andrew Bryant wanted me to see for myself how he and his neighbors had been impacted by Fay Block Materials, a concrete masonry company off Ramsey Street, where Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway terminates.
He gave me a tour last Friday in the early afternoon. Afterward, I could only shake my head.
I have not seen a company in Fayetteville do to a neighborhood what Fay Block is doing to Bryant’s neighborhood in the North Street area near downtown.
More:Pitts: The good metal? What a billion-dollar Fayetteville titanium plant could cost the environment
Neighbors in the Black, economically depressed community of small homes in north Fayetteville have complained for years about dust pollution from the company. It produces pavers and other products and stacks gray construction blocks high enough to be visible behind tall fences.
The dust tells its own story.
In several places along the tour, Bryant showed me the mountains of sand just visible beyond a thin line of trees and fencing. Dust settles on the road, on the street, on porches that can never stay properly swept, on a nearby childhood playground, on headstones and funeral flowers in a cemetery, where generations of Black families in north Fayetteville are buried.
More:Pitts: EPA head Michael Regan returns to NC, announces new standards for 'forever chemicals'
Yet the dust is only part of the story. The larger part is that a big concrete company, one of the state's largest such companies, has over decades steadily encroached into what was residential property — and sometimes by questionable means. Neighbors and local activists see what happened as a textbook case of environmental racism.
This did not happen overnight, but over time, says Bryant, who is president of the neighborhood association.
“Just like you take a frog and put it in the water,” Bryant says. “If the water's hot, it'll jump out. But if you take the frog and gradually turn up the temperature, he'll just ... die. And that’s what's happening in this community, that's what they're doing.”
Every neighbor lives near Fay Block
I met Bryant at his modest and well-kept home on George Street, a short road that ends near where a tree line visually blocks Fay Block. Out of sight is not out of mind. He still hears the company's operations, which includes rumbling big trucks and cement mixers. The trucks get going as early as 5 a.m., according to Bryant.
I was greeted in the driveway by his friendly black and gray cat, Katie. The cat wandered up one day to him his wife, who has since passed. He once thought he lost Katie in a flood in 2016.
"I guess she used one of her nine lives," I said. She has used more than that, he said, without elaborating.
At first, I wondered why he wanted us to get in the car for what I had thought would be a walking tour. Then I realized we had a lot of ground to cover and that not only Bryant lives near Fay Block — everyone in the neighborhood lives near Fay Block or near some part of its sprawling operations. The neighborhood comprises smaller homes — some of them abandoned or ramshackle — small churches and the Blueberry Place public housing complex. It is almost surrounded.
He showed me the sign on North Street that indicated where Fay Block is requesting a rezoning — which neighbors are fighting. Open fencing showed company operations on both sides of the street, including stacks of the gray concrete blocks. We saw the playground and Northside Cemetery, both maintained by Fayetteville-Cumberland Parks & Recreation.
He says of the cemetery, “It’s low-income and for Black folks.”
Truly shocking zoning
Along the way, we picked up Felice Lockamy, who neighbors call by her middle name, Star.She has been fighting alongside Bryant and others in the neighborhood association. She is 72 and has been fighting Fay Block for a long time.
One sight that was truly shocking was two cases of next-door neighbors whose adjoining properties were split by Fay Block-owned land — where the company had stacked the now-familiar gray blocks. One neighbor could look out their window onto blocks.
“Spot zoning,” Bryant says. “Yeah, all the way through.”
Near a church, Bryant points to two homes where one neighbor who had respiratory problems had died. Another had cancer. He suspects pollution from Fay Block as a factor, saying it often smelled in the neighborhood.
No link has been established, but cement production is considered by environmental officials harmful because of the large amounts of carbon dioxide it emits and what the Natural Resources Defense Council calls an "array of health harms."
"What does it smell like?" I ask Bryant.
"Gunpowder," he says, adding that one time it "got in my throat."
Dubious tactics
In the rezoning, Fay Block wants an additional 1.4 acres cleared for heavy industrial so it can store materials there.
I reached out to Tom Lloyd, who was listed as the rezoning agent in a CityView story on Fay Block, and who had said the rezoning expansion would not lead to any additional dust. He told me he was no longer serving in that role and referred me to lawyer Jonathan Charleston, who did not return a phone call.
Thing is, the company had already been storing materials on some of the acreage at the site despite its Residential 5 zoning — for two years, as reported by WRAL.com and confirmed on my tour by Bryant, who believes it was even longer than that.
One might be tempted to dismiss this as an oversight, except Fay Block has done this before.The company has been cited eight times by the city, seven for rezoning problems, WRAL reported.
Lockamy, who lives on North Street, which is ground zero for the company’s operations, told me that in the early to mid-1990s, the company began conducting industrial activity on land near her that she was certain was designated residential. She led neighbors in raising the flag back then.
In 1993, Fay Block sought a rezoning from the council of 8 acres, according to a story in The Fayetteville Observer, which stated: “The land is between Ramsey Street and North Street near the Central Business District Loop.”
That’s the old name for the MLK Freeway.
The story continued: ”The company has been using the land for sand piles and to store other materials used to make cinder blocks, but the use does not comply with the land's zoning.”
Lockamy said the late Ida Ross, who represented District 2, where the plant is located, advocated for neighbors.
She recalled Ross’ assessment of what Fay Block was doing next to the neighborhood.
“They are building an industrial city,” Lockamy recalls Ross saying.
I learned on the tour, as busy and big as the block company looks from Ramsey Street, that is just the front door. The operations sprawl all the way out near the P.O. Hoffer Water Treatment Facility operated by the Fayetteville Public Works Commission.
'Virtually no power'
Bryant told me on our tour he thinks environmental racism is a factor in what has happened to the North Street area. He believes it would not have happened with a predominantly white neighborhood with the right connections.
Anne Smiley shares that opinion. Her group, Organizing Against Racism: Cumberland County, is helping the neighbors in their fight against the rezoning.
“It is real similar to what happened in other neighborhoods that are low-income and mostly Black,” says Smiley. “The neighbors have virtually no power against these companies.”
Bryant toward the end of the tour said he had invited members of the City Council on the tour but did not have any takers.
That is a shame. I can pretty much guarantee whoever takes the tour will not see the situation the same.
Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
