SAVING GREAT PLACES
fishing ground in the sound and destroyed the way of life of a vibrant fishing community, and an island very vulnerable to flooding would have been badly overbuilt. Bird Island, a small coastal island near the North Carolina-South Carolina state line, was the inspiration for a major conservation campaign. From 1992 to 2002 the Bird Island Preservation Society and the Federation worked to preserve the island as a wild place, a haven for birds and other creatures. The campaign also preserved an important pilgrimage site for people, the Kindred Spirit mailbox. At Navassa, a small African American town across the Cape Fear River from Wilmington, the issue was a proposal to build a large recycling plant and landfill on the edge of town. Many in the low-income town welcomed the possibility of new jobs promised by the proposal, but many others who lived nearby feared the disruption that would be caused by a large industrial project and argued that a landfill in an area vulnerable to flooding and hurricanes was a bad idea. Local people supported by the Federation fought the proposal from 2003 to 2007 and finally persuaded the state legislature to approve solid waste legislation that blocked the recycling plant and landfill. In Wilmington thousands of local people, aided by the Federation, campaigned from 2008 to 2016 to stop a proposal to build a large cement plant just north of the city. Cement plants have a large environmental footprint. If the Wilmington plant had been built, large
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