Muriel Branch: Keep your hand on the plow and hold on

Published 10:25 pm Thursday, July 24, 2025

The immortal words of the Negro Spiritual, “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on,” defines the moment we are in right now in Cumberland County as the five member Board of Supervisors rush to vote on the new Green Ridge Conditional Use Permit 24-01. The public hearing is scheduled for Monday, July 28 at 7 p.m. at Cumberland Middle School Cafetorium, located at 15 School Street.

“Hold on” is a command to tighten our grip, and declare in unambiguous terms, and on every occasion, that the majority of Cumberland residents and property owners do not want a landfill. We made that clear in 2018, and our decision still holds. That board ignored our vehement opposition to the landfill, and approved the 2018 CUP. The new Board of Supervisors seems poised to repeat that mistake. So, hold on, we must!

As citizens, and stakeholders, we are obligated to speak out about the very real human costs landfills inflict on our communities, and the undue economic burden they place on poor rural counties. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,” and that for us means the freedom to live in a safe, healthy, and unpolluted county. But vigilance requires work. My historic heroine Maggie Lena Walker once said, “There is no such thing as standing still: you must go up or down: you must increase or diminish: you must grow or decay: you must spread out or shrink up – you can’t stand still.”

We will not, we cannot be still or quiet as our community is decimated by someone else’s trash. It is more urgent than ever that we keep our hands on the proverbial plow, and remain steadfast in our objective to preserve and protect our history and environment from erasure and garbage. We believe that everyone has a right to a safe, and clean place to live.

Cumberlanders have one last opportunity, on the local level, to fight for that right, to raise our voices in dissent to a Board of Supervisors that seems to have greater allegiance to Green Ridge Recycling and Disposal than to their constituents who live in, work in, worship in, and support Cumberland County with our tax dollars. Every voice matters if we are to hold on to our homes, our heritage and our health. Tell the Cumberland Board of Supervisors that we are not willing to pay the steep price of exacerbated respiratory conditions, cancers, and childhood asthma. We are not willing to risk our safety due to at least 75 heavy trucks daily traveling along the same narrow, two-lane roads as we are. 

We are not willing to have our wells, groundwater and soil contaminated by toxic leachates leaking through plastic liners. We are not willing to have the burial places of our ancestors desecrated by piles of garbage. We are not willing to accept economic losses, because the sight and smell of a landfill will discourage tourism to historic and recreational sites in Cumberland County.

Holding on means insisting that your supervisor vote no on the latest Conditional Use Permit. By the way, the Board of Supervisors posted the final text of CUP 24-01 for their constituents to review 11 days before the public hearing. Why? What Is the rush? Keep Your Hand on the Plow, fellow Cumberlanders. Join our Saturday morning protest at the Cumberland County Courthouse, Saturday, July 26 at 8:30 a.m.

Rev. Muriel Miller Branch is a Pine Grove School alumnus, as well as President Emeritus of the AMMD Pine Grove Project. She can be reached at storytellermuriel4@gmail.com or 804-306-8494.