From February to August 2025, North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality issued repeated orders to shut down an unpermitted mining operation on the banks of the Nolichucky River in Mitchell County. Each time, the operators ignored the directive and expanded. It took six months — and a court injunction — before the state could force the mine to stop extracting rock from a site that now bleeds sediment into a river already devastated by Hurricane Helene.

The regulatory breakdown raises pointed questions about DEQ’s enforcement authority and whether the Mining Act of 1971 gives the department adequate tools to stop defiant operators in real time.

A Raleigh-linked operation no one permitted

The company behind the mine, Horizon 30 LLC, is listed as being based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in Raleigh, The News & Observer previously reported. Brent Fernandes of Turlock, California, is listed on documents as its CEO and Sean Chipman of Allentown as chief financial officer. The property owners are brothers Theodore and Bruce Carter of Candler. Neither the Carters, Fernandes nor Chipman could be reached for comment on the mine’s operations.

In North Carolina, DEQ’s Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources oversees mining operations under the Mining Act of 1971. The law requires mines or quarries to be permitted; before the ground is broken, a plan must be in place for reclamation of the site when extraction is complete.

DEQ says neither the property owners nor Horizon 30 ever applied for a permit before operations began in late January or early February 2025.

The enforcement timeline

The state Department of Labor discovered the mine was operating without a permit when federal officials asked the department to conduct safety training at the site. Labor officials notified DEQ, which first visited the site on Feb. 6, 2025, and found workers building roads and removing dirt, according to state records. At that point, the work was taking place over about 4 acres.

That was the first time DEQ told workers to stop mining because the operation had no permit and no plan for site reclamation. The digging didn’t stop, the state said.

In March 2025, DEQ notified the Carter brothers and Horizon 30 that the mine was violating the mining act. In April, the operators filed an incomplete application for a mining permit for the site, and when the state visited later that month the operation had grown to 10 acres. Mining continued.

DEQ again ordered the operators to “cease and desist,” the state said, but mining continued.

DEQ visited again about a month later, near the end of May 2025, and found mining had expanded more. The department again told operators to stop. At that point, DEQ said, Fernandes, the CEO, told inspectors he had been talking with department officials weekly and had told them to just “fine him the $5,000 a day” for continuing to operate without a permit.

In June 2025, the state again told the mine’s operators to stop working, but mining continued.

The state filed a complaint against the operation under the Mining Act in July in Mitchell County Superior Court, seeking to force the mine to shut down.

DEQ inspectors returned to the site in August 2025 to find mining underway on as much as 30 acres of the 50-acre site. They again told operators to stop mining and initiate reclamation.

On Aug. 11, the court issued a preliminary injunction against the mine and ordered it to stop the removal of materials from the site. Two weeks later, the state denied the operators’ application for a mining permit because the mine had been out of compliance from the beginning.

In six months, what started as a 4-acre operation had ballooned to 30 acres — all while the state agency charged with oversight issued orders that carried no immediate consequence.

Reclamation failures compound the damage

In September 2025, the company submitted a reclamation plan for the site as officials said it should have done before mining began — at least seven months prior. Though the plan hadn’t been approved, the company said it already had been implemented.

Subsequent inspections by DEQ found the site had not been stabilized and that sediment, possibly containing toxic heavy metals commonly resulting from mining, was running into the Nolichucky River directly from the mine and through drainage pipes the company installed that emptied into the river. The sediment had formed an island reaching nearly halfway across the river, inspectors said.

DEQ directed Horizon 30 to install ground cover, repair slopes where gullies had formed and take other actions to stabilize the site and control sediment runoff.

In October, the company submitted a modified reclamation plan that addressed the state’s concerns, and in December, DEQ approved the plan.

Environmental groups say the work has not been done.

Legal pressure from outside the state

In February 2026, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a notice of intent to sue the mine’s operators in 60 days under the federal Clean Water Act, with support from the nonprofits MountainTrue and the Center for Biological Diversity. Jamie Whitlock, the Asheville-based lead attorney for the SELC, said the group would sue the operators for violating the federal Clean Water Act if proper repairs aren’t made to the site.

“They’re just a bad actor,” Whitlock said. “They came into his small community and really just ravished it after it had already been basically destroyed by Helene.”

If issues at the mine aren’t addressed, Whitlock said, the SELC likely will file suit in April. The lawsuit will seek a civil penalty of up to $68,445 per day for each violation, attorney’s fees and costs, as well as an injunction against continued violations.

What the mine did to a community still recovering

The Nolichucky River, a 115-mile world-class whitewater rafting destination, hit historic flood levels during Hurricane Helene in September 2024, which dropped up to 2 feet of rain across mountainous Mitchell County. Water poured over the Nolichucky Dam at a rate twice the normal flow of Niagara Falls, according to researchers at East Tennessee State University. The flooding flattened mature trees, reshaped sections of the ancient Nolichucky Gorge and took out roads, bridges and a 60-mile section of the CSX rail line that traverses the gorge.

The mine reportedly operated under the guise of digging stone and gravel to help the railroad rebuild. It’s not clear whether stone from the Horizon 30 mine was ever used to help repair the blown-out rail line. Jonathan Stuckey, spokesman for CSX, said the railroad would not comment on whether it had received stone from Horizon 30.

“They came in literally in the dark of night,” said Christy Thrift, who with her husband, Scott Thrift, runs N.C. Outdoor Adventures.

Tessa Sharp, who lives near the mine site with her husband, Leo — both artists, he a disabled Navy vet — described the compounding damage.

“Helene really took out all of the foliage and the trees and everything in the landscape that was surrounding the river,” Tessa Sharp said. “The storm took all that away, and brought increased winds and higher chances of fire. And then the mine came in and kicked up all this dust that coated everything and got into the air that we breathed, and brought all the noise and stressed out the wildlife.”

“We used to have an active bald eagle nest right across the river from our house,” she said. “It’s been a complete change from what we knew.”

The river provides habitat for rare and threatened wildlife including the Eastern Hellbender and the Appalachian Elktoe mussel, supplies drinking water for downstream communities, and is a source of income for countless river guides and rafting and paddling outfitters.

Whitlock called the destruction a betrayal by the property’s North Carolina owners and those who ran the mine of a place and people who already had suffered enough.

When the rogue mine finally was forced to close last fall, inspectors say the restoration work on the site was woefully inadequate. Locals now fear the mountain may forever bleed pollutants into the river.

Original story reported and written by The N&O’s Martha Quillin. AI recap edited by N&O business editor Dave Hendrickson.

This story is available free to all readers thanks to financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider a digital subscription, which you can get here.

Helene in NC

DEQ issued months of orders to protect the Nolichucky. Illegal mine ignored them.

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