Environmentalists and Community Members Band Together Against Buc-ee's
The Texas mega-chain is looking to expand across the nation, polluting air and water, crowding small town streets, and paving over cultural sites.
Lewis Raven Wallace
EFLAND, N.C. — Missy’s Grill sits off a tree-lined stretch near where Interstate 40 and I-85 merge, an unassuming diner advertised by no billboard, no lit sign — just “Missy’s Grill” in white plastic lettering. Del Ward stands in the parking lot, gesturing emphatically across the road at a cattle farm that was nearly turned into a gas station the size of a small mall.
It would have been the first Buc-ee’s travel stop in North Carolina.
Five years ago, Ward was on his way to Missy’s for a sandwich when he noticed a little sign about a zoning meeting. That’s how he learned about the proposed mega gas station in his tiny hometown. At the meeting, he says, “There were people who have lived here their whole lives saying, ‘Absolutely not. This is my drinking water, this is the air I breathe. We don’t want this.’ ”
Ward, 30, is a bearded and burly country musician and music producer. He lives in Greensboro now, but he grew up going to Missy’s and used to coach mixed martial arts at a nearby gym. For years, he’s loaned his charisma to a growing movement against Buc-ee’s.
Ward and his neighbors successfully organized to stop Buc-ee’s opening here, but the company buckled down. In 2023, Buc-ee’s returned with a proposal just a few miles up the highway, in Mebane. In spite of strong local opposition, the Mebane Buc-ee’s is expected to open in about three years, after a huge renovation of the highway interchange.
If you haven’t heard of Buc-ee’s yet, look for the signs soon: The Disneyland of gas stations may be coming to an off-ramp near you. The Texas-based chain of enormous, sensational travel stops already has 50 locations and plans to open dozens more. These aren’t typical gas stations. In fact, the Buc-ee’s in Luling, Texas, is the world’s largest gas station, sprawling over 75,000 square feet and featuring 120 pumps. An existing Buc-ee’s in Sevierville, Tenn., and the forthcoming Buc-ee’s in Mebane, are on a similar scale.
Every Buc-ee’s covers dozens of acres of land, with “convenience stores” the size of a Target serving up hot food and advertising sparkling clean bathrooms.
The Buc-ee’s expansion has been welcomed by some local leaders, including in Mebane, who see a source of new jobs. It’s also been cheered by a devoted national fan base that gathers on subreddits and Facebook groups. It’s a Texas thing, about to become an everyone, everywhere, all the time thing.
The expansion has, however, also provoked a growing movement of detractors like Ward, who offer a sinister inventory of concerns: the loss of permeable surfaces near sensitive watersheds, the air pollution and traffic congestion associated with 100 gas pumps, the dozens of underground storage tanks full of carcinogenic toxins that can eventually leak, the company’s 24/7 water use and waste production — and the fact that these installations can bring some 10,000 cars a day to idle their engines at local traffic lights without stopping at local businesses. Bipartisan groups against Buc-ee’s have popped up in a growing number of small towns, including in Stafford, Va.; Palmer Lake, Colo.; and Oak Creek and DeForest, Wis.
In Mebane, the opposition has drawn together a slew of interests. There are environmentalists, older residents concerned about the character of Mebane’s cute downtown, nearby trailer park residents worried about pollution and traffic. Indigenous activists point out the planned Buc-ee’s would pave over an Occoneechee trading path, which is on the World Monuments Fund Watch List.
Buc-ee’s declined to comment for this story.
After a contentious public meeting, the Mebane planning board recommended against rezoning the site to allow the mega-gas station. In January 2024, the city council heard hours of public comment, the vast majority against Buc-ee’s. The broad consensus was this: Buc-ee’s is not for us — it’s for tourists, people from elsewhere to flush endless toilets and pump endless gas.
The city council approved the plan anyway.
“Buc-ee’s is a stupid chain that is an American nightmare,” says Janet Ecklebarger, an organizer who lives next to the Mebane site. “It’s the last thing we want people to think about Mebane.”
Buc-ee’s is unironically pro-fossil fuel, unironically “bigger is better.” The co-owner, flashy Texas millionaire Arch “Beaver” Aplin III, is a major donor to Southern Republican governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, who are banning abortion and against trans rights.
A billboard featuring Buc-ee’s red-hatted juvenile beaver logo already haunts the highway just beyond Mebane. “Buc-ee” is upside down, and the logo lettering is backward, a gimmick to catch the eye. Fat yellow letters yell, “YES, IT’S REAL.”
Ward remains defiant. “I’m not stopping,” he says, laughing with a bitter edge in the long light outside Missy’s. “I’m going to continue to fight across the country. I’m going to continue to help local communities get what is best for them, which is thoughtful and sustainable development that actually serves the community.”
Lewis Raven Wallace (he/they/ze) is a journalist based in Durham, North Carolina, the author of The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, and a co-founder of Press On, a southern movement journalism collective. He’s currently a Ford Global Fellow, and the Abolition Journalism Fellow with Interrupting Criminalization. He is white and transgender, and was born and raised in the Midwest with deep roots in the South.
