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COUNTY-BY-COUNTY REPORTS:
NO. 4: CLAY COUNTY, N.C.
Petition filed to halt expansion
of Shewbird Mountain mine
North Carolina grants permission
to excavate up to a maximum depth of 755 feet from the crest
‘They’re going to leave my parents living on a little blade’
‘We all live in a watershed,’ middle-schoolers extol
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition,
Inc.
Hayesville, N.C., Apr. 7, 2008 –
Shewbird Mountain is one of the landmark features of the
Earth’s natural beauty here in Clay County, where there are
many of them. This is far out in western North
Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The difference with Shewbird is
that since 1989, this elevation of 2,902 feet visible from
two states has had a granite mine on it. The operator
just received a permit to blast to a depth of 755 feet from
the crest. And whether he can do this is an issue now
in the North Carolina courts.
Attorney Thomas Stark of Durham
filed a petition with the Office of Administrative Hearings
Feb. 21. It protests the Dept. of Environment and
Natural Resources’ Jan. 18 permit to Harrison Construction
Co. Division of APAC, Alcoa, Tenn., to expand mining of
granite by shovel and truck atop Shewbird Mountain.
The Stark Law Group is asking for a September court date.
I asked Tom Stark, “So did you file
a restraining order?”
“It’s automatic when you file the
petition protesting the permit,” he replied.
North Carolina has a good public
records law, and this citizen inspected the five-inch-thick
APAC file at the DENR district office in Swannanoa, near
Asheville.
A document that caught my eye was
the Nov. 19, 2007 letter from James D. Simons, director of
the Division of Land Resources, to Harrison Construction of
Franklin, N.C.
Simons stated that a maximum
depth was to have been 500 feet. However, the director
continued: “Review of mine excavation profiles
indicates a maximum mine depth from peak of mountain to
bottom of pit would be around 755 feet and approximately 630
feet from the proposed final crest elevation to proposed
bottom of pit… Please revise item A4A on page 3 of
application and submit to this office.”
So the entity making the
application, Harrison Construction Co. Division of APAC,
Alcoa, Tenn., was not the addressed recipient of this key,
helpful letter giving instruction how to fix up page 3 of
the application.
MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL MINING is a dread way of life in
West Virginia. Meanwhile, a Jan. 10, 2008 memo from Judy
Webner, assistant state mining specialist, to Simons shows
how this industry is growing to the south, in the private
lands below the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“There are 196 crushed stone quarries presently under
permit in North Carolina and that comply with the
requirements of the act (General Statutes 74-46 The Mining
Act of 1971),” Webner wrote in the staff’s recommendation to
Simons to go ahead with the permit.
Finally, DENR did so Jan. 18, 2008. The permit was to
have been good through Sept. 2009. Mining of granite on
Shewbird could expand to 297 acres, and the affected area to
86.95 acres. Here are some other stipulations:
There were to have been diversions, earthen dikes,
check dams, sediment retarding structures, rip rap pits, or
ditches. All blasts were to be monitored with a
seismograph. The operator had to keep records of total
numbers of holes; the pattern of holes and delay of
intervals; the depth and size of holes; the type and total
pounds of explosives; the blast location; the distance to
the nearest regularly occupied structure; and the weather
conditions.
THERE ARE TWO PERSONS who certainly could have been
asked to assist with this monitoring of the blasts. Betty
Lou and Rev. Rufus Stark live in retirement on Shewbird
Lane, next door to the mine. They are the parents of Tom
Stark, the Durham attorney I mentioned earlier.
The Starks served United Methodists around the state,
in Leasburg, Burlington, Swepsonville, Clayton, Wilmington,
Raleigh and Morehead City, and for the last 14 years of his
career, Rev. Stark was president of the Methodist Children’s
Home in Raleigh. First her parents, and then the Starks,
enjoyed living on Lake Chatuge, and at a retreat high
up on Shewbird Lane. When this family grew tired of the
noise of speedboats, they moved to the high place for good
and expanded it to make it their retirement home.
The noise and the shakings from the mine are serious
matters. The Starks also are troubled by the harm they say
is being done to tributaries of the Hiwassee River, which
forms Lake Chatuge.
“There are little streams running down on both sides of
our property and then down below they form Woods Creek,
which runs into Lake Chatuge,” Mrs. Stark told me.
“One of the things the mining company does is to fix it
so that all the water runs into their own reservoirs, where
they clean the rocks, or whatever they do there, and we’re
concerned that one day Woods Creek will dry up.”
Later, I talked to her son Tom Stark by phone. He is a
graduate of Duke University and Duke Law School. The impact
of growing up in part on Lake Chatuge and Shewbird Mountain
is reflected in his being an Eagle Scout and a former
chairman of the Boy Scouts of America’s Open Spaces and
Trails Commission. Tom Stark said he has watched as the
granite mine has steadily bought more property and expanded.
“When they first put the mine there, they promised all
they were going to do was put a small pit at the bottom,”
Tom Stark said. “But now what they’re trying to do is chop
off the top of the mountain. They’re going to leave my
parents living on a little blade.”
‘THE DEPOSITION OF SEDIMENT TO 2,800 LINEAR FEET’
You can wade in the Hiwassee River where Fires Creek
flows into it and feel you have found the most serene and
beautiful locale in the Blue Ridge. Then, however, you can
drive a short distance to the south, minutes away along the
river’s banks, and this will place you in the center of the
bustling yard of Western Materials’ Mission Quarry. This
gravel producer has been a polluter of the Hiwassee River,
according to DENR.
The 65-acre quarry received permits in 1996 and 2001
for “continued operation of a gravel wash-water recycle
system consisting of an 18,000-gallon settling lagoon and a
20-gallon-per-minute spray pump with no discharge to the
surface waters.”
There is terse evidence in a June 2006 notice of
violation that the quarry operators were not as careful
about protecting the water as they could have been. DENR
complained: “No plans have been generated in accordance with
the requirements of the facility’s permit.”
In Nov. 2006, DENR’s patience was wearing thin as it
wrote: “There have been unauthorized impacts to an unnamed
tributary to the Hiwassee River. The sediment from the pile
flows downhill approximately 75-100 feet from the toe of the
slope into the unnamed tributary. The largest impacts were
caused by the deposition of this sediment to approximately
2,800 linear feet of stream, and the un-permitted
installation of a sediment basin in the stream.”
The file takes a hopeful turn with the June 2007 letter
from Western Materials’ consultant, Soil & Environmental
Consultants of Raleigh.
“A clean-up has occurred at Mission Quarry,” the
consultant wrote. “All sediment was excavated by hand, and
all material removed from the channel was disposed of
properly. In the area where an in-line sediment basin had
been installed, a channel was reformed.”
DENR has a small staff to cover the entire western tip
of North Carolina, where local governments dating to the
19th Century lack zoning, erosion control, even subdivision
ordinances – leaving all the environmental enforcement to
DENR. I don’t know if the latter has returned to the site
since that hopeful letter to prove it’s true. Meanwhile,
the quarry’s permit has been renewed, according to Starr
Silvis, DENR environmental engineer.
PROSPECTS FOR CLAY COUNTY AND WATER PROTECTION
Wealthy and/or credit-extended people love Clay County,
its mountains, the Nantahala National Forest and Lake
Chatuge. They enjoy spending part of the year here to play
golf, fish, go boating or just kick back and enjoy whatever
libation they’ve brought into the dry county. Meanwhile,
the 9,675 full-time residents still control county
government.
Herbert “Hub” Cheeks, a farmer, is chairman of the Clay
commission. The other members are Stephen “Doc” Sellers and
Harry Jarrett. At least two have sent signals they might
support stricter rules protecting the Hiwassee River, creeks
and Lake Chatuge.
“We don’t want to stop the growth, but look long-range
at where we’re going to be on schools, on septic,” Hub
Cheeks states in the video of the Mountain Landscapes
Initiative, being facilitated this year by the Southwestern
Commission of Sylva, North Carolina.
“Let’s do the best we can with the resources we’ve
got,” Cheeks continues. “If we can, let’s leave them better
than they were when we got them.”
Harry Jarrett is a former dean of instruction, dean
of continuing education, and finally in 1992-95, president
of Tri-County Community College near here. As a county
commissioner, he asked neighboring Towns County, Ga., for
“help with the water,” Towns Commissioner Bill Kennedy told
me. Jarrett is a member of the advisory board of the
Mountain Landscapes Initiative and invited its sponsors to
address the Clay Co. Commission, which they did. A person
by his name lives on Jarrett Road, where the county’s
300,000-gallon-per-day treatment plant is located, so has
cause to think about water each day – how it’s taken out for
drinking, showers and toilets, and put back into the
Hiwassee River as treated effluent.
I told him there is a Mountain Landscapes Initiative
effort, and the Safe Artificial Slopes Construction Act that
was pigeonholed in committee in ‘07 is going to be back in
the General Assembly this year.
“I am not aware of any connection between the Mountain
Landscapes Initiative and the Safe Artificial Slope Act,” he
said. This response reminded me how conflicted the
politicians of western North Carolina are as they weigh
whether to embrace environmental goals.
Paul Leek is Clay County manager. He told the
“Asheville Citizen-Times” newspaper this month that he is
looking forward to having the Mountain Initiative’s “tool
box” for better government.
“When you are looking at doing an ordinance, you have
something to start with and you don’t have to do it from
scratch,” he said.
A group called Partners for an Attractive Clay County
conducted a survey in January 2007 to study residents’
attitudes about natural and scenic beauty, growth and roads,
according to the “Clay County Progress” newspaper.
There were 1,303 responses. The issues receiving the
most responses indicating a high level of concern were clean
streams, 89 percent; ridge top development, 86%; clear
cutting for homes, 85%; scenic views, 85%; woodlands, 84%.;
and pastures and farmlands, 74%, according to the newspaper.
THE WATERSHED COALITION’S CHALLENGE TO CLAY COUNTY
There are seven recommended actions for local governments in
the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s 2007 Lake
Chatuge Watershed Action Plan. They are:
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establish a local sediment and erosion control program;
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evaluate your own property for potential best management
practices to retain/treat stormwater;
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fund the management measures called for in the action
plan;
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review and potentially revise subdivision ordinances;
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consider adopting a stormwater ordinance;
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plan for wastewater treatment for new development; and
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consider conducting a regional planning initiative.
The single additional recommendation for Clay County is
to pass a mountain protection ordinance as its neighbor
across the lake, Towns County, Ga., did in 2007 and then
strengthened this year.
There are three National Pollutant Discharge
Elemination System dischargers in Clay County, according to
the 2007 Hiwassee River Basinwide Water Quality Plan. They
are:
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USDA US Forest Service Jackrabbit Mountain Recreation
Area;
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Clay County Water and Sewer District Hayesville
Wastewater Treatment Plant; and
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Tennessee Valley Authority’s Chatuge Hydro Plant.
Finally, there are five NPDES permits pending in Clay
County, according to the DENR web site. They are:
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Clay County Water and Sewer District for gravity sewer
extension, pump stations and pressure sewer extensions,
and a second permit for collection system management and
operation;
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Rolling Frito-Lay Sales for vehicle maintenance
separator stormwater discharge, which is seeking two
permits for this purpose; and
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James A. and Lois R. Vanderwoude for construction
stormwater.
‘LET’S HAVE A HEART AND TAKE A PART’
Kathryn Henrikson is in Mrs. Anita Tyson’s 4th grade
class here at Hayesville Middle School. All the entries in
the poster contest are impressive, in my opinion, and yet I
believe hers makes the best use of this year’s theme, “We
all live in a watershed.”
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She has drawn with her crayons the mountains looming
above and cascading their water down into the Hiwassee River
and Lake Chatuge, and in a corner of her work, Kathryn Henrikson has written:
“We all live in a watershed.
Let’s have a heart
and take a part in protecting
our water and our land.”
Leanna Staton is the administrative assistant and
education coordinator for Clay County Soil and Water
Conservation.
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Click on the image
above to enlarge.
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I stopped by this month to visit her and her colleague,
Glen Cheeks. He is the Agriculture Cost Share Program
technician. Staton and Cheeks are two persons the nation
has to thank for this project, heightening children’s
understanding of the importance of the Blue Ridge
environment.
The children will grow up in a county where there are
corporations, and persons, who certainly need to hear this
and as Kathryn Henrikson urged, take it to heart and have a
part.
PREVIOUS
COUNTY-BY-COUNTY REPORTS:
Feb. 27, 2007 – Cherokee
County, NC Health
Board appointments end abruptly and an official fears
effluent from improperly installed septic systems could
travel "almost immediately" into the Hiwassee River
July 2, 2007 – Union County,
GA Union
County's Lamar Paris unifies 16 north Georgia counties to
gain relief from mandatory 150-foot stream buffers
Aug. 31, 2007 – Towns County,
GA The
man in the driver's seat of Towns County government goes to
work to try to prevent further harm to the Blue Ridge
Mountains and Lake Chatuge
* * *
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community west
of Murphy is a board member and a volunteer for Hiwassee River
Watershed Coalition.
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