Commercial hog farming in Halifax County, on a possible verge of unprecedented growth, generated an intense debate during Monday night's adjourned meeting of the Halifax County Board of Supervisors.
Three proposed hog farms recently gained approval to operate in Halifax County, triggering a rebirth of the hotly-debated commercial hog farming issue.
Citizens worried about the negative effects of large commercial hog farms complained that the board should place a moratorium on new hog farms until an adequate conditional use permit process can be set up.
The far-reaching stink from hog farms will devalue neighboring properties and cause environmental damage to rivers, streams, and ground water, those citizens pointed out.
Several hog farmers who also appeared at the meeting stated that they have already met strenuous state and local guidelines for hog farms and any new regulations would unfairly prohibit them from being able to make a living.
Hog waste - referred to as affluent - is disposed of properly in a highly-regulated, scientific manner, proponents said.
However, the reality of the three approved farms rejuvenated opposition to the current local ordinance which regulates commercial hog farms.
"You all (the board) have dodged this issue and it's time to do something," commented Jack Dunavant of Halifax who is opposed to widespread commercial hog farming under current guidelines. "This thing is going to come and it's going to smack us in the face."
Supervisor Robbie Smart of South Boston (ED-8), along with supervisors Tom West of Nathalie (ED-2) and Bill Abbott (ED-4), were the most vocal defenders of the current ordinance.
"Are you against farming in Halifax County?" Smart asked Dunavant.
"No. I am a farmer," Dunavant responded. "But you have to do it in the right way."
"Right Way" Disputed
The board of supervisors went through similar debates two years ago when the commercial hog farming issue first arose locally to a large degree. On the heels of the "Right-to-Farm Act" of 1993, supervisors told members of the public that they were limited in ways to regulate farmers wishing to create hog farming operations.
However, in response to widespread public skepticism of commercial hog farming, the supervisors appointed a citizen committee to come up with suggested guidelines for a county ordinance on hog farms.
That 12-member committee was called the Agricultural Zone Study Group and was designed to include members from both sides of the debate.
Since one of the major issues of the debate is declining property values for adjacent landowners, three members of the committee were appointed from local real estate firms. They were Rosemary Ramsey, Sam Watts, and Cecil Granger.
Also on the committee were three members from agricultural backgrounds, including extension agent Larry McPeters, Marvin Barker, and Donnie Anderson.
Representing the Halifax County Planning Commission were members Hudson Reese, Hunter Ford, and Roy Bradley. Since that time, Bradley resigned from the planning commission and is now serving as the Director of Code Compliance for the county.
Dunavant was appointed to the committee as a representative from the county's Economic Development Authority. The remaining two members were Assistant County Administrator Jerry Lovelace and Robbie Love, the county's Geographic Information Systems Coordinator. They represented the county staff, though they were non-voting members of the group.
That group worked out a recommendation to the board that setbacks for hog farms be at least 500 feet from the nearest dwelling. That requirement can be reduced to 400 feet, if the hog farmer plants a ten-foot wide vegetative screen that will grow at least six-feet high, according to the recommendation which eventually became an ordinance.
The setback from a neighboring building can be reduced to 300 feet by mutual consent of the owner and the adjacent building owner, if the vegetative screen is put in place.
Furthermore, according to the ordinance, the setback of a hog farm operation must be a minimum of 400 feet from the centerline of an adjacent highway or road.
Dunavant questioned the fairness of the recommendations that made its way from the Agricultural Zone Study Group to the board of supervisors.
"As for the real estate members, one of the three came to just one meeting," Dunavant related. "They wouldn't touch it...it's a hot potato."
Their lack of attendance caused a voting majority clearly on the side of the proponents of least restrictions on hog farming, according to Dunavant.
"It ended up being a 'gang-up job' on Jack (himself) and Hunter Ford," Dunavant said.
New Citizen Concerns
John Brecht, a citizen from the Red Bank area, appeared at Monday night's meeting, warning the board about the negative aspects of commercial hog farms.
"Just take your children over to (eastern) North Carolina and let them smell that," Brecht told the board. "Then tell them that you're going to bring that smell back to Halifax County."
Brecht is a retired aeronautical engineer who has lived on his 45-acre farm on Rt. 602 for the past 22 years. While stating that he is not against hog farming in general, he said he is against constructing such operations which are "more manufacturing, than farming."
He questioned the impact that such hog farms would have on the local economy. "Those automated systems don't generate many jobs," he said. "Even if they did, they'd only fill them with Mexicans."
The setback ordinance is "nothing more than a joke," Brecht continued. "Three hundred, eight hundred feet, it doesn't matter to me," he said. "On a hot, humid day you can smell it from two miles away."
Such hog farms that can legally be built so close to adjacent landowners causes a sudden demise in adjacent property values, he said.
"You'll never sell a house or a piece of land as long as one of those things are around," he told the board. "You can't give it away."
Taking issue with the opinion that the Right-to-Farm Act prohibits any local control of hog farmers, Brecht told the board, "You've got the power to do (approve a moratorium) it tonight," Brecht said. "You have to do something before this county is destroyed."
Effectiveness of Moratorium
As with the debate over smell and environmental concerns, the issue of just how much power the local government has over hog farms also generates widely-split opinions.
Halifax County Administrator Dan Sleeper puts the issue into a "yes and no" category. "Yes, hypothetically, the board could approve a moratorium or anything else against hog farms," he said. "The board could essentially approve about anything it wants."
However, approving something politically and having it withstand potential lawsuits are entirely different matters, he pointed out.
"If the board approved a moratorium against any new hog farms, then you'd eventually have a hog farmer or hog producing company challenge the law in court," he said.
With the Right-to-Farm Act, the law probably wouldn't hold up and the county would end up having spent a lot of money on legal fees, while only postponing the inevitable, he explained.
Lovelace stated that the board could approve a moratorium, one of "a defined, short-term duration and one that has a specific objective to achieve within that time frame."
Such a moratorium, with a time frame of 60 days or less, would not likely to be challenged in a court of law, according to Lovelace. However, the longer the duration, the higher probability that a lawsuit could be filed, he added.
At any rate, the three proposed hog farms would not have been effected by a moratorium that could have been approved during Monday night's meeting.
In the meantime, Dunavant pointed out,"There could be 30 more such approvals of hog farms" before any additional regulation is put into place.
Lovelace conceded that new hog farm applications could indeed come in, but the three current hog farms just approved are the only such applications that were filed since the ordinance went into effect on January 1, 1997.
New Research Requested
Following the lengthy discussion, supervisor Dickie Abbott made a motion to ask for a moratorium which was seconded by Watts. But in the resulting confusion of simultaneous, but separate verbal debates among supervisors, that motion was not followed through with a formal vote.
Instead, supervisor Garland Ricketts (ED-7) made a substitute motion for Sleeper and Lovelace to obtain updated information on what neighboring counties are doing concerning hog farm issues and report back with that information to the board during the August 3 meeting.
That motion passed by a 6-2 vote. Voting in favor were Ricketts, board chairman Joe Satterfield of ED-3, West, Smart, Page Wilkerson of ED-6, and Bill Abbott of ED-4. Voting against the motion were Dickie Abbott and Watts who were in favor of having a moratorium.
Supervisor Bill Abbot spoke in favor of the need for local farmers to diversify their operations. "These farmers have their backs against the wall," he said. "I believe we need to look at the big picture."
Supervisor Dickie Abbott described a recent bus tour in a commercial hog production area of North Carolina. "For fifty miles on that air-conditioned bus, that's all you could smell," Dickie Abbott said. "It's a place for hog farming out there...but..."
In other matters before the board:
· The board authorized Sleeper to negotiate with an adjourning landowner of the county landfill to purchase a 50-foot strip of land running on the west side of the facility.
That land will be used to install gas monitoring wells required by the Department of Environmental Quality. Those wells must be installed outside the perimeter of stored, compacted waste.
Since the waste goes to the border of the land boundary, the additional strip has to be purchased, Sleeper explained. The county plans to build a road on the strip which may also be used by the current landowner.
· The first step of possibly turning the county landfill and trash-collection operation over to a private company was discussed. Sleeper was authorized by the board to seek proposals from consulting firms to study if such a move would be beneficial to the county.
The issue was studied in 1993, but at that time, it was determined that it would cost 2.5 times as much for a private company to dispose of trash as it would cost the county to do so. Market conditions and environmental requirements have changed since then, possibly making it more feasible, officials said.
Any such study would look at the issue from a comprehensive basis, in terms of virtually every facet from actual trash collection to private ownership and operation of a landfill.
Sleeper estimated that the county landfill will last between 10 to 13 years, and even as much as 15 years, "if we do a real good job at recycling."
· The board voted to temporarily restore the boundary lines for rescue calls in the northern end of the county to lines utilized before May, 1997.
The reversion was done because of dissatisfaction of some citizens who said they no longer have a choice of going to South Boston or Lynchburg hospitals, depending on which rescue squad responds.
The temporary reversion is effective while parties involved have a chance to meet and iron out transportation conflicts and funding requirements.
Those parties include fire departments from Brookneal, North Halifax, Liberty, and Triangle, and rescue squads and dispatchers from Halifax and Campbell counties.
By Beth Robertson
Since June 20th, state Forestry Service strike leader Alex Williamson and his four-man bulldozer team have averaged 16 to 17 hours a day in the thick of the burning inferno sweeping 500,000 Florida acres.
"I was in Oklahoma two years ago, in Kentucky and Tennessee fighting fires, but I've never seen that much destruction in 24 years in the Forestry Service," said a tired but happy to be home Williamson yesterday.
"The number of big fires intermingled with communities...," added the Halifax County man.
He and his team fought the raging fires in the hot spots, in Flager County, the Palm Coast community, and other sites.
"We had one very, very close call," said Williamson. "And a couple of other times it was unbelievable how the fire burned.
"It jumped a four lane highway, got a housing development and then jumped Interstate 95 at Palm Coast," said the forestry service veteran.
"We put the last fire lines in before it jumped into the development. We slowed the fire down, but once it jumped we were just powerless to do anything. It had so much force, almost a mile and a half of head fire, the most powerful part of the fire.
On the way home last weekend, Williamson stopped at Palm Coast just as residents were being allowed back in.
The Virginia team had applied foam to one house as the one next to it burned. When he returned, Williamson was pleased to see the foamed house still standing.
Tired, hot, at times enveloped in smoke so thick it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, the firefighters always knew the danger.
"Some of the fires did join together," said Williamson. "Sometimes you would look to the right or left and see a large head of fire coming ...and were afraid to get between the two because they were interacting.
"They create so much wind and heat, it's like a vacuum suction once they get close together. Like a magnet pulling them together," added the strike team leader.
One day, Williamson remembers working a site with 11,000 acres burning. And he estimates 15,000 acres or more were involved at Palm Coast.
He also remembers the large pine trees, some 20 inches in diameter, which were burning "so hot they just fell."
"The trees were a real threat, falling everywhere," said Williamson. "The fire was so hot it just burned the tree right off the base." And there were injuries, though not to the Virginia team.
"I felt so sorry for the people. It was so dry down there. Canals and creeks dry, and no hay in the pastures. I've never seen a place so barren in my life.
"The majority of fires started from dry lightning storms," he added. "You could see lightning hitting and starting fires."
And saddest of all, Williamson said "some of the fires were arson."
"One fire, as soon as I went in I suspected it was arson," said the team leader. Later, Williamson said, someone confessed.
Bulldozers, helicopters dipping their buckets into available ponds, firefighters from 41 states worked together.
"We did a lot and we saved homes, but a lot were lost. We did the best we could," said Williamson.
Still, the memory of the grateful Florida residents lingers.
"I hope it never happens here, but if it does I hope the people here are as nice as they were in Florida. Along highways people offered water, Gatorade and ice. They were so appreciative. Every fire we were on, if a house was close by, they would give you the shirt off their back ...or offer you a place to sleep."
Williamson, who lives on a family farm in the Calvary community with his wife and two children, John and Amanda, is also thinking ahead.
"Maybe Virginia could send some hay down there. They were doing pretty good on water because farmers had windmills, but no pasture land at all. It was so barren. I have never seen anything like it."
South Boston native Corporal Berkley G. Blanks, a police officer with the Greensboro, N.C. Police Department, has been named as this year's recipient of the Officer of the Year Award.
Greensboro, N.C. Mayor Carolyn Allen presented the award during the Eighth Annual Police And Citizen Appreciation Dinner.
The dinner is held annually to honor both police officers and citizens for their outstanding contributions to the Greensboro, N.C. Police Department and the community.
In addition to being cited as one of the department's best street patrolmen, Cpl. Blanks was noted for his active assistance with rookie policemen.
Cpl. Blanks has been an active member of the police department's Peer Counseling Team and is actively involved in the North Carolina Law Enforcement Officer's Association.
Also, Cpl. Blanks serves as an advisor to the department's Explorer Post and is serving for the 13th year as the tournament chairman of the Peace Officers' Week Golf Tournament.
Cpl. Blanks is the son of Mitchell Jasper Blanks and the late Jeanne B. Blanks of South Boston.
He is a 1968 graduate of Halifax County High School and he and his wife, Kathy, have two children, Justin and Kelly.
Clover Town Council agreed Monday night to petition the courts for a public referendum this fall that, if agreed to by a majority of voters, would nullify the town's charter that dates back to 1895.
Monday's public hearing on the subject of petitioning the court, produced a turnout of about 15 of the town's almost 200 residents.
Town officials say it's still anyone's guess which way the vote will go but they want to make sure that there be no guessing about what will happen to the town's tax and fee structures should residents decide to keep the town charter in place.
Clover's financial crisis has resulted in the release of the town's police force and all of its maintenance workers. When a water line bursted last week, four council members spent most of the day digging up pavement and making repairs that required most of the day.
Clover elected officials receive no pay and while willing to make such sacrifices, State Water Control Board officials are insisting that they either receive training and become certified, or hire someone who does have the qualifications.
Should Clover yield its corporate status, the town's water and sewer system would be turned over to Halifax County. There are about 178 water and sewer connections (about 145 active) both in the town and just outside the corporate limits.
Consolidated with the county, Clover residents would pay only county taxes ending the present $0.15 per hundred real estate tax rate and $0.20 per hundred personal property tax rate.
As a town or consolidated with Halifax County, users of Clover's water and sewer services can expect to pay more in the future. That's a message which Clover officials want to make sure residents understand. Council said Monday night that the town would have to hire at least one maintenance worker, raise taxes and water and sewer rates to meet the requirements.
Just how much those rates will increase has not been determined but Clover's system is aging and has not benefited from proper maintenance. The town's water storage tank needs painting and will cost an estimated $100,000.
Clover officials are in the process of obtaining the names and addresses of all town residents and between now and November, will be sending out letters explaining the referendum and how nullifying the town's charter will affect them.
A time for public comment will be provided for at each council meeting between now and the election.
New to council and sworn in Monday night was Wash Glover who was elected in May. Chosen as vice mayor by the council was Leo Noblin.
Virginia Jones Short of 1120 Railroad Drive, Nathalie died Monday, July 6, 1998 at Halifax Regional Hospital. She was 65 years of age at the time of her death.
Mrs. Short was born in Halifax County on January 25, 1933 the daughter of Otey Henry Jones and Sue Arendall Jones and was married to James Alver Short.
Survivors include four sons, Ronnie Short of Java, Steve H. Short of Nathalie, Wayne Short of Alton and Dennis Short of Halifax; two daughters, Ann S. Hunter of Halifax and Ellen S. Hall of Vernon Hill; four brothers, Billy Jones and Ralph Jones, both of Crystal Hill, Barkley Jones and Frank Jones, both of Nathalie; two sisters, Myrtle Warren of South Boston and Della Beadles of Mebane, NC; 19 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Funeral services for Mrs. Short will be held Thursday, July 9 at 2 p.m. at Powell Funeral Home chapel with Rev. David Dickerson conducting the service. Burial will take place in Halifax Memorial Gardens.
The family will receive friends at Powell Funeral Home tonight, July 8 from 7 until 9:00, and other times at the home.