As Ghost Town heads toward its first big showdown in bankruptcy court next week, objections from those owed money are beginning to pile up.

Ghost Town, an Old West amusement park in Maggie Valley, recently filed a disclosure statement and reorganization plan, which are supposed to outline how it intends to pull out of bankruptcy — presumably making enough profit to repay its debts.

However, Ghost Town failed to include profit and loss statements, back tax filings or basic financial projections as part of its disclosure statement. Objections over the spotty disclosure statement were filed by several parties owed money, including the Haywood County Tax Collector, Mountain Energy and BB&T, the mortgage holder on the property.

Some 200 businesses, many of them local contractors and small businesses in the region, are collectively owed more than $2.4 million. They are at the bottom of the list to be repaid. The reorganization plan calls for paying back only 25 percent of what the businesses are owed over a seven year period using a portion of net profits.

In an objection, BB&T said such a claim was disingenuous. Since Ghost Town’s current owners have never turned a profit, it is possible the businesses owed money would never get a dime, BB&T wrote in its objection.

Ultimately, everyone owed money will get to vote on whether to accept the reorganization plan or force Ghost Town into a liquidation — namely selling off the mountaintop property to the highest bidder and using the proceeds to pay off the debt.

In the disclosure statement, CEO Steve Shiver encouraged everyone owed money to vote yes, claiming they likely won’t see a dime if the park is liquidated, since it won’t fetch enough to pay off all the debt.

In an effort to boost recruitment of doctors to the region, hospitals across Western North Carolina are following in the footsteps of a national trend to employ physicians in-house.

Historically, doctors set up independent, private practices.

But doctors are increasingly being squeezed by rising overhead and lower reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid patients. As a result, doctors are gravitating toward a new model of being employed directly by hospitals. The hospitals keep the revenue generated from the patients, while providing a steady salary to the doctors.

“It allows them to do what they were trained for, the clinical work, and let someone else handle the administrative side,” said Tim Hubbs, CEO of Angel Medical Center in Franklin.

Whether it’s disciplining chronically late employees, shopping malpractice rates or billing insurance companies, “It is nice to say ‘Hey, can you all just handle that?’” Hubbs said.

Sylva-based WestCare is leading the hospitals west of Asheville in the number of physicians employed in-house. WestCare employs 19 physicians across six practices. Angel Medical Center employs 13, while Haywood Regional Medical Center employs five.

WestCare CEO Mark Leonard said the trend reflects a generational preference among younger doctors. He cited a recent survey of medical school grads at Duke University where 74 percent said they would rather be employed upon graduating than go into their own private practice.

“This really reflects a generational shift on the part of new physicians entering into medicine,” Leonard said. “It was incumbent on us to shift and embrace this new way of doing business.”

Leonard said he understands why the new model is attractive to today’s younger doctors, citing the long shifts doctors pull simply to care for their patients.

“When you put on top of that being a business owner and doing the taxes and the personnel issues, that causes the hours to stack up,” Leonard said. “These new physicians coming out say, ‘I just went to medical school and I want to emphasize the clinical side of medicine.”

Haywood CEO Mike Poore added that young doctors aren’t eager to follow the rigorous on-call schedule that had their older peers chained to beepers most of their lives. They want a steady salary and more free time.

Balancing autonomy

The only downfall of the model is a potential loss of autonomy. Doctors can suddenly find themselves answering to a hospital CEO, unlike a private practice model where they answer to no one but their patients.

All three hospital CEOs interviewed for this story said they recognize the concern.

“When I go to my personal physician, I don’t want to be thinking that there is a suit in another room influencing how he is going to care for me, my wife or my children,” Leonard said. “I want his decision to be based on what’s in my best interest as a patient.”

At WestCare, Leonard said he has laid the foundation of trust between physicians and administration and a collaborative decision-making model, which should in turn allay such fears.

“I am not a physician. I did not go to medical school. I am going to rely on and trust the physician’s judgment when it comes to clinical decision-making,” Leonard said.

Hubbs also pledged a hands-off management style when it comes to medical care.

“If a physician says I think we need a CAT scan on this, we are not going to second guess that,” Leonard said.

For Dr. Bruce Lobitz, an ER doctor who joined a team of hospital-employed doctors in the Angel emergency room this year, the possibility of hospital administration intruding on his care of patients was a top concern.

“That was one of my hesitations,” Lobitz said, who has found it not to be the case, however. “Here, there is very little of that.”

While it might give some physicians pause, the positves seem to outweigh the negatives.

“There is some trepidation in the loss of autonomy,” said Dr. Charles Trenthem. “But if you look at the trends nationally, this is what’s happening.”

While the nonprofit hospitals in the mountains have a community minded philosophy, larger for-profit hospitals could take advantage of the employment model.

“They do have a profit model, and they do push the providers at all levels to see that one extra patient, to generate that one extra charge,” said Dr. David Farley, an internist at Angel Medical. “I have not seen that be an issue here.”

Hubbs said there are external controls to ensure hospitals don’t prod physicians to order more costly tests than a patient really needs just to boost revenue. The insurance companies or Medicare who get stuck with the bill would notice an outlier ordering gobs of tests, Hubbs said.

There is one upside for patients: fewer bills. Anyone faced with a hospital stay braces for a litany of separate bills trickling in for lab tests, X-rays, various specialists and the hospital itself. Poore said bundled payments — where the bill for doctors is included with the bill from the hospital — is a model that shows promise.

Hospitals employing a critical mass of in-house doctors will often house them in a joint practice, even if they aren’t in the same specialty. It allows for integrated patient care, providing quick access to charts and reducing the chances of two doctors ordering the same test.

“Really it is kind of a data flow issue that is so clumsy in medicine right now,” Farley said. “If you’re housed in the same unit, you can walk down the hall and say ‘What did you think of Mrs. So-and-so this morning? Should I be concerned about this?’ You don’t have that when you are all scattered around in separate pods around town.”

Making the transition

While urban hospitals have launched a large-scale transition toward employing doctors, rural hospitals are using the model primarily to lure new recruits or to stabilize a faltering practice in a specialty the hospital can’t afford to lose within its medical community, said Dr. David Farley, an internist at Angel Medical.

“In this town, most of the employed physicians are the new recruits,” Farley said. “The existing doctors have remained solo, but I don’t think you can predict that will continue.”

Farley said the new model could be enticing to physicians at different points in their career, like a physician nearing retirement who wants to go part-time and no longer wants to deal with the hassle of managing a private practice.

As the new model develops, the result is a hybrid of traditional private practices and hospital-employed physicians within the community, Leonard said. Leonard largely follows the preferences of the doctor being recruited. If there is an existing private practice in the community the doctor wants to join, the hospital simply plays matchmaker.

When a doctor joins an existing practice, they are often expected to make an upfront investment.

“They buy in to do their fair share,” Poore said.

In Haywood County, both models exist within the same orthopedics office. Western Carolina Orthopedic Specialists has three doctors, two of whom own the private practice, while a third, Dr. Gerald King, is an employee of the hospital.

The hospital pays Western Carolina Orthopedic Specialists a management fee to covers King’s share of overhead, from office space to secretarial staff. The hospital also pays Kings salary.

In exchange, the hospital gets 100 percent of the revenue generated from King’s patients. It also benefits from having an orthopedist in the county who will bring business through the doors of the hospital. The hospital was suffering from a chronic orthopedist shortage that led patients unable to get appointments locally to take their business outside the county.

Haywood Regional Medical Center recently bought out Haywood Women’s Medical Center, the only Ob-Gyn practice in the county. The hospital now owns the practice and the doctors are employees of the hospital.

It was one of the first moves toward hospital-employed physicians in Haywood. The Ob-Gyn practice was a good starting place for several reasons, Poore said.

For one, doctors who deliver babies have some of the highest overhead.

“The malpractice is unbelievably high,” Poore said.

But the service is so crucial, no well-rounded hospital could afford to be without it.

“Our goals was to keep a viable Ob-Gyn practice in Haywood County,” Poore said.

Buying out an existing practice is more complicated than setting up the arrangement from the get-go with new hires. The process took six months and required outside consultants to help arrive at a fair purchase price.

Getting squeezed

The new model is particularly attractive to doctors in a climate of decreasing reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Doctors take a bigger hit in rural areas, where a higher percentage of patients are likely to be on Medicare or Medicaid. It makes the offer of employment — and the steady salary that goes with it despite the poverty level of patients — an even more important recruiting tool in rural areas, according to Dr. Charles Trenthem, an anesthesiologist and chief of staff at Angel Medical Center.

“If we weren’t employing physicians and subsidizing their practices, the health care in Western North Carolina would suffer,” Trenthem said.

Angel Medical recently got a special “critical access” designation for its hospital that gets it a higher reimbursement rate from Medicare and Medicaid. Physicians employed by the hospital also enjoy the higher reimbursement rate, since billing is done by the hospital itself.

The issue is particularly acute in emergency room settings, where doctors are likely to see a higher number of patients without insurance who have no means to pay their bills.

While ER doctors theoretically treat patients without regard for whether they can pay, it can influence doctors on a subconscious level, said Dr. Bruce Lobitz, an ER doctor at Angel. But as a hospital-employed physician with a steady salary regardless, it makes it easier for doctors to ignore a patient’s ability to pay when providing care.

“I don’t care about the patient’s payer status. The hospital takes care of all that,” Lobitz said.

The hospital is left to absorb the hit, which can be a problem for rural hospitals already operating on a paper-thin margin, Trenthem said. The model also saddles hospitals with the upfront investment of setting up a new doctor and shouldering the risk if patient revenue falls short.

“Costs are being shifted to these smaller hospitals,” Trenthem said.

But given the trend, they had no choice but step up to the plate and adopt the model.

“The days of a physician going out and hanging a shingle are kind of over now,” Trenthem said.

Burt Kornegay is a one-match man.

As the owner of Slickrock Expeditions and the longest running independent outdoor guide in the state, he’s started hundreds of campfires in some of the most remote wilderness settings in the country, never using more than a single match, even in a downpour.

There’s little he can’t fix with duct tape. He can carve a cross-piece for a broken canoe from a tree limb, make baskets from bark and fashion a crutch from a branch.

“You have to be able to look at a situation and real quickly see a simple solution and act on it,” Kornegay said.

In a pinch, Kornegay can resurrect the lost skill of friction to get a flame going. Kornegay isn’t perfect, however. There’s always the time he forgot coffee.

“That was serious,” he said of the fateful trip along the Okefenokee River. Luckily, he knew a spot where the river meandered within a mile and a half of a store. On day two of the expedition, he pulled the group over and left them to guard the canoes while he ran through the woods to buy coffee.

The debacle is high on the list of “worst things you’ve forgotten on a trip.” Admittedly, the list is a short one, but not totally devoid of good stories, like when he forgot ropes to string up the kitchen tarp. He was leading a four-day all-women backpacking trip through the remote Slickrock Wilderness in Graham County when a huge storm kicked up their first night out.

Kornegay doesn’t use a camp stove but instead cooks his group’s meals over an open campfire. No tarp to keep the fire dry meant no supper that night.

Kornegay announced an impromptu change in plans: a side excursion to view the wreckage of a downed airplane he happened to know about. He put everyone to work stripping electrical wires out of the fuselage, and voila, he had rope to string up the tarp. They carried the wires for the rest of the trip.

Everyone always begs for the stories of injuries and rescues, but Kornegay doesn’t have many of those either.

“If you had many injuries, I wouldn’t have a business,” Kornegay said.

He sees his share of cut fingers and blisters, but only a few breaks and sprains. The worst occurred last summer while portaging around rapids on a remote river in Idaho. A member of the party dislocated his ankle. With one of his changes unable to walk and stranded on a rocky bluff, Kornegay turned a canoe into a stretcher, strapped the injured man in and lowered it down to the river with ropes. From there, the group floated to a wide rock bar where Kornegay used a satellite phone to call for a helicopter.

Kornegay has a long list of repeat customers, from families who have grown up on his trips through the years to retired couples that go on one or two of Kornegay’s trips every year.

One group of businessmen from Durham that gets their annual wilderness fix with Kornegay, has dubbed themselves The Wild Boys while on his trips. They even fund scouting trips for Kornegay to plan new itineraries for them. After years of outdoor trips with Kornegay, they’ve probably learned enough to pull off a trip on their own, but they still prefer a guide.

“They are not going to get lost. The supper will get cooked. They will sleep dry at night,” Kornegay said.

Meanwhile, they avoid the headache of packing, and the chore of cleaning and repairing gear when they get back home.

“All they have to do is bring their clothing,” Kornegay said.

It’s not easy to have a dozen people emotionally and physically dependent on you for 12 days at a stretch and remain in good spirits from dawn to dusk during the duration, but Kornegay’s demeanor is well-suited to the job. He’s even-keeled and not easily ruffled. He is chatty when it’s called for, but introspective by nature. He can spin a good yarn, and listens equally well.

He’s also a good fence mender, a skill that comes in handy when spouses find themselves trapped in a canoe with each other for days on end. Sometimes, couples turn to him to salvage a previous outdoor experience gone awry.

Such a trip is often prefaced by a husband’s pleading: “She will never hike with me again, but she said she will go on your trip. This is my last chance, Burt, just don’t screw it up.”

Typically, conflict on wilderness trips occurs when things go wrong: the rice doesn’t get fully cooked, the sleeping bags get wet, the map dropped overboard. Having a guide preempts those crises.

“Things don’t tend to go wrong in guided trips. You are with a professional,” Kornegay said. “They don’t get lost, they see the danger spots, they know how to start a fire even if it is pouring rain, their equipment works.”

Guided trips also remove decision points, another potential conflict zone, like where to pitch the tent or whether to take lunch at a mediocre overlook or hold out for the promise of a better one around the bend.

“There are not a lot of chiefs. There is an itinerary you are following, so you tend to have better spirits,” Kornegay said.

In addition to ferreting his clients through the wilderness, Kornegay gives them a sense of the woods. He shares local lore, identifies trees and birds, imparts survival skills and teaches tracking.

From the ground up

Kornegay, now 59, was just 20 when he started running trips in the Adirondacks in 1971. A few years later, he moved to Oregon and ran trips there.

He eventually went back to school for a PhD in English, harboring fantasies of being an college professor and running a few trips on the side during the summer.

“I was also convinced I was going to be a great poet,” Kornegay said.

Apparently, there were lots of college English majors on the professor-poet track, far more than the nation’s universities could ever employ.

“We’re a dime a dozen,” Kornegay said.

When his wife got a job in Jackson County as a librarian at Western Carolina University, he gave up the English PhD and resurrected his skills as an outdoor guide.

He started Slickrock Expeditions in 1983, named for the Slickrock Wilderness in Graham County. Kornegay relied on his wife’s salary to support their family for the first three years after launching the guide service. The first order of business was building an arsenal of outdoor gear.

“The money they paid me to run the trip bought the gear for that trip. Everything went back into the business,” Kornegay said. “I had to tailor the trips to the gear I had.”

Even the used Ford station wagon he used to transport gear was acquired in exchange for a spot on a trip for the son of a car salesman.

In the quarter century since starting Slickrock, Kornegay has built a strong reputation as one of the leading outdoor guides in the state.

He and his wife live in the Caney Fork community of Jackson County surrounded by mountains and farms. He spends time between trips holed up on his tranquil 42- acre homestead reading guide books and planning for the next trip, whether here at home or the wilds of Montana and Idaho.

And then it’s off again.

“For my wife it is kind of like being married to a truck driver,” Kornegay said.

Changing industry

While the wild places Kornegay frequents seem timeless, the outfitter business has changed in the nearly four decades he’s run trips — some of the changes are nuanced and others more overt.

In the early 1970s, the back-to-the-land movement was all the rage, yet the budding outdoor types of the era hadn’t amassed their own garage full of camping equipment. Guides were more imperative.

“It was kind of a novelty,” Kornegay said. “All I had to do was put a little ad in the paper, and I could fill a trip.”

The demand was big, and the number of guides were few.

Today, Kornegay is competing in a marketplace dominated by large outfitter companies.

The recession has brought its own challenges. His business is off by a third this year as disposable income for wilderness trips has dried up. Meanwhile, overhead has gone up. Liability insurance has risen, as have fees charged by the forest service for commercial trips.

Another change over the years: the weight of Kornegay’s pack. He used to carry 80 pounds easily. Now, he caps his pack at no more than 55.

The dynamics of the larger outdoor scene is also different today than in the early 1970s.

“Back then, it was getting in touch with yourself and getting in touch with nature,” Kornegay said. “Today it is a very completive, high-tech and fast-paced thing. The spirit has definitely changed.”

It’s something that the younger generation increasingly misses by not taking extended trips. It’s what Kornegay calls the “park and play” mentality.

“It’s more about ‘Let’s go to that one rapid and play on it for three hours’ or ‘let’s go climb that one cliff and then go home and have a beer,’” Kornegay said.

Under Kornegay’s wing, however, trips are about the immersing yourself in the outdoors, not about the bragging rights the expeditions can earn you back home.

“There is always that earlier element of getting back to nature,” he said.

Getting out

Slickrock Expeditions offers a variety of guided trips, from the mountains of Western North Carolina to a slew of big rivers out West. Some are open trips available to anyone who wants to book a spot, while custom trips can be tailored to the needs of a private group. www.slickrockexpeditions.com.

In the ongoing battle to keep Lake Junaluska from filling with silt, the lake will once again be partially lowered this winter so accumulated sediment can be dug out.

Scooping sediment out of the lake is a costly proposition. There have been four digs over the past decade, costing $1.7 million. Of that, $1.2 million came from state and federal grants, and Lake Junaluska Assembly contributed $500,000.

When the first “big dig” was undertaken at the beginning of the decade, so much sediment had accumulated it was a mere four to eight inches from the lake’s surface around the mouth of Richland Creek.

“At that point we were in danger of losing that whole west end of the lake,” said Jimmy Carr, executive director of Lake Junaluska.

Carr and his team first had to play catch-up before putting in place a plan to keep sediment at bay with smaller digs every other year.

“The problem will never be solved. What we are trying to do is get it so it is manageable,” said Buddy Young, director of residential services with Lake Junaluska Assembly.

To set the stage for periodic clean-outs, the lake bottom was reshaped near the mouth of Richland Creek to confine sediment being dumped into the lake into one area, making it easier for the bulldozer operators to get at.

This next round of sediment dredging will cost $300,000 — with half coming from the state and half from Lake Junaluska Assembly.

Lake Junaluska requested $350,000 for the dredging back in 2009, but it didn’t come through that year. Carr said the assembly is thankful Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, continued to fight for the appropriation.

“He really stayed with it in a very difficult budgeting time,” Carr said.

The economic impact of Lake Junaluska Assembly on the entire region helped win the funding.

“Lake Junaluska is a valuable asset to the Haywood Community and the entire region,” said Queen.

Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center attracts 100,000 people each year for dozens of conventions held on its grounds, with an annual economic impact in the millions plus intangible benefit of outside exposure.

The sediment piling up in Lake Junaluska is a countywide problem. One only has to look at the color of Richland Creek during a heavy rain to see the mud and erosion making its way into the water.

“When it hits the lake it slows and the silt settles out,” Carr said.

The lake can be unsightly while work is being done. Lower water levels expose a ring of mud around the shore in the main part of the lake, and a mudflat in shallower areas. The work usually raises eyebrows.

“I think a lot of the locals understand this is a regular thing, but for visitors to the area it is the No. 1 question we get during the draw down: is there something wrong with the lake and why are you doing this?” said Ken Howle, marketing director for Lake Junaluska Assembly.

Though there has been some discussion of sacrificing the lake at the mouth of Richland Creek and allowing it to become a wetland, Young said it would not be a good route to take.

“It is not like it would build up a good quality wetland. It would be a shifting sand bar,” Young said.

A couple of wetlands have been created in the shallow part of the lake, however, benefiting wildlife.

Deputy Gregory Wood was looking forward to a mundane Monday morning manning the metal detector at the Haywood County courthouse when a woman came in with some strange news: a snake had taken up residence in the elevator of the parking deck.

Needless to say, when the woman saw the big, black snake curled up in the corner, she opted to take the stairs. Wood said he didn’t doubt her tale for a second.

“We get strange things around here all the time,” he said.

So Wood, along with fellow Deputy Russell Bryson, headed out to see for themselves. They hit the call button for the elevator, and when the doors opened, there it was — a big, black snake nearly four feet long.

They realized right away the snake didn’t get in there on its own.

“It couldn’t have crawled in there before the doors closed shut on it,” Bryson said.

But first things first.

“I knew I needed to get it off the elevator,” Wood said. He pulled his expandable baton from his holster and quickly pinned down the snake’s head to immobilize it. With his other hand, Wood grabbed the snake by the neck so it couldn’t turn around and bite him.

Wood paused briefly to pose while Bryson took a picture on his cell phone, and then the two released the poor critter into the grass.

Once back inside, they began reviewing surveillance footage of the parking deck. At 10:20 a.m. — about 10 minutes before the woman reported it — a man is seen walking up to the elevator and putting the snake inside. It’s possible someone rode on the elevator with the snake if they were talking on their phone or otherwise distracted, Wood said.

“We are trying to figure out if there is anything we can charge him with,” Wood said of the man. They consulted with a District Court judge to figure out what charge might be applicable. The next step would be identifying him.

Before putting the snake on the elevator, the man was walking around with it on the grounds outside the historic courthouse. Tax Collector David Francis, who works in the building, confronted the man and asked him to get rid of the snake.

Chief Saunooke Bear Park in Cherokee has been cited with federal violations for the treatment and condition of captive bears kept in pits for viewing by tourists.

It marks the fourth federal inspection of the bear zoo in two years where violations were noted.

Also: read the citation

In July, two tourists were bitten by bears over the course of a week at Chief Saunooke Bear Park. One case involved a 9-year-old girl who was bitten on the hand — coincidentally in front of a federal inspector who happened to be there that day.

The incident likely prompted a follow-up inspection in August, where four federal violations were documented.

“For facilities where they don’t have a lot of concerns, they normally only do one once a year,” said Lisa Wathne, a captive exotic animal specialist with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “I suspect because they saw the girl get bit, they did another inspection very shortly thereafter.”

The violations documented by a federal inspector during the August visit include:

• Failing to provide veterinary care for a bear with a broken tooth. “Broken teeth can be very painful and can lead to gum and jaw infections,” the inspector wrote. The bear handler said he was not aware of the tooth condition. The inspector noted that daily observations are required to ensure the bears’ health and well-being.

• Two bears were being tormented by another more aggressive bear housed in the same enclosure. One bear cornered the others, and “the bears were observed barking and swatting with open mouth aggression. The bear handler indicated this aggression was normal for them.” One bear had scars on both his hind legs. The owner had been verbally warned before by inspectors that the bears should be separated if the aggression became worse or created the possibility of injuries.

• A metal water bowl had been damaged by a bear, resulting in a piece of torn metal sharp enough to hurt a bear’s paw.

• Paper trays holding bear food were being re-used, creating the potential for contamination from old food caked on them. Tourists are allowed to feed the bears, a diet that at one point included Lucky Charms cereal that are against federal diet regulations.

“Anyway you look at it, this facility is failing miserably,” said Wathne. “PETA maintains it has to be shut down for the sake of the animals and for the sake of public safety.”

Wathne said the bear zoo could continue to rack up violations for years before USDA would shut it down, however.

Animal-rights activists confronted the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians over the bear pits last year, calling on the tribal government to shut them down. Bob Barker, the famed game show host and advocate for animal rights, came to Cherokee and met with Chief Michell Hicks and tribal council. But tribal leaders maintain there is nothing wrong with the bear zoos and rebuked PETA for its tactics.

This summer, PETA launched a billboard campaign advising tourists not to go to the bear zoos in Cherokee.

No one could be immediately reached at Chief Saunooke Bear Park prior to press deadline.

After enduring months of dogged opposition over a county rule that would protect residents from nasty garbage piles on their neighbor’s property, Haywood County leaders are trying a different tack.

The county has dropped the idea of a public health rule governed by the health department and instead will draft a health ordinance. An ordinance will allow more flexibility, while a rule under the auspice of the health department had to conform with state mandates.

Haywood County Commissioner Mark Swanger recommended the new approach, which garnered unanimous support from the rest of the commissioners.

Swanger said some sort of mechanism is necessary to protect people from unhealthy situations created by neighbors.

“It has nothing to do with aesthetics or that you just have a messy yard. It would have to be a demonstrated health risk,” said Swanger.

The scrapped health rule chiefly dealt with garbage that might attract disease-carrying rodents and mosquitoes, but would have also applied to an abandoned swimming pool that had become a health risk or a chemical spill, for example.

While some opposed the spirit of the ordinance as meddling in the private property arena, others merely took issue with over-reaching enforcement and over-the-top punishment.

The rule allowed the health director to come onto private property without permission and offenders could have been charged with a class I misdemeanor.

Wording was changed to require the health director to first get a search warrant except in the case of an imminent hazard. But little could be done about the class I misdemeanor for violations, as that was the punishment mandated by the state. If written as an ordinance by the county, however, it could carry a lesser charge of a class III misdemeanor, Swanger said.

A small task force has been appointed to provide input on writing the ordinance, including two critics of the health rule in its original form.

One of those, Terry Ramey, said he hopes the new approach will help “bring people back together instead of being mad at each other.”

Ramey said too much bad blood exists between the critics of the rule and members of the health board for a compromise to be reached.

“It had gotten to a head-butting deal,” Ramey said. “It just got out of hand.”

Ramey said he is not against an ordinance in principle.

“We need something,” Ramey said. “Let’s say somebody had trash piled up and it was rotten and it had insects and stuff in it. We want something in place for situations like that. Even the people against it don’t want a really bad health hazard.”

But Ramey said the original rule left too much room for broad interpretation.

Tired of all-night parties, yards used as parking lots and  overflowing trash cans, a community near Western Carolina University is taking aim at student rental houses.

The Village of Forest Hills plans to limit the number of people who can live under the same roof unless they are family. But exactly how many unrelated people should be allowed to live together has been a source of debate for several months.

Initially, the town planning board suggested a maximum of four non-related people living in the same house. But the town board thought it seemed like too many and instead suggested a limit of just two.

Two is a better number, according to Clark Corwin, who sits on both the planning board and town board. Four was simply too weak, he said.

“The essence of the ordinance would be almost absent,” Corwin said.

If four students shared a house, and each had a girlfriend or boyfriend, the actual number coming and going on a daily basis could mushroom to eight.

But a limit of only two drastically limits the rental market in Forest Hills’ neighborhoods. Landlords are left with a much smaller pool of eligible renters, according to Ron Hancock, a planner with the N.C. Division of Community Assistance in Asheville, which aids small towns like Forest Hills that don’t have trained staff to address planning and zoning issues.

“If someone has a home that has been a rental for years and all of a sudden their revenue has been cut off, they might take offense to that,” Hancock said. That’s why Hancock had recommended four, and cautioned that two was too restrictive.

But Olin Dunford, another member of the planning board, said the greater good has to be considered.

“I am not totally against college students renting houses,” Dunford said. “I have to think about what if I moved away and wanted to rent my house. But as a good respectable neighborhood, we had to consider that four was too many.”

Hancock agrees that Forest Hills’ character is incongruous with that of a typical college house.

“The core issue is that students tend to have an active nightlife,” Hancock said. “Forest Hills is a quiet little community of mainly single-family homes.”

Corwin has lived across the street from a house of college students for several years. Parents of a student bought the house for their daughter to live in while at school, figuring it would be cheaper in the long run than renting an apartment for four years. She played on the golf team, and several of her teammates shared the house.

Corwin said the golfers weren’t so bad. They would usually come across the street and let him know before they had a party.

But after she graduated, the house was rented to students who weren’t so courteous. Corwin counted six to eight cars that came and went from the house regularly.

Dunford said parking is a major complaint when students rent houses. They park on the street, in the yard — “and even park in your yard,” he said.

Loud partying is the other chief concern. Forest Hills doesn’t have its own police force. Instead, it hires an off-duty deputy to make rounds on weekend nights during the school year primarily as a deterrent against parties.

But students are prone to party any night of the week, not just weekends, Corwin said. Plus, the deputy isn’t always successful in enforcing the noise ordinance. Corwin said students will use their cell phones to text warnings to each other when the deputy is coming.

“Everyone runs to the car and gets in and they are gone,” Corwin said.

There is a shortage of rental property in the Cullowhee area, both for students and professors. That’s why Corwin doubts anyone will have trouble renting their house, even if they have to cater to families and professionals rather than groups of students.

Forest Hills is a tiny town of just one square mile that sits across the highway from the WCU campus. Many of the town residents are professors and university staff.

“We are a bedroom community to the university,” Corwin said.

What now?

The planning board has spent almost two years wrestling with the issue and crafting the language, along with a few other changes to the town’s zoning laws.

When Forest Hills became a town in the late 1990s, its primary intent was to preserve the neighborhood character. As a town, it could pass zoning laws that kept student condos and apartment complexes out of the community. It promptly got to work doing just that, but failed to address the issue of students renting houses.

Corwin said the town realized it could succumb to “studentification,” a takeoff on “gentrification.”

“We could become a whole multi-family community with students up and down the street,” Corwin said.

That could lead to lower property values for everyone.

Thus, the planning board embarked on the proposed occupancy limits.

“It’s setting out that these are the rules of a residential neighborhood and this is what our expectations are,” Corwin said.

Enforcement of the ordinance will be complaint-based and fall to the town’s volunteer zoning enforcement officer. The town has no paid workers.

The number of people living in a house is unlimited if they qualify as a family — which can include everyone from foster children to great-aunts. But a family must be a single house-keeping unit of a non-transient nature.

“Non-transient is the key factor because students are transient,” Corwin said.

Defining what qualified as a “family” was tricky in and of itself.

“We worked very hard to get a definition of ‘family’ so it would be defensible legally if it came to that,” Hancock said. “Legally, there is nothing that discriminates in any way.”

Such an ordinance is very common in college towns, Hancock said. Forest Hills’ planning board borrowed language from similar zoning laws in Boone and Chapel Hill.

Want to weigh in?

A public hearing on limiting the number of college students sharing a rental house will be held by the Forest Hills town council at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5, at the Jackson County Recreation Center in Cullowhee. The hearing will also include other changes and updates to the town zoning ordinance.

Stabilization of the landslide below Ghost Town in Maggie Valley will begin in two weeks, finally bringing comfort to downslope residents who have lived below the looming threat of another slide for half a year.

The slide last February scoured nearly a mile-long path down the mountainside with a wall of debris 30-feet high and 90-feet wide in places. Only three homes were damaged, but several others suffered destruction to their yards.

The slide initially forced an evacuation of a couple of dozen homes for fear more of the mountainside might collapse. To date, all but one homeowner, whose home suffered the most damage, has returned.

The $1.37 million job will take five months and was awarded this week to Phillips and Jordan, a construction company that specializes in major earth moving. The same company did the rockslide cleanup and stabilization on Interstate 40 last winter.

In addition to recontouring and shoring up the mountainside, the job includes road repairs and returning a dislocated creek to its original course down the mountain.

Al Hill, a seasonal resident with a second home below the slide, said he is pleased stabilization work will be done before the worst of winter. The freeze-thaw cycle can exacerbate erosion and act as a trigger for more landslides.

Engineers and slide specialists who have inspected the site cautioned that the slope remains unstable and another slide is still not out of the question. In fact, a slide could be triggered in the process of stabilizing the slope if the contractor isn’t careful.

As a result, a geotechnical engineer will work on-site each day with the Phillips and Jordan crew.

“It is extraordinarily sensitive,” said Randy Hintz, project manager with McGill Associates, an engineering and planning firm in Asheville overseeing the contract.

The geotech engineer will dictate the final outcome, but not necessarily the approach.

“There is a fine line in telling the contractor how to do his job,” Hintz said. “We tell them how the slope needs to be, and they figure out how to make that happen.”

If things start to look dicey, it might be necessary to send an alert to homeowners to leave the area, Hintz said. The engineer will not always be able to predict how the unstable slope will respond to a particular strategy when the contractors begin moving dirt.

Landslide experts and engineers believe the slide was triggered by a collapsed retaining wall on Ghost Town’s property. Ghost Town had struggled to shore up the unstable and nearly vertical slope on and off over the years.

When the mountaintop was leveled off to make way for the amusement park in the 1960s, loose dirt was pushed over the side of the mountain without being properly compacted. It must now be peeled back to reveal the original contour and compacted as it is put back. Portions of the slope, especially at the top, will be permanently recontoured at a gentler grade that mirrors the original mountainside, Hintz said.

Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver originally objected to the stabilization plan and demanded an alternative design, but he did not get the engineering specifications done in time to go out to bid. Shiver said he is simply pleased work is getting underway.

“I am extremely happy,” Shiver said after the contract was awarded.

The total project, including engineering, will cost $1.47 million. Federal and state taxpayers will foot most of the bill. Maggie Valley taxpayers will contribute $25,000, and Ghost Town has pledged to contribute $25,000 as well.

Ghost Town has been in bankruptcy the past 18 months. Time is running out for the amusement park, which is being threatened with both foreclosure and liquidation. But Shiver remains hopeful a loan will come through allowing the park’s principal owner to regain title.

Meanwhile, Ray and Cookie Dye are tired of looking at a mud-filled pond that was buried when the slide moved across their yard. They want the pond dug out and their landscaping repaired, but it’s not clear who is accountable.

“We can’t prove it is [Ghost Town’s] fault,” Cookie Dye said.

Town Manager Tim Barth said town crews would try to dig out their pond for them.

Danny Allen, a former Sylva town commissioner who has been off the board for two years, will reclaim his seat after being the top vote-getter in the town election.

Commissioner Stacy Knotts followed closely on his heels, while Harold Hensley narrowly lost re-election. Hensley said he is not too disappointed, however.

“I will have a lot less headaches,” Hensley joked.

Hensley and Allen shared a similar platform, being closely aligned on most issues, making it unusual that Allen won while Hensley, a sitting town board member, did not.

The chance to serve with Allen again “was the only reason I would have cared to go back on,” Hensley said. Hensley has been in the minority on several split votes defining town board dynamics the past two years.

Two years ago, Allen tied for third place with Town Commissioner Ray Lewis, but rather than holding a run-off election Allen stepped down. Allen was fighting cancer at the time.

Knotts said she was pleased to go back on the board.

“I am excited that I get to work four more years for the town,” said Knotts, a stay-at-home mom.

One of the first decisions facing the town board will be appointing a new member to its ranks. Town Commissioner Maurice Moody will be vacating his seat on the board to become mayor. The other board members will appoint his replacement.

Board members were uncommitted on whether they would appoint the next highest voter-getter in the election to the vacancy.

Hensley said it would make sense to appoint the next highest vote-getter to the vacant seat, which would place him back on the board. Allen and Lewis would likely support such a move since they historically have been in the same camp as Hensley.

But the other two board members — Knotts and Commissioner Sarah Graham — have been on the opposite side of many issues.

While the mayor only votes in the case of a tie, Moody could find himself as the deciding vote in appointing a new board member, who in turn will hold a swing vote on what could otherwise be a split board.

Knotts and Graham have a more progressive platform, while Allen and Lewis have more conservative views. They opposed town funding for the Downtown Sylva Association and the use of tax dollars for the construction of the downtown Bridge Park concert pavilion — two things Knotts and Graham supported.

Sylva had poor voter turnout of only 14 percent of registered voters.

“I was really surprised the turnout was so low,” Knotts said.

But voter Minnie Casey, 83, wasn’t among those who stayed home.

“I just knew I was supposed to vote,” Casey said.

Jim Moffett, 50, also felt it was his civic duty.

“I believe in voting. If you don’t vote, don’t complain. I think we need some new blood in this little town so it doesn’t become stagnant,” said Moffett.

Moffett said controlling development and protecting the environment were the issues that brought him to the polls.

Sylva

Mayor

Maurice Moody    174

Town board

Seats up for election:    2

Total seats on board:    5

Danny Allen    119

Stacy Knotts (I)    117

Harold Hensley    109

David Kelley    79

Ellerna Bryson Forney    46

Registered voters:    1,684

Voter turnout:    242 (14%)

When Candace Stimson lost her job last winter due to the recession, she seized the opportunity to go back to school and pursue something meaningful.

She wasn’t sure just what that would be, however, until she happened upon a new degree being offered at Haywood Community College. This fall, HCC became the first college or university in the state to offer a degree in low-impact development.

“Right now people are starting to look around and see how important it is to take care of the earth,” said Stimson, 42. “Things are going to get more and more green. We are heading in that direction as a country.”

HCC forged the curriculum from scratch and convinced the state community college system that the field warranted its very own degree.

“We actually developed it from the ground up,” said Chad Bledsoe, vice president of the academic affairs at HCC. “We saw with the changing economy and the green movement, there would be a need for individuals with these skill sets.”

Winning support wasn’t a terribly hard sell, but did make for a teaching moment.

“People at the state level were not aware of low-impact development, so we went through an education process of what kind of career a person with that degree would have,” said Dr. Rose Johnson, president of HCC.

The college had to prove there was a demand in the marketplace for the graduates in the field — and that it rose to the level of a standalone degree. So HCC solicited input from the development industry to help make that point through interviews and roundtables.

The idea for the degree got a strong endorsement across the real estate, development and construction industry. Their input helped refine and shape the curriculum, honing in on the skills new hires touting knowledge in sustainable development should have.

“They were able to give us information about the number of people they would want to employ if we got a program in place and had graduates coming out of it,” Johnson said. “They were so excited about it. We felt like there was a lot of emerging job potential that would cut across many sectors.”

The curriculum scored final approval by the state less than a month before the start of the school year. The new degree has just eight students this fall, but it’s expected to grow.

“We are going to see a statewide draw, and from other states as well,” Bledsoe said.

As graduates filter through the program and into the workplace, they will hopefully influence future development practices throughout the region, Johnson said.

“We want to show how you build without destroying the land and ground you are building on,” Johnson said.

The new degree dovetails with a sustainability push Johnson is spearheading campus wide, from incorporating biodiesel and alternative fuels in automotive classes to installing solar panels on the new craft building that is slated to get under construction next year.

How it started

The low-impact development degree has been in the making for more than three years. It dates back to a sustainable development pilot project pursued jointly by the college, Haywood Waterways Association and Haywood Soil and Water Conservation District. The organizations pooled grant money and expertise to help two developers go the low-impact route.

The pilot helped developers tailor their projects to the mountain terrain, and that allowed them to protect the environment while maximizing profit.

Some poorly planned developments have left an unfortunate mark on the mountain region: crumbling roads and slipping foundations, streams decimated by erosion and slopes cut so steep stabilization after the fact is hopeless. In most cases, the environmental and construction nightmares could have been avoided with better planning up front.

“You look at any development here in Western North Carolina and there are several lots that will sit there and continue to sit there because it’s too steep,” said Blair Bishop, a natural resources instructor at HCC and one of the designers for the low-impact development curriculum.

Following the principles advocated in the college’s curriculum allows developers to end up with a more marketable subdivision. They can avoid lots that looked suitable on paper but on the ground are unworkable, perhaps hemmed in by a creek on one side and large boulders on the other, leaving no room to shoehorn a house or driveway without serious earth moving — and in turn environmental consequences.

“It is definitely environmental but also economical in terms of planning those communities,” said Bishop, who served as the “boots on the ground” during the pilot project.

The degree could be applied to development anywhere and will touch on some of the environmental considerations in other regions. In coastal areas for example, steep slopes aren’t a problem but sandy soils and fragile underground aquifers are.

The new degree will fall under the umbrella of the Natural Resources Department at HCC. The Natural Resource Department already has a reputation for one of the most outstanding two-year degrees in fields like forestry, wildlife management and horticulture. While most community colleges cater almost entirely to students in their own backyard, the natural resources program at HCC draws students from across the state and even the country looking for hands-on training

Bledsoe expects it won’t be long until other colleges copy the degree now that HCC did the hard work of designing the curriculum and getting the state to recognize it.

“We hope we will model for other institutions,” Bledsoe said.

The college is offering a low-impact development certificate as well as the full-fledged degree. It’s obviously not as comprehensive, but is ideal for those already in the industry who want to bone up on sustainable practices.

HCC will hire a new full-time instructor dedicated to the low-impact development degree before the start of the next semester.

As for Stimson, she hopes to find work as a consultant for developers, graders and contractors when she becomes one of the first graduates in the state to hold such a degree.

“It fit right in with my values,” Stimson said. “I have a farm myself and I love the outdoors. I live in the mountains because it is so beautiful here. We have to start taking care of that.”

A model home under construction on the Haywood Community College campus is giving construction majors hands-on training in green building techniques.

The demonstration house will take two years to build. It was launched in conjunction with a new green building track within the construction degree.

The green home will not only help students get hands-on experience in green building techniques, but will continue to serve as a model for builders and the public. That lasting impact was one of the primary goals.

“We wanted to build a house that someone could look at and say ‘I might not be able to do all this, but I can do some of it,’” said John Mark Roberts, an instructor for the green building certification.

Roberts has seen lots of inquiries into the green building certificate since its launch this fall. Construction students are excited about the extra skill set that will hopefully set them apart from others in the building industry.

“I think it will be in high demand in the future,” said Trent Burgess, 18. “With all the green stuff coming in, there will be more and more people wanting their houses built green. So I figured I could get a head start on it.”

The green building certificate can be earned as a compliment to HCC’s construction degree, or as a stand-alone program, which appeals to builders already in the profession who want to expand their skills — especially these days.

“Times are slack as you know,” said Al Dinofa, a builder who decided to put his down time in the industry to good use by getting his green building certificate at HCC. “I’m learning a lot of different things.”

Even those who don’t start out drawn to the green building track soon realize its worth.

“All my students are seeing that it is marketable,” said Roberts.

Among them is Colby Stamey, 20, who started out in the regular construction program last year.

“I think it will become useful in the years to come,” Stamey said.

Even those who don’t take the special track will get an extra helping of green building techniques — a direct result of HCC’s campus-wide sustainability focus.

“It is pretty heavily incorporated in our general curriculum,” Roberts said.

Green building is more than the use of eco-friendly materials, although that’s certainly part of it. But it also means disturbing as little land as possible outside the building’s actual footprint and protecting streams from erosion runoff.

Energy is also a big part of the program. Graduates will be versed in geothermal heating and solar technology. Students will be able to perform an energy rating for a house once they’ve built it, including testing for air leaks and giving the buyer an estimated annual energy cost.

The green building demonstration house is funded largely by the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory, a research arm of the U.S. Forest Service. Financial support also came from the Janirve Foundation, Progress Energy and Home Trust Bank.

“Building green is certainly going to be a wave of the future,” said N.C. Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, who attended the September groundbreaking on the green building demonstration house and is an architect. “It’s great to see the community college focus on that. To have a whole new generation of contractors who know best practices, that’s a good thing.”

As with the election two years ago, Canton will once again see three new faces on the board.

Voters had a deep bench of candidates to chose from: 10 running for four seats on the board. The only two returning board members are Alderman Eric Dills and Mayor Pat Smathers.

Town politics in Canton have been marked by division the past two years, and the vast majority of candidates running this time claimed they would rise above the fray and bring an end to opposing camps.

The two town leaders most at odds — Smathers and Dills — are the only two returning to the board, leaving it up to the three new board members to forge a new direction.

“I think we will sit around that table and come up with some good ideas and discuss them and come to a consensus hopefully a lot quicker than what was done in the past,” said Ed Underwood, one of the new candidates winning election to the board.

Candidate Jimmy Flynn agreed.

“I just feel like the three new people need to concentrate on bringing everybody together,” Flynn said.

Flynn said personality conflicts need to be put aside to do what’s best for the town.

“They have to concentrate on listening to each other more than talking,” Flynn said.

Two years ago, voters ousted three long-time board members and ushered in a slate of new faces for the first time in years. A power struggle between Smathers and Dills rooted in philosophical differences bogged down progress, according to both candidates and voters.

One voter interviewed for an exit poll, Paul Moore, said he went for a “complete change” when casting his ballot. Moore had supported a change on the board two years ago but was disappointed in what they had accomplished.

“Nothing,” he said.

Luckily for Moore, all the seats on the Canton board are up for election every two years, so he didn’t have to wait long to vote for another clean sweep.

Dills has been among the first to admit that the change promised by candidates two years ago hasn’t come to fruition but says progress was stymied by hold-overs in the town leadership who resisted the change.

“People haven’t been satisfied with the progress that has been made, but I know I will continue to stand in there with their best interest,” Dills said.

Coming to consensus

A hot topic in the race was forging a new place for the historic, blue-collar mill town in the 21st century economy.

“I think everybody in Canton wants Canton to be a vibrant community again,” said Randy Burrell, a voter interviewed on his way out of the polls. “I think all the candidates have that in mind. It is the main issue. Canton has a little niche somewhere and once we find it, we’ll be back.”

Indeed, most candidates made revitalization a central issue — but they differ on how to best target the town’s efforts. Some want the top focus to be on the core downtown. Others want to upgrade water and sewer around the Interstate 40 interchange to lay the groundwork for commercial development. Yet others believe Canton’s strength lies in its neighborhoods and want to clean them up.

Underwood said it is crucial they agree on some priorities, or they won’t be any better than the last board, which was chastised for getting nothing done.

“You hear presidential elections with a mandate. The mandate here was get down there and work together,” Underwood said. “I think if you didn’t hear that message, you got a problem.”

Mayor Pat Smathers published an op-ed piece in a local paper listing 17 priorities he wants to see the town tackle and challenged voters to elect candidates who would follow his lead on them.

Dills said he is going to come up with his own list to put before the board. He said the board should commit to priorities on paper rather than a piecemeal approach that is hard to track.

“We have to come to some concensus and figure out what we want to accomplish the next two years, put it on paper and let’s go do it,” Dills said.

Troy Mann, a current board member who lost re-election, wished the new board good luck.

“If they can fulfill Mayor Smathers’ list of 17 projects, they have their work cut out for them,” Mann said.

Smathers was running unopposed, and nearly a third of the voters chose not to vote at all in the mayor’s race and instead marked no name at all. Another 88 voters wrote in a candidate for mayor, but the names were not available as of press time.

Barry Mull, a worker at the mill, was among those who chose not to vote at all, rather than vote for Smathers.

“I think it’s time for him to slide out of there,” said Mull.

Most voters wouldn’t say who they voted for to avoid hurt feelings in a small community. For Cassie Erwin, 22, members of her own family were split over who to vote for and therefore she wouldn’t share her picks.

Flynn, a safety manager for Buckeye Construction, was the top vote-getter. He chalks it up to his experience working for the town for 30 years in a variety of jobs from the police department to recreation department to streets. He also served as town clerk and assistant manager.

“I think people were looking for experience,” Flynn said.

Canton

Mayor

Pat Smathers (I)    448

Town board

Seats up for election:    4

Total seats on board:    4

Jimmy Flynn    364

Ed Underwood    337

Eric Dills (I)    288

Kenneth Holland    257

Carole Edwards    246

Patrick Willis    229

Charlie Crawford    216

Troy Mann (I)    214

Angela Jenkins    195

Gene Monson    171

Registered voters:    2,880

Voter turn-out: 648 (24%)

Balsam Mountain Preserve has been stripped of control and custody of its development as lenders continue their march toward foreclosure.

The 4,400-acre development in Jackson County owes nearly $21 million to its lender, a private equity investment firm called TriLyn. Balsam Mountain Preserve developers have been in default of the loan for more than a year.

Foreclosure could be a long way off, however, so lenders went to court last week asking that a third party be put in charge of the property in the meantime.

The third party will have full control of the development. It will take over the bank accounts, manage employees and keep up the property. It will even be able to sell lots, with revenue to be turned over to the lender.

The lender will put up the money the third party management company needs for upkeep and operations, although it will be tacked on to the running tally Balsam Mountain Preserve owes. The company selected by the lender, Radco Property Management of Atlanta, will get a fee of $25,000 a month for overseeing operations, known as a receivership.

The lender said the move was necessary to ensure the property is properly maintained, since its only hope of recouping its investment is the equity that remains in the development.

Two-thirds of the 354 lots in the development have been sold. Developers were banking on continued lot sales to pay off the loan, but the pace of sales plummeted due to the national economic downturn.

“There is no good guy, bad guy. It is just a case of the economy. The music stopped,” said George Hendon, the Asheville attorney representing the lender in court last week.

Also last week, Balsam Mountain Preserve got a 30-day extension on a foreclosure hearing. The hearing would decide whether the lender should be allowed to proceed with the actual foreclosure.

Balsam Mountain Preserve is trying to raise money to pay off the debt and needs more time, argued Sylva attorney Jay Coward, who is representing Balsam Mountain Preserve developers. Coward said there has been “substantial success” in raising the funds so far.

“Given more time the entire amount may be raised,” Coward wrote in his request for an extension.

The original loan dating to 2005 was for $19.8 million. While more than $3 million of the principal has been paid off, the total owed on the property has grown to $21 million, mostly due to mounting interest, which totals more than $4 million. Interest is accruing at a higher than normal default rate of roughly $100,000 a month, according to court documents.

Lenders are also tacking on their own legal expenses and costs associated with collecting the debt. And now, the fee paid to the third-party management company and operating costs to keep the development going will be tacked on as well.

Despite the loan being in arrears, lenders say they advanced Balsam Mountain Preserve more than $1 million over the past year to keep the property from decaying. Credit was extended for operating costs, items like payroll for workers grooming the golf course and for sales staff courting prospective lot buyers. The lender even had to pay leases on maintenance equipment to keep it from being repossessed.

“We did that on the assurance they were trying to find additional capital,” Hendon said.

Balsam Mountain Preserve has been in discussions with the lender for a year to refinance the loan, restructure it or arrive at a work-out, but the lender’s patience has been exhausted, Hendon said. The lender’s top concern now is to keep the property from deteriorating since that is the only collateral securing the debt.

“It is a critical time,” Hendon said. “They are down to a skeletal security force with no indications they are improving.”

If the foreclosure drags out, the property could be in jeopardy of losing value and, in turn, limiting the lender’s ability to recover its investment, Hendon said.

Balsam Mountain Preserve countered the suggestion that it wasn’t taking care of the property.

“When (the lender) tries to paint this bleak picture, I don’t think that is fair. We deny it,” said Coward.

The two top managers at Balsam Mountain Preserve filed affidavits in the court record stating their opposition to the lender’s representation that the property was being ill-managed and not taken care of.

If sales continued at the historical average of $500,000 per lot, there is $60 million in revenue yet to be made off unsold lots in the development — more than enough to pay off the loan. But if and when demand for lots in that price range will return is anyone’s guess. The lender is apparently not willing to take a wait-and-see approach.

Meanwhile, property owners are concerned that the third-party overseer won’t uphold the same values as Balsam Mountain Preserve developers.

“The homeowners association is very distressed about the situation,” Coward said. Coward said it has been difficult to “get a read” on the third-party overseer and its track record or experience with resort communities.

Balsam Mountain Preserve is a subsidiary of Chaffin Light, a national company with a reputation for high-end resort communities that cater to the environment and pay homage to the natural resources and scenery of the surrounds.

“The environmental ethic of this development is pretty incredible for Western North Carolina. In other words, they didn’t cut up 4,000 acres into 4,000 lots,” Coward said.

The third-party overseer has full control now, however. It even has the authority to edit marketing materials and the Balsam Mountain Preserve Web site to delete any reference to Chaffin Light.

The development has 354 lots on 1,400 acres, with the remaining 3,000 acres off limits to development under a conservation easement. The conservation easement is legally binding and protections will remain in place regardless of the outcome of the foreclosure. The number of lots is also capped, regardless of new ownership, thanks to covenants on the property.

The Balsam Mountain property owners association had an attorney of its own at last week’s court hearing on the third-party receivership to assert their interests. Property owners bought into the community under certain expectations, which should be upheld, said David Herrigel , the attorney on behalf of the property owner’s association.

“We want them to continue to operate the community the way it was represented to the members at the time that they bought,” Herrigel said.

Property owners hope to intervene by raising enough capital to pay off the loan and assume control of the property themselves, including the well-appointed amenities of an Arnold Palmer golf course, equestrian center, dining hall, swimming pool, tennis court, pavilion and backcountry camp.

“I am just hoping that it all works out for the best,” said Nancy Seidensticker, a homeowner in Balsam Mountain Preserve. “We all love this place. Most of the homeowners I know have committed to put in a certain amount to see what we can do, but I don’t know if it will be enough because I guess the lender is hanging pretty tough.”

Judge Brad Letts, the resident Superior Court judge for Jackson County, had to recuse himself from proceedings since he owns a lot in the development. Judge Dennis Winner presided instead and granted the receivership to Radco. Radco did not return phone calls seeking comment, but a representative of the company — which specializes in taking over distressed commercial properties — was on site at Balsam Mountain Preserve Monday.

The National Park Service and Swain County appear locked in a stalemate over how much the federal government should pay up for breaking its long-standing contract to replace a road flooded by the creation of Lake Fontana in the 1940s.

Swain County has asked for $52 million as fair compensation for the government’s refusal to honor the long-standing written promise to rebuild the road it flooded. But a meeting between Swain County and the National Park Service last week ended once again without a resolution. It is the fourth meeting held between the parties over the past 18 months.

“It is the same thing they have been doing for the past 65 years — they tell you one thing then they go back on their word,” said Swain County Commissioner David Monteith, who would rather see the road rebuilt rather than cash anyway. “I told the commissioners it was time they put their britches on. We have yet to get what we were promised.”

Swain County Manager Kevin King said the county expects $52 million and nothing less. The number was first proposed by the county in 2002. The park service later used that figure in its own literature and documents that were disseminated to the public during a comprehensive analysis of whether to rebuild the flooded road — which would traverse 30 miles through the Smokies — or compensate the county financially for the broken contract.

Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson has failed to get behind the number, however.

“Their whole mission is to get as low a number as possible,” King said. “That’s why it is called a negotiation. They are just doing their job.”

Bob Miller, spokesperson for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, would not say whether the park service endorses $52 million, or whether it opposes the amount.

“Discussion are still ongoing, aimed at coming up with an agreeable settlement amount,” Miller said.

Heading into the meeting, those following the process thought the park service might put a formal offer on the table. However, that didn’t happen. Instead, Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, will continue lobbying for the full $52 million.

“He is trying to get it worked out behind the scenes,” King said. “I think that is why the park service did not present an offer because they know the wheels of government are turning.”

The negotiations had reached an impasse last year, with the park service unwilling to get behind $52 million. Shuler intervened in hopes of getting the money appropriated anyway.

King and County Attorney Kim Lay are the only people representing Swain County who participated in the meeting, which included a dozen people representing five different parties.

After years of battling Duke Energy in nearly every legal arena it could scout out, Jackson County was dealt a major blow last week when the U.S. Court of Appeals denied its plea for federal intervention.

Jackson County is trying to save the Dillsboro dam from being torn down by Duke, and at the same time force Duke to offer up better compensation for the environmental impacts of its network of hydropower facilities in the region. Jackson hoped the U.S. Court of Appeals would step into the fray and send Duke back to the drawing board to reconsider its plans for dam demolition, slated to move forward this winter.

“This brings Duke a giant step closer to river restoration by removing the Dillsboro Dam,” said Fred Alexander, Nantahala district manager for Duke.

After exhausting everything shy of the U.S. Supreme Court, Jackson County’s fate now hangs on a final case with a decision pending as early as next week. Jackson County hopes to exercise eminent domain to take the dam away from Duke and make it the focal point of a new river front park along the shores of the Tuckasegee River.

A lawsuit in Jackson County Superior Court will decide whether the county can go forward with the plan. Arguments were heard earlier this month, but a decision from Judge Zoro Guice is still pending.

Jackson County Manager Ken Westmoreland said the case for eminent domain is much more critical than the U.S. Court of Appeals filing was.

“That was just another one of those procedural administrative challenges. It doesn’t go to the heart of the issue now, which is condemnation,” Westmoreland said.

Duke’s biggest ally has been the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has consistently agreed that tearing down the Dillsboro dam is a good idea and has been unwilling to force Duke into more mitigation.

Jackson County has challenged everything their lawyers could think of to challenge, from state and federal environmental reports to technical jurisdictional issues, pushing mountains of paperwork around over a six-year period.

Jackson County had finally appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in hopes it would force the energy commission to give a hard look at Jackson’s stance, but instead the three-judge panel upheld FERC’s decision.

“This decision affirms that FERC acted appropriately in approving Duke’s application to surrender the license and decommission and remove the Dillsboro Dam and Powerhouse,” Alexander said in a written statement.

The appeal did not require an extensive legal investment on the county’s part. It was mostly a matter of rounding up all the paperwork that has previously been filed in various arenas and packaging it with a new cover letter.

“Most of it was just a compilation of things that had taken place over the years, so it wasn’t all that expensive,” said Westmoreland. The county has not gotten a final legal bill for the appeal filing.

Claude Douthit has spent half his life fighting the federal government over the North Shore Road.

The decades-old debate dates back to the 1940s, when the federal government flooded a road outside Bryson City with the construction of Lake Fontana. The government promised to rebuild it but never did. While Swain gave up its quest for the long-promised road and agreed to take a cash settlement instead, the government had been dragging its feet lately on that as well.

Douthit, 81, began to wonder whether he would live long enough to see the cash settlement come to fruition or whether his decades of work would go to waste. He occasionally wanted to give up.

“I felt like it many times. I felt like it was so futile,” Douthit said. “[But] I just kept working on it. I am very pleased that a 66-year injustice to Swain County has finally been resolved.”

So when word trickled down that Congress would finally be passing an earmark with Swain County’s name on it, an afternoon in front of CSPAN seemed like a small price to pay. Douthit camped out in front of his television through hours of Congressional drudgery last Wednesday to witness an otherwise anti-climactic vote by the House on the defense spending bill. Tucked deep in that bill was a Christmas present to Swain County: $12.8 million secured by Congressman Heath Shuler toward repairing a decades-old broken promise.

“After 66 years I’d say it is history in the making to get something instead of nothing,” Douthit said. “I wanted to see it. After working on this issue for 40 years, it was time to get something, time for me to see some results.”

County Commission Chairman Glenn Jones said the news was heartwarming after such a long struggle.

“The people of Swain County can now share this settlement,” Jones said.

Douthit credits Shuler for getting the appropriation.

“I think he has done a good job. He has finally got them to realize they owe Swain County,” Douthit said.

While others before him failed, Shuler was keenly positioned to bring the long-standing issue to a close. For starters, he grew up in Swain County, and to him, the debate was more than just political posturing.

“To grow up in that community and see how that road has divided families and divided the community, when there is an opportunity to settle something that has lingered for that many decades, to put it to rest, I hope we can bring the community back together,” Shuler said.

Shuler said his heart goes out to those with deep feelings on both sides in the debate, but his position for a settlement has been driven by the need for closure.

Shuler’s politics may have given him leverage in winning the earmark. As a Blue Dog Democrat — part of a coalition of conservative Democrats — he has angered the Democratic majority for voting against them on key legislation but also staked out his position as a swing voter for the party, potentially making it easier to curry favors.

“I’m glad Heath had a enough clout to get what we got right now,” Jones said.

The quest for a cash settlement has been vehemently opposed by those who would rather see the flooded road rebuilt as originally promised. Road supporters have fought equally long and equally hard.

But the environmental resistance to building a 30-mile road through a remote section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — not to mention a price tag of $600 million — led many to realize rebuilding the road would never happen and that a cash settlement in lieu of the road was Swain’s best chance at putting the issue to bed.

The National Park Service formally spoke out against the road in 2007. Now, with the cash settlement cemented in a Congressional act, it becomes virtually impossible to roll back. Douthit said it is time for warring sides to move on.

“Swain County citizens will no longer be divided over this issue and can press ahead toward a brighter future for every resident of the county,” Douthit said.

More to come

While the appropriation falls short of the $52 million Swain hoped to get from a cash settlement, it’s an important milestone.

“Before this, they never had made a commitment,” Jones said. “To me, that shows that they realize they do owe Swain County something.”

The settlement amount of $52 million is based on the value of the road at the time it was flooded plus interest and inflation. The $12.8 million has been coined a “down payment” on a total sum to come.

“The congressman has said this is a down payment. He is not giving up,” Jones said.

Negotiations between Swain County and the federal government over the dollar amount of a cash settlement have been stalled for a year and a half but may finally be on track again.

Shuler said attorneys on both sides are drawing up the draft language for a settlement agreement “as we speak.”

“I certainly hope in the next 30 to 60 days we get something that is concrete,” Shuler said.

As for the amount, no one is saying how much Swain compromised on the sum of $52 million.

“I feel like we will get something we can be very proud of,” Shuler said.

Shuler said he will fight for another round of appropriations next year.

A movement is afoot to roll back some of the smart growth principles of Waynesville’s land-use plan by loosening commercial development guidelines.

A blue-ribbon committee appointed by the town has spent the past few months combing through the town’s land-use plan, which espouses a progressive “new urbanism” philosophy.

The plan promotes pedestrian-friendly development and aesthetic standards for commercial development in an attempt to preserve small-town character. Several members of the committee question whether the new urbanism model is realistic, however.

Joe Taylor, one of committee members, said the ideals in the land-use plan are utopian and don’t take current development patterns into account.

“It can be done if you start with a clean sheet of paper. If we are going to create a new town, fine, go for it,” Taylor said.

The committee’s composition is weighted toward business interests.

“We have people on that board making recommendations that make sense for doing business,” Taylor said.

Public Works Director Fred Baker said that commercial interests were perhaps underrepresented on the citizen task force that helped write the land-use plan earlier this decade. The current blue-ribbon committee was constituted to give them a voice, especially given their ongoing complaints over the regulations.

Ron Leatherwood, a contractor on the committee, said he didn’t get involved when the town was writing the guidelines, despite literally dozens of public input meetings held over the course of three years.

“A lot of us in the business community didn’t realize the consequence of the written word on the table,” Leatherwood said. “At the end of the day, I am not seeing us doing a great deal of changes except in two or three areas. We have to have some type of hybrid of this.”

But Baker isn’t sure a hybrid is possible. Baker has long had the 13 principles of new urbanism tacked up on the wall of his office. He said they work in unison, and if you ignore more than two or three, the whole vision collapses.

Leatherwood questioned whether Waynesville in general has the population to support new urbanism. The concept is based on people living, working and shopping in a close-knit, pedestrian-friendly environment, but it relies on residential populations being able to support nearby mixed-use commercial districts.

Taylor also wonders whether the model is possible today. Society no longer functions like it did in the 1950s, when people walked to their neighborhood grocer, Taylor said. But advocates of new urbanism want to remake society by forcing commercial developments into a mold that doesn’t work on the ground, Taylor added.

Parking lot saga

One of the most contentious points addressed by the committee is parking lot configurations for new commercial development. The town’s plan bans parking lots directly in front of buildings. By placing parking to the rear and side of businesses instead, the streetscape is defined by building facades, sidewalks and street trees rather than expansive asphalt parking lots.

Despite the aesthetic benefits, the regulation is not always practical, according to some committee members.

“Parking, as we knew going into it, is probably going to be the biggest issue,” said Town Planner Paul Benson. “I think they all feel like we are being too restrictive by not allowing any parking in front of the building. Certainly we have heard that from the development community.”

Taylor said it is ridiculous to ban parking in front of buildings.

“People tend to go where the crowd is,” Taylor said. “That is pretty much human nature to say, ‘That place is doing business, let’s go in there.’ Hide all the vehicles and you take that factor away.”

Baker said the purpose of the rule is to create an “active pedestrian environment.”

“That is difficult to do if you have only left a little strip of sidewalk between the parking lot and road. It visually sets the automobile above all other considerations,” Baker said.

Craig Lewis, a planning consultant with the Lawrence Group in the town of Davidson who is steering the review process, said auto-centric development doesn’t stand the test of time. One strip mall is simply abandoned by shoppers and merchants alike when a new one comes along.

“Areas that are pedestrian friendly have become more successful than areas that are automobile friendly,” Lewis said. “We are talking about creating places that people care about.”

But Leatherwood said the “new urbanism” vision can still be achieved through other techniques to buffer the look of asphalt parking lots.

“By still having tree canopies or street walls or some kind of streetscape, you don’t have the impact of a large parking lots directly on the street,” Leatherwood said. “You can soften the street.”

Committee member Patrick McDowell pointed to a small strip mall in the greater downtown area called Haywood Square, which wouldn’t be allowed under the town’s current land-use plan.

Engineer Patrick Bradshaw countered that it’s not a bad thing to force developers to think outside the box.

“Surely we are brighter than just a strip mall duplicated time and again. What we keep trying to do is move these strip malls around. While it is suitable for some locations, we can do better,” said Bradshaw, who sits on the committee.

Lewis said Waynesville’s land-use plan has been a trendsetter.

“More and more communities are doing it, but it is still not the norm and certainly not in the mountains. I think Waynesville has led a lot of conversations in the mountains because they have said ‘We care about the aesthetics of our community,’” Lewis said.

But even Lewis isn’t a purist when it comes to no parking in front. To insist there can never be parking in front of a building is impractical, Lewis said. Lewis has proposed a compromise that would allow a portion of parking to be allowed in front of buildings in a few of the town’s high-traffic commercial areas, namely Russ Avenue, the Dellwood/Junaluska area and the interchange near the new Super Wal-Mart.

“I think it is a good compromise,” Benson said. “Some districts lend themselves to new urbanism more than others.”

But several committee members want the compromise extended to more parts of town. They also want more parking spots in the front than the limited number Lewis has proposed.

That debate has yet to fully play out and the differences of opinion could ultimately lead to a split vote in the committee’s final recommendation.

What’s next

The committee is still a few months away from making its recommendations. The task has been rigorous. The committee had been meeting every other Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. for three months, allowing the members to get on with their workday by 9 a.m. They have now ramped up the schedule to meet every week.

“It is a hard-working advisory committee,” Baker said. “The town is certainly getting a lot of work and a lot of good ideas from them.”

Baker noted that the recommendations will be just that, however.

“There might be some that don’t necessarily make it through,” Baker said.

Final approval resting with the town’s elected leaders following public input.

“I don’t see the town board wanting to reverse course completely on the parking issue,” Benson said. “I think we are all just looking for a way to add some flexibility without compromising the pedestrian focus.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce 2009 Business Directory. With the final throes of Christmas shopping underway this week, the message seemed particularly relevant and is reprinted here with permission.

It’s all about choices. The choice to order a book from Amazon or through your local bookstore. Whether to fill a prescription at Wal-Mart or a family-owned pharmacy. Pulling through the drive-thru at a fast-food chain or a local lunch counter.

Every day, we face choices about where to spend our dollars — and the health of the local economy rides on the collective outcome of our decisions.

“It is important for every resident in Haywood County to understand how money moves through our community,” said CeCe Hipps, executive director of the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce. “Strong communities and economies need the full support of the people to drive it.”

While the catch phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” was born under the pretext of the environmental movement, it applies to the economy as well. If residents everywhere focus on building healthy economies in their own communities, the country will prosper.

It’s not always easy, however. Consumers are lured by big-box chain stores that boast the convenience of one-stop shopping and in some cases — though hardly all — lower prices. Buying online, from shoes to insurance, opens up a world of choices and the ease of armchair shopping.

But Haywood County residents, more than most, seem to understand the hidden costs to their community that such choices carry.

“The current state of our economy has caused everyone to rethink,” Hipps said. “If we want to maintain and improve our quality of life in Haywood County, it is essential to keep the cash flow moving throughout our county.”

In a quest to understand how money moves, we decided to follow a dollar through the community, from business to business. We picked a starting place, asked them to name a local business they support, then traced the dollar from one business to the next. Along the way, the business owners in the chain talked about their personal philosophy of buying local.

Each time that dollar was spent, bouncing from one place to another across the county, it created a positive ripple effect. The impact of a dollar spent locally — versus one that is shipped out of the county never to be seen again — is indeed a powerful thing.

Stop 1

Ed Kelley, Ridge Runner Naturals in Waynesville

As a downtown Waynesville business owner, Ed Kelley is finely attuned to the hum of local commerce. Kelley, a nature photographer, writer and musician, owns the gallery Ridge Runner Naturals along with his wife, Jo. Both go out of their way to support local businesses when they can — whether it’s buying tires or filling prescriptions.

“You may save money by going to a mass merchandiser, but when you think about how much of that money stays in the community, it is a small percentage,” Kelley said.

The value of supporting local businesses goes beyond the economy. It creates a sense of community, Kelley said.

“Whoever you do business with you get to know better. You get to know people and trust people,” Kelley said. “If you’ve established that, when things need to be done in the community, you already have that cohesiveness.”

There’s a third reason on his list for shopping local.

“To me, it is a matter of sustainability,” Kelley said. Giant retailers are prone to vacate an old strip mall for a new one, leaving an enormous hulking shell in their wake, and to Kelley, that’s not creating a sustainable community.

Kelley had a long list of local businesses that he supports, but one of his favorites is Smoky Mountain Coffee Roasters, a local coffeehouse that roasts its own beans.

“We feel good supporting them, and it is a good product,” Kelley said.

Stop 2

Kevin Duckett, Smoky Mountain Coffee Roasters in Hazelwood

Kevin Duckett had successfully created a well-known brand of locally-roasted coffee beans when he decided to branch out and enter the retail side five years ago. He now runs a coffee shop cafe on the main streets of Hazelwood and churns out batches of the aromatic beans.

For Duckett, supporting other local businesses has become a way of life.

“When you spend a dollar at a shop that isn’t local, the profit portion goes straight to corporate, whether it is in New York, Atlanta or Seattle,” Duckett said. Those profits aren’t being reinvested in the community like they would by a local business owner.

“I bank here, buy groceries here, all the way to buying my vehicle here and paying property taxes,” Duckett said. “That local dollar gets spent over and over in the county. With a local business, it will stay in circulation within the county until somebody goes outside and spends it.”

Duckett has long competed with mass-produced brand name coffee sold on grocery store shelves, but the dreaded Starbucks had stayed at bay until recently.

While the “Buy Local” movement has been afoot for a while, environmental awareness has provided another motive. Duckett always buys local produce in season, for example.

“If a tomato is coming from California, the shipping and fuel used to bring that to us versus a tomato grown in Crabtree and sold at a local market — that’s going green, literally and figuratively,” Duckett said.

One of the businesses Duckett supports is a kindred cottage industry like his own just a few doors down, Hazelwood Soap Company.

Stop 3

Diana Laursen, Hazelwood Soap Company in Hazelwood

For Diana Laursen, the evolution from a soap-making hobby to full-time business occurred quite by accident. Pregnant with her third baby and the ink barely dry on a new mortgage, Laursen’s husband was laid off from his job as a chemist.

“We were like, ‘Uh-oh. What are we going to do?’” Laursen said. She had been making soap as a hobby to sell at festivals after learning the recipe from her chemist husband. Down on their luck, they turned up the soap production and found a local store to carry it. After five years of mostly wholesale operations, they opened a storefront in 2006 and have become a primarily retail store.

“Our business is solely based on locals,” Laursen said. “It is definitely more of a working relationship with the community.”

Laursen credits her success to the conscious effort of people in Haywood County to shop local.

“What they really connect with is we have four kids. They know if they come in and buy lotion, I am going to take that money and go to the grocery store. I am like, ‘Great we are all going to eat tonight,’” said Laursen, whose four kids come to work with her. “People can see, ‘Oh, that one really does need shoes.’ They see us working as a real family-owned business.”

Laursen said there is a sort of tit-for-tat support among businesses in the community.

“There is an unspoken but conscious thing that we support each other,” Laursen said. “They notice another business owner coming into their store, and they go back there. Everybody knows who’s going where for lunch.”

In fact, one of the people who buys gift baskets from Laursen every Christmas is the same person her family gets their insurance through: Clay Dangerfield of State Farm in Canton.

Stop 4

Clay Dangerfield, State Farm Insurance in Canton

Clay Dangerfield’s theory is that the local dollar is so powerful, it goes beyond recirculation but actually carries a multiplier effect.

“Let’s say we eat out at the Corner Sandwich Shop in Canton instead of a chain. If their business thrives, they will keep hiring. That is more people in this community who will have money,” Dangerfield said.

Dangerfield often gives out gift certificates to the Corner Sandwich shop to his customers at Christmas and on their birthdays, encouraging them to support local businesses as well. When people support local businesses, some of that money comes back to the community itself.

“Do you know how many times people come in and ask us to support this vacation bible school, this little league tournament, this cheerleading camp?” Dangerfield said.

A big-box retailer, even with a community-minded general manager or franchise owner, can’t get approval easily or quickly for donations or sponsorships.

While TV commercials luring people to buy their insurance over the Internet sound appealing, their promise of cheaper rates is a myth, Dangerfield said.

“When someone tells me they have Geico, I say, ‘Definitely let me give you a quote,’” Dangerfield said.

Buying local ensures that the shops will be there when you really need them. When his wedding anniversary rolls around, for example, Dangerfield is able to pop down the street during his lunch break and pick up a card and flowers for his wife at Polly’s Florist.

Stop 5

Vicki Gregg, Polly’s Florist and Gifts in Canton

For Vicki Gregg, buying local supports more than the economy. It sustains the town itself.

“If you don’t have the small businesses, you don’t have a town,” Gregg said. “Each individual business is what makes a town.”

As a mill town, Canton isn’t exactly on the tourist circuit, but Gregg nonetheless gets her share of vacationers passing through who are drawn to the mom-and-pop feel.

“They say how much they love the town. They say there is so much charm,” Gregg said.

Those who support Polly’s Florist and Gifts, which has been among the ranks of Canton’s mom-and-pop shops since 1953, help keep that charm alive, like the customer who stopped in last weekend on a quest for a Christmas ornament to take to a party.

“She said, ‘I can’t wait to tell everyone I bought mine in downtown Canton,’” Gregg said.

The shopper told Gregg she could have gone to Wal-Mart, but the purchase would have felt like a chore and lacked a connection. Gregg could relate, making similar choices to support local businesses in her own life.

“They are like me. They are trying to make a living, and I feel like I should trade with them,” Gregg said. “It just gives me a good feeling.”

When she needed a small sign to keep people from parking in the loading zone reserved for her delivery van, she had to look no further than a sign shop down the street to fill the bill, WNC Sign World.

Stop 6

Charles Rathbone, WNC SignWorld in Canton

Charles Rathbone believes what goes around, comes around. If he expects others to buy local, he knows he’s got to do the same.

“We keep all of our business local, even our suppliers,” Rathbone said. “I try to find a local vendor even if I have to pay more. It creates a relationship and in a relationship you can have more control over the end product than going through a store where you are just an account number and dollar value.”

Rathbone makes signs of all sorts: laser-engraved, sand blasted, even brail. When people special-order signs from outside of the community, middle-men and laborers in another region make the money, Rathbone said.

Rathbone’s shop has grown from three employees when they opened in March 2008 to eight in little more than a year. A few jobs here, a few jobs there: it’s a testimony to the collective impact of small businesses in the economy when the public is willing to buy local.

“This community is really kind of unique,” Rathbone said. “It is like a family. People seek each other out. They really don’t want to go outside the area it seems like.”

When asked to pick a local business for the next stop on our local dollar journey, Rathbone rattled off a long list. Among them was the place where he buys all his appliances.

Stop 7

Steve Hardin, Haywood Appliance in Clyde

When Steve Hardin opened Haywood Appliance in 1978, the advent of big-box stores and mass retailers had not yet reached Haywood County. But thanks to the support of the community and the exceptional service he provides, his business remains strong.

“Service doesn’t mean how fast somebody can ring up a cash register,” Hardin said. “If you buy a refrigerator from us and it breaks down, it’s our staff who come fix it under warranty.”

Between sales and their factory-authorized warranty repair center, Hardin employs 16 people — not bad for a small business.

Hardin counters the notion that mass retailers are cheaper.

“They have propagated the image that they have lower prices. Customers automatically assume that’s where to go and don’t shop around,” Hardin said. “The problem is that is not necessarily always true.”

Hardin will go to great lengths not to shop at big-box stores.

“I personally boycott them if I can,” Hardin said. “There are times when I can’t find what I am looking for anywhere else, so I do have to end up going there for those items. But by far, we prefer to shop with independents.”

Lane Thaw, the CFO for Haywood Appliance, has researched statistics behind buying local versus at chains and dedicated a page to his findings on the company’s Web site. Of every dollar spent at a locally-owned store, 25 percent more remains in the community compared to a purchase at a big-box chain, which funnels off profits and consolidates functions.

“So many things are done at some central headquarters: accounts payable, accounts receivable, their lawyers, their bank, their insurance. The list goes on and on,” Thaw said. “But everyone we deal with is local and our dollars trickle out.”

Nobody knows their way around the gear section of an outfitter store better than the people who work in them every day. The purveyors of serious outdoor clothing and equipment are almost always addicted to their own product. The Smoky Mountain News has capitalized on the expertise of three of the region’s premier outdoor retailers–– Mast General Store in Waynesville; Blackrock Outdoors in Sylva; and Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City –– by asking their staff to recommend the best outdoor gear gifts this season.

Gear Classics

In every generation there’s a technology or a design that’s so good it never changes. If you check out what the gear gurus are wearing in their free time, you get a feel for what the items are.

Blackrock Outdoor Company • Patagonia Down Sweater $200

Patagonia sets the standard for quality gear manufactured with environmentally responsible processes. Their answer to the polyfill puffy coat is this quilted sweater that will keep you snug while you’re cruising or provide warmth under a waterproof outer layer in cold conditions.

Nantahala Outdoor Center • Kleen Kanteen $19.99

Coming in just under $20 and made of BPA-free stainless steel, Kleen Kanteen water bottles are a great gift for almost anyone. Kleen Kanteen formed in 2004 and put BPA-free stainless steel technology into the mix as an alternative to plastic water bottles. The company is part of the 1% For the Planet partnership that donates a portion of its profits to environmental causes.

Mast General Store • Mountain Hardware Flip Jacket $180

Polyfill down puffy coats are a perfect example of a classic design. They’re comfortable, stylish, and retain heat even when they’re soaking wet. The Flip jacket might cost a bit more than a polyfill puffy from another manufacturer, but Schoon says you’ll notice the difference as soon as you snuggle into one.

For the person who has everything...

If you have a gear head in your family, then the chances are slim you can walk into one of these outfitter stores and find something they don’t already have. All of the experts in the field will tell you the simplest solution is to buy a gift certificate of $100 or more, but they also offered up some unique gift options that might tickle the fancy of the person who has everything.

Nantahala Outdoor Center • NOC Belt Buckle $22

We guarantee you won’t find this stylish buckle anywhere else!

The Stick $42.50

It’s like a toothbrush for muscles, erasing soreness and tension after a tough weekend workout!

Mast General Store • EGear solar pull light $19.99

This handy little outfitter light features both solar charge and pull charge features so you’ll never run out of light in the backcountry.

Wedderlings hand-forged Swedish steel hatchet $60.99

Designed to last a lifetime, this hatchet is sure to push its way into your gear head’s backcountry setup.

Blackrock Outdoor Company • Innova Disc Catcher Sport $199

Disc golf is Western North Carolina’s fastest-growing past-time and Blackrock carries everything you need to get started. Buy a friend a disc basket and set them loose on a lifetime of low-flying fun.

Stocking Stuffers

Stockings are arguably the most fun part of Christmas morning, in part because filling a giant sock full of little gifts tickles the creative instinct of holiday shoppers. All three of our featured local outfitter stores have a whole slew of neat stocking stuffers, but we’ll highlight a few really choice picks.

Blackrock Outdoor Company • Columbia River Knife and Tool M-16 Series $59.99

These hardy river knives are lightweight and built to stay sharp.

Cliff Bar minis $.75

Cliff Bar now makes little tidbits that are perfect for stuffing stockings or the inside of your ski parka for a long day on the hill.

Nantahala Outdoor Center • Foamie Boater Kit $20

Kids and adults love building miniature foamy boaters to float or to race in small creeks and streams.

Kayaking Santa Ornament $10.95

Let’s face it, Santa just looks cooler in a kayak than in that clunky old sleigh. We hope Santa’s got a high-volume stern!

Mast General Store • Green Guru Billboard Series wallet $25

These stylish, sleek, bifold wallets are manufactured from recycled billboards. They’ll impress the most demanding fashionistas and enviro activistas in one fell swoop.

Mast General lip balm $2.99

Manufactured by Joshua Tree, an environmentally friendly independent supplier in Michigan, the Mast store line of lip balm is top quality and eco-friendly.

Hot New Items

Every year, outdoor clothing and equipment companies come out with new products and new materials. Hot new items make good gifts because your loved ones can hit the streets (or rapids) knowing they’re trendsetters.

Nantahala Outdoor Center • Astral Greenjacket Limited Edition $240

Asheville’s Astral Buoyancy — founded by NOC alum Phil Curry — has once again put out the most sought-after PFD for paddlers. Loaded with features, the Greenjacket rescue vest provides paddlers with unmatched freedom of movement. The LE has a small-batch design that looks as good as it performs.

Mast General Store • Mountain Hardware Monkey Woman Jacket $150

Mountain Hardware was started by the people who put The North Face and Sierra Designs on the map. The Monkey Woman Jacket is a thermic fleece jacket that combines incredible warmth and a lightweight design. Thermic fleece isn’t brand new –– it’s the shaggy kind –– but Jay Schoon and Jim Taylor at Mast in Waynesville say its popularity is still on the ascent.

Blackrock Outdoor Company • Under Armour Hundo fleece pullover $69.99

Under Armour has been a staple for high school and college jocks for a number of years, but now their gear line is penetrating the outdoor marketplace. Blackrock now carries a full line of men’s and women’s base and outer layers.

A malicious prosecution lawsuit by a woman accused of misappropriating flood relief donations should be dropped, according to the recommendation of a federal magistrate reviewing the case.

Denise Mathis, former director of the Haywood County Council on Aging, claims she was wrongly accused of mismanaging the finances of her former agency. Mathis lost her job and was charged with 14 counts of embezzlement in 2006 for allegedly misappropriating $100,000 in flood relief donations — one piece out of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that poured into the county in the wake of massive flooding along the Pigeon River that wiped out dozens of homes and businesses in 2004.

In an attempt to clear her name, Mathis sued District Attorney Mike Bonfoey and Waynesville Detective Tyler Trantham for malicious prosecution and accused them of inadequately investigating her case. She also sued them for conspiracy and making false public statements.

But the federal magistrate found no evidence that Bonfoey or Trantham set out to malign Mathis. They were acting in their official capacity as a prosecutor and police detective and cannot be sued simply because the target of an investigation doesn’t like the outcome.

“To do so would subject every prosecutorial decision, every investigation that leads to charges, and every decision of a grand jury to be second guessed by a federal court,” Magistrate Dennis Howell wrote in his recommendation.

Whether the case is indeed dropped will be up to a federal judge, who will presumably take the magistrate’s recommendation into account.

“The Magistrate’s ruling confirms the town’s strongly held belief that Officer Trantham acted professionally in all respects and that absolutely no wrongful acts were committed by him or town employees,” Waynesville Mayor Gavin Brown said.

The embezzlement charges against Mathis were ultimately dropped. While the $100,000 in question did not make it into the hands of flood victims as donors intended, it likewise didn’t go into Mathis’ pocket, a police detective and financial investigator determined. It was used to cover salaries and overhead of the nonprofit agency — and it therefore would be hard to make the embezzlement charges stick in court, Bonfoey said of his decision to drop the charges.

Ghost Town in the Sky, an amusement park in Maggie Valley, failed to pay employees for their final two weeks of work before shutting down for the winter.

While most employees were told upfront that they might not be paid their full wages immediately and were given the choice to work or not, the company could still be in violation of state labor laws.

“The law says they must pay all accrued wages to employees on the regularly scheduled payday,” said Darrell Sanders, supervisor for Wage and Hour Bureau with the N.C. Department of Labor. “Even with the employees’ agreement, nobody can waive the law. As soon as midnight ticked by on payday, the company automatically went into violation of the law and will be until the employees are paid.”

CEO Steve Shiver said the company still plans to pay employees what they are owed.

“They will be paid as quickly as possible. I am doing everything I can every day to make sure that takes place,” said Shiver.

In the meantime, there may be little the employees can do about it other than wait. Ghost Town is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy with hopes of reorganizing and regaining its footing. Workers who are not paid by an employer usually take their complaints to the labor department, but the department has no jurisdiction when bankruptcy proceedings are in play.

“It is a large wrench to throw in the machinery,” Sanders said.

Ghost Town filed for bankruptcy early this year. In addition to a $9.5 million mortgage, the park has a trail of unpaid bills with more than 215 companies totaling $2.5 million, including local contractors, electricians, media outlets and equipment rental companies.

Shiver held a meeting with employees going into the final few weeks of the season in October to fill them in on the financial status of the amusement park.

When Shiver leveled with workers and told them cash flow was tight, it came as no surprise. A few times during the year, the park couldn’t make payroll on Friday and instead relied on revenue from weekend ticket sales to pay employees the following Monday. The park eventually moved payday from Friday to Monday on a permanent basis, according to employees. Even then, the park didn’t always make full payroll, and would only give employees a partial paycheck and make up the difference the following Monday after another weekend of revenue came in.

At the meeting, Shiver gave employees two choices: shut the park down early or remain open the rest of the October. If they stayed open, however, there was a chance they wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to pay everyone on time.

Shiver then left the room while employees voted with a show of hands whether to keep working. The vote was unanimous.

“We all knew there was a possibility we may not get paid,” said David Aldridge, a Maggie resident who worked at Ghost Town. “We were willing to risk it.”

Shiver said the dedication of employees is remarkable.

“I have such great employees,” Shiver said. “It shows the dedication of all of us, including myself, to make sure Maggie Valley and Ghost Town in the Sky and all that goes with it survives. I am very humbled by their support and continued efforts.”

While Shiver never suggested employees would be volunteering their time in exchange for no pay, that was certainly in the back of their minds, Aldridge said.

“We were asked if we were willing to take half our paychecks now and half later,” Aldridge said. “Nobody ever agreed to not get paid. Everybody expected to get their last paycheck.”

The paychecks haven’t been forthcoming yet, but Aldridge said he isn’t mad. He said most employees understand and care deeply about the park and want to help it succeed. Aldridge said Shiver was a good leader and an inspiration for employees.

“He was out there working every day as hard as everybody else. He was trying to do all he could to keep Ghost Town going,” Aldridge said.

Shiver has exemplified the all-hands-on-deck attitude that allowed Ghost Town to make it through the year.

“I bussed tables, I swept floors, I blew leaves off the streets to make sure our guests could enjoy themselves,” Shiver said.

Not all employees were at the meeting when Shiver leveled with the state and the informal vote was held, however. The meeting was billed as a non-mandatory staff meeting and the topic wasn’t shared in advance, so Ron Coates, a worker who lives in Hot Springs, opted not to make the hour-long drive on his day off to attend.

No one in management ever told him what had transpired or warned him that he may not be paid if he kept working.

“Nobody ever said we might not get paid,” Coates said.

Coates has filed a claim with the bankruptcy court for $386 after being told by the state Labor Department that was his only recourse.

Meanwhile, water to the amusement park has been shut off due to failure to pay bills, according to the Maggie Valley Sanitary District.

Every hiker has likely named a trailside feature or two in their day. Ferns sprouting from the banks of a waterfall give rise to Fern Falls, or a flat granite outcrop stumbled upon mid-day becomes the ever-descriptive Lunch Rock.

For most of us, the names fade into oblivion, but for a lucky few, the names they come up with are committed to paper and adopted by hikers everywhere — especially if you’re the guy making the map.

“When you map a place you get to name things,” said Burt Kornegay, owner of Slickrock Expeditions.

Such was the case for Panthertown, the bowl-like valley flanked by granite domes, known as Yosemite of the East. It perches on the Cashiers plateau, its waterfall-laden streams feeding the headwaters of the Tuckasegee River. It was once considered a “best-kept secret,” with a maze of unmarked trails, unnamed waterfalls and uncluttered campsites.

It’s safe to say Panthertown has been discovered, witnessed by the 15,000 maps Kornegay has sold of Panthertown in the past decade. His map was the first and only one depicting the trails, and as a result, he got to name stuff, lots of stuff — like the previously unnamed Jawbone Falls.

“The first time I ever walked out on it there was a beaver jaw laying on the rock. So that’s how I started referring to it,” Kornegay said.

He can also take credit for Halfway Falls, which, incidentally, is halfway between Greenland Falls and Carlton Falls.

Kornegay used intuitive names when possible. A waterfall that empties into a giant pothole in the rock below was plainly named Pothole Falls. Names bestowed on trails usually pay homage to natural features along their route, like the West Fork Way trail, which follows the West Fork of the French Broad River in the Big Pisgah portion of Panthertown.

Kornegay also named the massive granite wall known as the “Great Wall of Panthertown” and the trail known as the Great Wall Trail.

When Kornegay first began naming things in Panthertown, his motive wasn’t map-making. It was simply to communicate with the handful of other hikers who, like Kornegay, enjoyed Panthertown as their own personal backyard playground.

“When you tell someone ‘I’ll see you at such and such falls,’ you better be talking about the same place,” Kornegay said.

Of course, some people had adopted their own names for the same place. Kornegay can think of half a dozen names people still use to refer to one waterfall — a product of the hiker’s paradise lacking an official map for so long.

Kornegay’s first maps of Panthertown were mere line drawings, sketched in on a standard issue USGS topo map to help him remember where he’d been and where he had yet to explore.

The area known as Panthertown was largely a big blank spot.

As luck would have it, Panthertown didn’t fall neatly within one USGS quadrant. He had to piece together the corners of four maps to replicate Panthertown.

Kornegay could have kicked back at his kitchen table with a cup of tea and drawn all the trails from memory.

“I had been hiking them for years by then,” Kornegay said.

But for good measure, Kornegay hiked the trails and drew them in as he went.

He ran off 100 copies on a color copier, mostly to share with clients on his guided outfitter trips. But word soon got out in the hiking community that someone had made a map of Panthertown trails, and they’ve sold like hotcakes ever since.

For the first time in 12 years, Kornegay has updated the map and released a new and improved version. There’s only one downside, for him anyway. It’s made out of tear-proof, waterproof paper.

“These ones won’t wear out. It’s going to hurt sales,” Kornegay said.

While Kornegay’s map was the only one out there for years, the forest service has recently come out with a map of its own. Kornegay’s map is more detailed, however, showing several trails and waterfalls that don’t appear on the forest service one.

When making a map, the forest service didn’t have the knowledge base of Kornegay and his Panthertown comrades. They were unfamiliar with colloquial names assigned to various knobs, trails, creeks and the like.

So a map naming session was convened with several Panthertown experts to hash out official names for the forest service map.

The meeting of the minds managed to label the final handful of features that still lacked a name — including the final unnamed waterfall of Panthertown’s wilds.

“Someone said ‘That’s near Mac’s Gap, Let’s call it Mac’s Falls,’” Kornegay said.

Want to hike Panthertown?

Trail maps of Panthertown Valley can be purchased for $12 at Blackrock Outdoors and City Lights in Sylva or Highland Hiker in Highlands. Or go to www.slickrockexpeditions.com.

Dubbed the “Guide’s Guide to Panthertown, Bonas Defeat and Big Pisgah,” the name is a throwback to the map’s author Burt Kornegay, an outdoor guide who frequently leads trips in Panthertown.

To reach Panthertown, you have to take side roads off N.C. 107 or N.C. 281 in southern Jackson County. Directions to the parking areas are found in the map. The back of the map has a detailed explanation of Panthertown’s natural and human history, along with suggestions for possible hikes.

Christmas is still two weeks away, but I’ve been rehearsing the dramatic tale of Santa’s arrival with my toddler for a month already.

“Talk about Santa on the roof again!” my 2-year-old daughter insists several times a day. It’s her first real Christmas, and her mind is busily plotting the scene that will play out that magical night, right down to the bowl of reindeer food she plans to leave on the front porch.

This year, for the first time since my own childhood, I was able to crack open the Christmas classic The Polar Express. The imaginative story follows a boy roused from his sleep on Christmas Eve by a train outside his window.

“All aboard!” the conductor cries. “Well, are you coming?”

“Where?” the little boy asks.

“Why to the North Pole, of course,” the conductor answers. “This is the Polar Express.”

The book is sheer brilliance, combining a child’s natural infatuation with train rides with a fantastical journey to the North Pole to see Santa. Santa gives the boy a silver bell from the reindeers’ harness — a bell that can only be heard by those who believe in Santa.

Equally brilliant is the effort by the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in Bryson City to capitalize on the story, billing their very own Polar Express holiday excursion every Christmas season.

Trains are so popular with my toddler that we often race through town to the nearest railroad crossing whenever we hear a whistle in the distance. Throw in Santa, and the Polar Express train ride seemed like one holiday treat we just had to splurge for — especially at an age where the line separating reality and imagination is still so blurry.

In preparation for our big Polar Express adventure, my toddler and I spent days reading the book and watching the movie — often simultaneously — while sipping hot chocolate like the children in the train cars.

The morning of our train ride, I was a little nervous. I regretted talking up the trip on the Polar Express as much as I had. Would she be disappointed when we didn’t actually arrive at the North Pole, and didn’t actually see Santa fly away on his reindeer?

But I didn’t need to worry. The Polar Express excursion successfully brings the pages of the book to life.

For starters, kids get to wear their pajamas and slippers, just like the little boy in the book. They also get a golden boarding pass that’s the spitting image of the ones in the movie. As we stood in line along the tracks, I bent down and handed my daughter her special golden ticket, and for a second time stood still as she clasped it with both hands and stared, wide-eyed and speechless.

Once on board, a conductor dressed in a navy suit with a gold stop watch — just like in the movie — worked his way down the isles punching the children’s special tickets. Chefs in big white hats served up hot chocolate and passed out chocolate covered Santa’s with a marshmallow filling — another throwback to the book, where the children on the train eat “candies with nougat white as snow.” All the while, the soundtrack from the movie is played over the speakers.

When we arrived at the North Pole — which is actually a roadside way station in Whittier — a life-size diorama came into view, decked out with snow blanketing the ground, little elves and reindeer. There in the middle of it all was a real Santa, waving from his sleigh.

Children began squealing, pointing and shouting, “There he is!” Mine pressed her face to the window and mustered a breathless whisper: “Santa!” It was, after all, her first real encounter with a very special man indeed. Who else can fly through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer or slide down chimneys with bags of presents?

Santa boarded the train and began making his way through the cars to visit each child — a departure from the actual storyline but hardly consequential given the frenzy over Santa’s imminent arrival.

Meanwhile, however, I braced myself for the magical journey to rapidly unravel. As much as she adored Santa from the safety of storybook pages, the real thing was an entirely different proposition. At best, I thought, my daughter will cower behind me, unwilling to even peek at the man in the white beard and red coat. At worst, she would begin wailing and burst into tears, a repeat of our failed attempt to visit Santa last Christmas.

As Santa walked down the aisle, he stopped at each child’s seat to hand them a large, silver bell just like the little boy in the book. It hung by a piece of brown leather, a nice touch since it had after all been cut off a reindeer’s leather harness.

I suppose my daughter wanted that bell pretty badly. When Santa stopped at our seat, she reached out her hand to meet his and promptly joined in the chorus of jingling heard throughout the train car by now.

When we got back home, she refused to relinquish her silver bell at bedtime. I worried she would never fall asleep with it in her crib, but the jingling sound eventually got softer and more intermittent and she finally dozed off. Our big Polar Express adventure was over, but it is one Christmas memory that will live on forever, at least for me.

As we were stringing lights on our Christmas tree last weekend, a layer of white snow in the yard outside, I noticed her peering out at the street from our living room window, absently ringing the silver bell in her hand. Perhaps she was merely marveling at the first snowfall of the year, but I think she was half expecting a train to pull up in front of the house, listening for those magical words shouted by the conductor: “All aboard!”

Jackson County and Duke Energy squared off this week over the Dillsboro dam, marking the first major head-to-head courtroom battle in the nearly eight-year saga.

Duke Energy wants to tear down the Dillsboro Dam, while Jackson County hopes to save the historic landmark as the focal point of a riverfront park.

Jackson County devoted part of its court time this week to pleading with the judge for a restraining order that would prevent Duke from tearing down the Dillsboro dam.

It could be months before Jackson County gets a legal ruling on its attempt to seize the dam by the power of eminent domain. By then, however, it will be too late, as Duke previously announced it would start demolition in January.

“This is a historic structure that once taken out can’t be recreated,” Attorney David Ferrell argued on behalf of the county. “It’s a structure that means a great deal to this county. The commissioners of Jackson County believe they are speaking for the citizens in trying to preserve this dam and power house. Without an injunction that’s not going to happen.”

Jackson County wants to preserve the historic dam as the focal point of a river park, replete with walking paths, fishing piers, boat docks and picnic tables.

Kiran Mehta, a Charlotte attorney for Duke, said there would be no lasting harm to Jackson’s river park if Duke tears out the dam. If Jackson County wants a dam so much, it can build a new one in its place, Mehta said.

The protracted arguments in Superior Court this week centered on whether Jackson County can use the power of eminent domain to seize control of the dam and stop Duke from demolishing it.

Duke countered that it was obligated to tear down the dam, citing an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“The county’s suit for condemnation is nothing more than a collateral attack upon and an end run around the FERC order,” said Mehta.

Sherin disputed Metha’s characterization of FERC’s order.

“He talks about this FERC order as if it was the tablet that Moses brought down with the Ten Commandments on it. But it’s not that,” Sherin said. “Duke asked to remove the dam. The FERC said OK.”

Sherin said FERC’s order even contains alternative provisions should circumstances change and the dam not be removed after all.

Duke argued that the interplay of federal agencies and the Federal Power Act make federal court, not state court, the proper legal venue for the case. If successful in getting the case kicked up to federal court, Duke could more easily bog down Jackson’s bid to save the dam.

Jackson County argued that state condemnation law, which gives counties the power to seize property for the creation of parks and recreation areas, stands on its own two legs.

“Duke acts as if federal pre-emption is some sort of blanket that wraps itself around this whole controversy and nullifies all of the county’s rights,” Sherin said.

Who wins and loses

Mehta said that Duke would be irreparably harmed if the dam’s removal is delayed by an injunction.

Mehta claimed Duke could be fined by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission if it didn’t remove the dam on schedule.

The company is currently in the process of dredging decades worth of sediment from behind the dam before its demolition, a process that might have to be repeated if more sediment accumulates during the delay. Duke also had to relocate bats that nested in the old powerhouse, which is also slated for demolition. The bats could take up residence again, prompting a second round of relocation.

Mehta put a price tag on the delays of $3.4 million in costs to Duke.

Ferrell said the claims were “disingenuous.” He said it was ludicrous to suggest Duke would be fined for failing to remove the dam, if a court order was preventing them from doing so. Ferrell asserted that the federal energy commission doesn’t really care if the dam comes down or not, having granted Duke permission at the company’s own request.

Mehta countered that there are other parties who do care immensely if the dam comes down. Removing the Dillsboro dam was a carefully crafted compromise intended to please disparate special interests concerned with the impacts of Duke’s hydropower network in the region. Duke’s permits for 10 other dams are up for renewal, and to get new permits, it had to come up with environmental mitigation that satisfied everyone. Tearing down the dam pleased environmental agencies who want to see the river restored to its natural state. It also pleased paddlers who wanted a free-flowing river.

Jackson County protested, not only out of a desire to save the historic dam, but also on the premise that another form of mitigation would benefit a greater cross section of the public, such as an environmental trust fund to pay for greenway construction along the Tuckasegee.

Mehta said Jackson lost that fight, but hasn’t been able to give up. The attempt to seize the dam for a park is a last ditch effort to bring down the hard-fought compromise, which could send Duke back to the drawing board, he argued.

“There is no way to calculate the loss that would result from a collapse of the settlement agreement,” Mehta said. “It is incalculable really.”

Ferrell called the injunction a “lynchpin” in Jackson’s case. Unless the judge grants an injunction barring Duke from destroying the dam, Jackson County will be precluded from getting its day in court down the road, Ferrell said.

“That’s what we need first and foremost,” Ferrell said.

Judge Zoro Guice, who heard the arguments in Jackson County Superior Court, said he likely wouldn’t have a decision until January.

As developers grapple with financial woes forcing them to sell off holdings or succumb to foreclosure, environmental groups in Jackson County want to rein in vested rights previously doled out for those tracts.

A whopping 238 subdivisions were exempt from Jackson County’s new development regulations two years ago. The so-called vested rights were intended to protect developers caught mid-stream by the new regulations, but were ultimately granted to developers merely in the planning stages. The question now is what happens to the vested rights held by developers who sell out to someone else.

“We do not know what these new owners will do — whether they will continue to pursue the original development plans and, thus, make use of the vested rights; or whether they will decide to do something else entirely with the land,” Julie Mayfield, director of WNC Alliance, told Jackson County commissioners last month.

The county was too liberal in granting developers a free pass, according to several community groups that have repeatedly protested the methodology. A coalition of citizens appeared before the county commissioners last month to air their lingering concerns.

The citizens claim the county acted too hastily and failed to figure out which developers indeed qualified. The county now has a golden opportunity to take back some of those vested rights as the original developers go under, Mayfield said.

Mayfield recognized Jackson County as “a regional leader in managing growth.” She praised rules that limit the number of trees that can be cut down on a mountainside lot, curb housing density on steep slopes and mandate open space within subdivisions — naming just a few of the more salient measures that sets Jackson County’s ordinance apart.

“We now ask you to sustain that courage, be firm in the face of the changes in land ownership occurring in our county, look for every occasion to ensure future development occurs in compliance with the county’s 2007 ordinances and does not needlessly destroy our important natural resources,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield read aloud from a letter signed by several community groups: the Watershed Association of the Tuckaseigee River, United Neighbors of Tuckasegee, Jackson-Macon Conservation Alliance, Canary Coalition and Tuckasegee Community Alliance, a local chapter of WNC Alliance.

Commissioner Tom Massie told those in attendance that he understood the concern and had himself sought advice on the issue from the county’s special attorney on development matters.

County Manager Ken Westmoreland suggested bringing in an expert on the issue to give a talk for the public, possibly from the Institute of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“It is a pretty complex subject,” Westmoreland said. “It may well be for clarity and impartiality we should bring in an outside consultant to provide a complete discussion on that subject.”

State statute requires local governments to make allowances for vested rights. Vested rights eventually expire if not utilized, but the exact time frame Jackson County must honor is not clear.

The recession has taken a toll on liquor sales at the ABC stores in Maggie Valley and Waynesville, in turn reducing the profits paid out to the towns.

Rather than curtailing their intake, customers are buying cheaper brands, according to Joy Rasmus, manager of the Waynesville ABC store.

“It is an easy thing to cut back on. It is a luxury item,” Rasmus said.

Meanwhile, fewer tourists during the recession hurt sales at Maggie’s main ABC store. Austin Pendley, the chairman of the Maggie ABC board, cited “the lack of full motel rooms” as the main factor behind a drop in sales.

Maggie Valley’s ABC store has noticed a further decline in business following the rockslide on I-40, which closed part of the interstate and discouraged travel.

“We could tell an immediate difference,” Pendley said.

That said, the rockslide occurred just when the tourist season was winding down anyway, making it difficult to determine what can be blamed on the rockslide versus the standard drop off Maggie sees this time of year anyway.

“There are too many variables this year,” Pendley said, adding that sales will pick up again when ski season arrives in full force.

Maggie is also bracing for a potential loss in ABC revenue with the advent of liquor at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Hotel. The hotel at Harrah’s began selling alcohol in restaurants and bars this fall, with hopes of eventually offering it inside the casino itself.

Maggie’s ABC store had been a favorite stop for those en route to Harrah’s.

“It will definitely have an effect. There’s no doubt about that, but to what degree I do not know,” Pendley said.

Maggie’s ABC store did a brisk business in miniature airplane bottles, which gamblers would tuck into their pockets and purses before heading over the mountain to the casino.

If and when Harrah’s begins offering alcohol to gamblers on the casino floor, Pendley expects a drop off in sales of airplane bottles.

Turf wars

In a tactical move to grow revenues, Maggie Valley opened a second ABC store this year aimed at capturing business from Waynesville. Maggie’s second store is on the outer fringes of town — more than a mile outside the town proper. Maggie annexed a satellite tract into its town limits to strategically build a new store between Maggie and Waynesville on U.S. 19 in Dellwood.

“Building store number two has been very gratifying,” Pendley said.

The second store likely pulled some business away from Maggie’s existing ABC store.

“We knew some portion would be siphoned from store number one. We don’t know how much,” Pendley said, citing the myriad variables at play this year.

Since Maggie’s new store opened, revenue at Waynesville’s ABC profits have taken a dive (see chart). While Maggie ABC revenue has grown by an additional $30,000 to $50,000 a month since the opening of the new store, Waynesville’s has dropped by a comparable amount.

The drop in revenue came as no surprise to Joy Rasmus, the manager of the Waynesville ABC store.

“We were expecting an impact, but we didn’t know how much,” Rasmus said.

Waynesville once captured a large share of the liquor purchases in the county by default. Residents from the county’s outlying areas come to Waynesville for their grocery shopping. While in the neighborhood, they would stop by the ABC store.

But Maggie’s new store — stationed practically at Waynesville’s doorstep — is snagging a share of what Waynesville once got.

It’s particularly true for those making a special trip from places like Lake Junaluska and Jonathan Creek.

“If you were just coming to town to buy alcohol, it is easier to stop at Maggie’s new store,” Rasmus said.

In response, Waynesville’s ABC Board is contemplating a new store of its own: one in the vicinity of the new Super Wal-Mart. Super Wal-Mart pulls in a huge volume of traffic, which Rasmus would like to capitalize on.

The current ABC store in Waynesville has been there since 1967.

“Absolutely we’ve outgrown it,” Rasmus said.

The Waynesville ABC Board is keeping an eye out for property to build on in the Super Wal-Mart vicinity, but there’s nothing concrete in the works yet.

“In a perfect world, it would be nice to keep two stores,” Rasmus said.

Opening a new ABC store isn’t cheap, Pendley said. There’s the cost of land and construction, but there’s also start up costs like shelving and a computer system. The upfront inventory cost to stock the store was “overwhelming,” Pendley added.

“We had no idea that there was going to be a recession or we probably wouldn’t have done it at this time, but we were too far committed not to go ahead with it,” Pendley said of the second store.

But Pendley is glad they did. The second store has already proven lucrative and will continue to pay off for the town, which reaps the profits from ABC operations.

“The whole purpose is to get more revenue to keep down taxes,” Pendley said of their mission.

The highly technical and extremely dangerous work to stabilize the rockslide is being carried out by Janod, a Canadian company. A leading expert in rock stabilization, they get called in by mines, quarries, railroads and highway departments to shore up volatile mountainsides.

Janod brought along a team of employees from all over the world. But they have hired some locals — including two young men from the Fines Creek area of Haywood County — and are still looking. The top requirement other than no fear of heights?

“You have to be able to physically climb that thing everyday. Unless the guy is a real go-getter, the first week here is going to be rough,” said Mike Patton, the lead DOT inspector on the site.

The upper staging platform is 400 feet up, and the steep hand-over-hand climb is hard work.

“Ropes assist you almost all the way to the top. Without them you would be on your hands and knees. The rope also gives you something to hold onto so if you slip you don’t start tumbling down,” Patton said.

Once on the slope, cables run back and forth for workers to shimmy along.

“There is a safety net that is strung all the way across the thing so if someone were to fall and you can’t get ahold of a stump you are going to get tangled up in that net,” Patton said.

On steeper sections, workers wear harnesses tied off to anchors and cables as they move about.

Getting equipment and supplies up the slope is another story. Some equipment is ferried up in a large cage with a system of cables and winches.

But heavier things require a helicopter. The drill rigs are the size of a go-cart and grout pumps are the size of a big pick-up. There’s massive light poles for working at night, bundles of steel drill shafts and pallets of grout — all of which had to be airlifted onto the slope.

Several staging areas and platforms were built on the slope as a repository for equipment. Ultimately, however, the crews have to muscle the supplies to the exact spot where they’re needed. When the bolts are installed, for example, they’ll be tightened down with a giant hydraulic jack.

“That weighs about 300 pounds, which these poor guys will have to manhandle around on the slopes,” Patton said.

In the final stages of the job, workers will have to tackle drilling and bolt installation on a verticle rock face. They will rappell into place with their equipment rigs suspended from platforms.

“Almost like a window washer on a sky rise — something like that is what I envision,” Patton said.

As the site inspector, Patton has to go where ever the workers go, even if it’s over the side of the mountain. So the DOT sent him to a crash course on rock climbing.

“The first time I did it, I felt like Spiderman in a way,” Patton said. “The first time you lean backwards over a straight sheer drop, it’s tough. You have to learn to trust the rope.”

Janod is working under a $6.2 million subcontract from Phillips and Jordan, the prime contractor on the job. Phillips and Jordan had a total contract of $9.2 million for the slide clean-up, a price that is bound to climb higher, however, due to weather and unforeseen additions.

As the prime contractor, Phillips and Jordan is reponsible for bringing the project to the finish line, and all the myriad details along the way. During blasting, for example, Phillips and Jordan set up seismograph equipment to monitor the tremors. If they were too strong, it could rupture nearby pipes that carry water from the Pigeon River dam to the Waterville hydropower plant.

Phillips and Jordan also employed spotters to simply keep watch around the perimeter for things that might go wrong. As blast technicians were preparing to set a charge one day, one looked over the road side into the Pigeon River below and saw a group of kayakers in the water. Debris from the blasts has been known to fly across the road and down the banks into the river, shearing off tree tops as it goes. The blast was halted in the nick of time.

Balsam Mountain Preserve, a mega-development in Jackson County, was sold to the highest bidder on the courthouse steps Monday (Jan. 25) in a closely followed foreclosure proceeding.

TriLyn, a private equity investment firm which initiated the foreclosure, was the highest and only bidder for $15 million and is now the new owner for 120 unsold lots on the property and all the recreational amenities, including an Arnold Palmer designer golf course, dining room, swimming pool, horse stables and myriad other features.

TriLyn was owed $20 million on an outstanding loan made to Balsam Mountain Preserve by developers Chaffin and Light. But the total had grown to about $22 million due to legal costs and interest since defaulting.

Prospective buyers have 10 days to file an upset bid. Each time there is an upset bid, the 10-day clock is reset.

The fact that TriLyn bid only $15 million when it claims it is owed $22 million shows they may be willing to part with the property and take a loss on the investment in exchange for cold, hard cash.

The foreclosure moved at a relatively fast pace, with just five months passing since the lenders made their intent known and foreclosure took place. Balsam Mountain Preserve developers attempted to stall the process longer, hoping to find financing to bail themselves out, pay off the lender and retain ownership of the development, but were unable to do so in the amount of time they had.

In the first days following the rockslide on Interstate 40 last October, Jody Kuhne had the unenviable job of rappelling down the freshly scoured rock face and into a gaping chasm left in the mountainside.

As the DOT’s resident expert on landslides, his mission was to figure out the nature of the problem and begin plotting a fix.

A giant slab the size of a five-story apartment building had sheered off the mountainside. Most of it fractured on impact creating an enormous pile of over-sized boulders. But a large wedge was lodged at the base of the mountain like a stubborn bookend. Unless Kuhne could rappel behind it — a six-foot-wide fissure called the back crack — he wouldn’t know exactly what kind of slide they were dealing with.

With surveying instruments stowed in his pack, Kuhne harnessed up and lowered down the rock face on ropes to measure the angle of the fault line that caused the slide. Combined with aerial photography, he generated a 3-D map of the remaining mountainside and soon realized they were dealing with a worst case scenario.

The rock slide was known as a “wedge failure,” except only the lower half of the wedge had broken lose.

Imagine an upside down pyramid superimposed on the rock face. The tip broke off and slid down the mountain, but the wide base was left behind and now loomed 250 to 400 feet above the workers on the ground. A fault line — the same fault line that caused the lower part to slide — ran in a large vein all the way up the mountainside.

That fault line lurking below the surface left the upper half of the mountain susceptible to a slide. It was Kuhne’s job to figure out just how susceptible.

“If it came out to a certain factor of stability that was acceptable to us, we’d walk away. But it didn’t. It is on the borderline of stability,” Kuhne said.

Ideally, they could blast away what remained of the giant wedge to eliminate the looming threat.

“We tried that, but it was time consuming, expensive and extremely dangerous,” Kuhne said.

Short of a bombing run by the U.S. Air Force, that strategy seemed impossible.

“To get up there and start drilling and blasting, you risk a catastrophic failure of the whole thing. It would certainly kill anyone on it, around it or in front of it,” said Mike Patton, the lead DOT inspector on the slide site.

So if the mountain couldn’t be brought down, at least not until gravity was ready, Kuhne had to figure out how to stop gravity from eventually getting its way. The answer was bolts. Lots of them.

Theoretically, bolts drilled deep below the vein of weakness would apply enough torque to hold the mountainside in place.

“It has to be anchored below the failure plane and basically snug that thing to the slope,” Kuhne said.

Based on his modeling, Kuhne could calculate how deep the fault plane was. Along the outer edges, it ran about 40 feet below the surface. But in the center — the thickest part of the wedge — it was some 120 feet down.

Based on the force each bolt conveyed and the mass of the wedge being held in place, Kuhne came up with 590 bolts. They would be spaced every 10 feet creating a giant grid on the mountainside. Kuhne likens it to a blanket of force battening down the rock face.

The sheer number of bolts combined with the depth of the holes mean 9.5 miles of holes have to be drilled.

It took eight weeks to blast apart and haul away to pile of boulders created by the slide.

“If that was all we were facing we would be done and open right now,” Kuhne said.

But the process of drilling holes and anchoring giant bolts into the mountainside has proved time consuming, further hampered by snow, ice and record cold.

There are currently five drill rigs on the side of the mountain, each one about the size of a go-cart. The drill shafts come in five-foot sections. Every five feet, the operator has to stop and screw on another length of shaft as it bores deeper and deeper.

Installing the bolts

So far, nearly a third of the 590 holes have been drilled. This week, the first bolts will be installed, no easy task given their enormous length.

A helicopter will hover overhead suspending the bolts while men on the slope maneuver them into place and feed each one into its hole.

Since the holes vary in depth, each one is numbered. The bolts have a tag with a corresponding number — a piece of duct tape marked with a black Sharpie.

The bolts are only 1.5 inches in diameter, but the holes being drilled are roughly 3.5 inches. The space around the bolts will be filled with grout.

The job will take a lot of grout, about two tractor-trailer loads. Water to mix with the grout will be pumped from a stream cascading down the mountain near the slope. Pipes will carry the water overland to a giant holding tank at the top of the slope. The holding tank has a heater to warm the water up to 50 degrees before it can be mixed with the grout, Patton said.

Getting grout into the deep but narrow gap around the bolt is another challenge. Long tubes duct taped along the length of the bolts will carry grout pumped to the bottom of the hole.

“You are filling the hole up from the bottom up,” Patton said.

The bolt has a flexible plastic ring every 10 feet to serve as a spacer and keep it centered in the hole as grout fills up around it.

Further complicating the process, each bolt had to be cased in a large plastic sheath. Inside the sheath, the bolt is caked with grease. The bolt will stretch as it is tightened down, and the greased-coated sheath will allow the necessary movement without breaking the bolt.

“You put these thing under so much stress that, believe it or not, we will stretch that bolt about four inches,” Patton said.

Each bolt will be subjected to a force of 7,000 PSI (pounds per square inch) using a giant hydraulic jack to pull it tight.

Finally, a plate about seven inches in diameter will cap the bolt.

Given the roughly 400 holes left to drill, and all but 10 of the 590 bolts still to install, including five days to let grout dry in each hole before the bolts can be stretched and capped, it is optimistic to assume the DOT can meet its self-imposed deadline of getting the Interstate open again by the end of March. But Patton said that’s still the plan.

“When things really get rolling, that is not necessarily going to be impossible,” Patton said.

Hang-ups are inevitable, however, and not just from the weather. The contractor hoped to fire up additional drilling rigs on the slope, but for the past three weeks, crews have been waiting on an order of extra drill shafts to arrive from Italy.

“All the Italians went on extended vacation at Christmas time,” Patton said.

As the lead DOT inspector on the slide, Patton is tasked with assessing whether the holes are drilled right, the bolts are installed right and whether each one carries the right load.

“Only 590 good bolts achieves the safety factor we are looking for so you have to make sure all 590 are doing what they are supposed to be doing,” Patton said.

Only time will tell if the strategy will work. But one thing is certain: without the bolts, the upper half of the mountain would be a ticking time bomb given the past history of I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge.

“Considering we get these every 10 years periodically and have had dozens since this was constructed, it will slide sooner than a million years,” Kuhne said. “If this decides to fail while we are standing here it will take about 10 seconds for it all to be in the road, and we will stand here and watch it all happen.”

The seven-year battle between Jackson County commissioners and Duke Energy has come to a close.

After losing a critical court battle this month, Jackson County commissioners voted 4 to 1 to give up their legal fight against Duke Energy last week.

“It is not prudent for Jackson County to move forward any further,” County Commissioner Chairman Brian McMahan said of the commissioner’s decision.

Recently, the fight has appeared nothing more than a tug-of-war over the Dillsboro Dam: Duke wants to tear it down and the county wanted to save it.

But the origin of the conflict is philosophical: how much does Duke owe Jackson County in exchange for harnessing the Tuckasegee River with numerous dams? Duke proposed removing one of those dams — the small and ancient Dillsboro dam — as compensation for using the Tuck in its lucrative hydropower operations, which net the utility millions annually.

Duke contends the river will be better off environmentally without the Dillsboro dam and it will open a new stretch of free-flowing river to paddlers and rafters.

Therein lay the crux of the disagreement, however. The county didn’t want the dam torn down, so it should hardly count as compensation, said Commissioner Joe Cowan, who voted against giving up the fight.

“It’s a bum deal,” Cowan said. “Duke ought to be ashamed of itself as a large corporation to attempt to pull such a stunt on the intelligent people of this county. I resent the hell out of it.”

Cowan gave a strongly worded speech directed at Duke at the meeting Tuesday.

“Why did they want to take the dam down? Because they didn’t want to give the county anything,” Cowan said.

Cowan said taking down the dam was a grand scheme on Duke’s part, a ruse intended at duping local people into believing Duke was doing them a favor by taking down the dam. But Cowan said Duke was only looking out for its own monetary interests by offloading a small, aging dam instead of real mitigation.

“Had it not been for greed, there would have been no seven years of bickering with Duke Power,” Cowan said. “Duke had many opportunities to step up and do the right thing as a good neighbor would do. Duke hasn’t done that. They have resisted it.”

The other four commissioners who voted to call it quits clearly did not revel in their decision.

“Seven years has been a long time and looking back on what has transpired, I still feel as strong today about my position on saving the dam as I did then,” said McMahan. “I grew up there learning to fish. It holds a sentimental place. It is going to move into our history now. It is going to become a part of our past.”

Commissioner Tom Massie, who has been urging the rest of the board to throw in the towel for over a year now, said he hopes the county and Duke can mend fences and work together in the future.

“It is unfortunate it has gotten to this point in terms of the legal costs and wrangling that has gone on,” Massie said. “I am glad it is over with.”

It’s one statement Duke agreed with.

“We at Duke are, as one of the commissioners remarked, glad it is over with,” said Fred Alexander, Nantahala district manager of Duke Energy. “About 10 more miles of free flowing Tuckaseigee River and improved aquatic habitat should benefit fishermen, boaters, and the critters in the water.”

Several members of the public took a turn the podium to thank the county commissioners for putting up a valiant fight.

“I came tonight to applaud you — applaud you for giving us leadership in your efforts to retain the Dillsboro Dam, as a historical site, as a viable source of sustainable energy and as land to be used by all the residents of Jackson County,” said Susan Leveille, an artist with a gallery in Dillsboro. “You have strived well to lead us toward the moral high ground of not just thinking of ourselves today but for making wise decisions with regard to the people, the land and the resources.”

Supporters said Jackson did the right thing by standing up to Duke, even if the cards were stacked against them.

“I also want to commend this board for doing everything they could to save the dam and the powerhouse,” said Tim Parris, a resident of Dillsboro. “I do realize you were up against a fight with a corporate giant in Duke Power — not only that but you had to fight the special interest groups like American Whitewater. The landscape is changing at Dillsboro, but I can tell you it is not what the people of Dillsboro want.”

But Sam Fowlkes, a paddler who is pleased the dam will finally come down, chastised commissioners for wasting so much money on an ill-conceived strategy.

“I am sure lawyers who get billable hours will always have more options for you, but it kind of looks like game over,” Fowlkes said prior to the board’s vote to end their legal fight.

Fowlkes said the big winner isn’t Duke, but rather Jackson County’s attorney throughout the protracted standoff.

“Win or lose, it is more money for him,” Fowlkes said. “The losers? The taxpayers. I am one of them.”

The county does not have a final tally of its legal bill, but the most recent total was between $200,000 and $250,000.

Commissioner William Shelton congratulated Duke on its win.

“I grew up on the Tuckasegee River and have watched it about every day in my life,” Shelton said. “This has been a gut wrenching experience for me. There has not been one easy thing about it.”

The county will likely not have another opportunity to extract mitigation from Duke Energy for 30 years, when the hydropower license comes up for renewal again.

Demolition of the powerhouse has been completed and dam work will start in a couple of weeks.

“It was like a knife going through my heart,” said Starlotte Deitz, a Dillsboro resident and Duke opponent, who watched the demolition last week. “It is an icon that can never be replaced. You can’t put a money value on that.”

The seven-year battle between Jackson County commissioners and Duke Energy has come to a close.

After losing a critical court battle last week, Jackson County commissioners vote 4 to 1 to give up their legal fight against Duke Energy at a meeting Tuesday night (Jan. 19.)

“It is not prudent for Jackson County to move forward any further,” said County Commissioner Chairman Brian McMahan.

Of late, the fight has appeared nothing more than a tug-of-war over the Dillsboro dam: Duke wants to tear it down and the county wanted to save it.

But the origin of the conflict is philosophical: how much does Duke owe Jackson County in exchange for harnessing the Tuckasegee River with numerous dams? Duke proposed removing one of those dams — the small and ancient Dillsboro dam — as compensation for using the Tuck in its lucrative hydropower operations.

Therein lay the crux of the disagreement. The county didn’t want the dam torn down, so it should hardly count as compensation, said Commissioner Joe Cowan, who voted against giving up the fight.

“It’s a bum deal,” Cowan said. “Duke ought to be ashamed of itself as a large corporation to attempt to pull such a stunt on the intelligent people of this county. I resent the hell out of it.”

Cowan gave a strongly word speech directed at Duke at the meeting Tuesday.

“Why did they want to take the dam down? Because they didn’t want to give the county anything,” Cowan said.

Cowan said taking down the dam was a grand scheme on Duke’s part, a ruse intended at duping local people into believing Duke was doing them a favor by taking down the dam. But Cowan said Duke was only looking out for its own monetary interests.

“Had it not been for greed there would have been no seven years of bickering with Duke Power,” Cowan said. “Duke had many opportunities to step up and do the right thing as a good neighbor would do. Duke hasn’t done that. They have resisted it, thus seven years of bickering back and forth, back and forth.”

The other four commissioners who voted to call it quits clearly did not revel in their decision.

“Seven years has been a long time and looking back on what has transpired I still feel as strong today about my position on saving the dam as I did then,” said McMahan. “I grew up there learning to fish. It holds a sentimental place. It is going to move into our history now. It is going to become a part of our past.”

Commissioner Tom Massie, who has been urging the rest of the board to throw in the towel for over a year now, said he hopes the county and Duke can mend fences and work together in the future.

“It is unfortunate it has gotten to this point in terms of the legal costs and wrangling that has gone on,” Massie said. “I am glad it is over with.”

It’s one statement Duke agreed with.

“We at Duke are, as one of the commissioner’s remarked, glad it is over with,” said Fred Alexander, Nantahala district manager of Duke Energy.

Duke has contended the river will be better off without the dam environmentally. It will also open a new stretch of free-flowing river to paddlers and rafters, including commercial rafting operations.

Several members of the public took a turn the podium to thank the county commissioners for putting up a valiant fight.

“I came tonight to applaud you — applaud you for giving us leadership in your efforts to retain the Dillsboro Dam, as a historical site, as a viable source of sustainable energy and as land to be used by all the residents of Jackson County,” said Susan Leveille, an artist with a gallery in Dillsboro. “You have strived well to lead us toward the moral high ground of not just thinking of ourselves today but for making wise decisions with regard to the people, the land and the resources.”

Supporters said Jackson did the right thing by standing up to Duke, even if the cards were stacked against them.

“I also want to commend this board for doing everything they could to save the dam and the powerhouse,” said Tim Parris, a resident of Dillsboro. “I do realize you were up against a fight with a corporate giant in Duke Power — not only that but you had to fight the special interest groups like American Whitewater. The landscape is changing at Dillsboro, but I can tell you it is not what the people of Dillsboro want.”

But Sam Fowlkes, a paddler who is pleased the dam will finally come down, chastised commissioners for wasting so much money on an ill-conceived strategy.

“I am sure lawyers who get billable hours will always have more options for you, but it kind of looks like game over,” Fowlkes said prior to the board’s vote to end their legal fight.

Fowlkes said the big winner isn’t Duke, but rather Jackson County’s attorney throughout the protracted standoff.

“Let’s not forget Paul Nolan, the big winner. Win or lose, it is more money for him,” Fowlkes said. “The losers? The taxpayers. I am one of them.”

Commissioner William Shelton congratulated Duke on its win.

“I grew up on the Tuckasegee River and have watched it about every day in my life,” Shelton said. “This has been a gut wrenching experience for me. There has not been one easy thing about it.”

A 31-year-old attorney in Jackson County pleaded guilty this week to forging judges’ signatures and creating phony court documents.

John Lewis faked the signatures on limited privilege driver’s licenses for at least three clients in Swain County who had their real licenses revoked.

District Attorney Mike Bonfoey said in court that it was a sad day for the legal profession and criminal justice system.

“We rely on the honesty and integrity of each individual in the system. We rely on the honesty and integrity of each order in the clerk’s office that is purportedly signed by a judge,” Bonfoey said. “To do this is an affront to all of us. His actions damage all of us. There is no way to undo that or make restitution for that.”

Lewis confessed that he was addicted to prescription pain pills for the past 18 months.

“What I did was not out of disrespect or contempt for the law or judges or my colleagues. It was done out of stupidity,” Lewis said. “Most of the time, I was screwed up. This was a daily habit. I would like to apologize to my colleagues and most of all my family.”

The crimes will cost Lewis his law license, but Lewis said his addiction almost cost him something far more important — his marriage.

Lewis was sentenced to 60 days in jail, followed by 10 months of house arrest and five years of probation, plus 100 hours of community service. He pleaded guilty to 12 felony counts spanning forgery and uttering, obstruction of justice and filing an unauthorized court judgment.

Lewis cooperated with investigators from the beginning and pleaded guilty without a bargain. He also checked in to a 28-day substance abuse treatment program. His remorse and cooperation likely helped him land a lighter sentence.

“One thing I was always taught was if you do something stupid you admit it and take responsibility,” Lewis said. “I realize I will never practice law again and I realize I might go to jail today.... if that’s what it takes to show everyone I am sorry for what I did.”

Judge Charles Ginn, who is from the Boone area, presided over the hearing Monday (Jan. 11) and handed down the sentence. Ginn was clearly dismayed by the events.

“It goes without saying I don’t take pleasure in what we are doing here today,” Ginn said. “We have lost the concept of absolute truth, that there is a standard that we all must live by that cannot be altered simply by some set of circumstances we might find ourselves in. The legal system was the last bastion of absolute truth, and it no longer is, unfortunately.”

But Ginn seemed to have sympathy for Lewis’ plight with substance abuse and lectured him extensively about it. From his seat on the bench, Ginn is a frequent eyewitness to the ills of substance abuse. He congratulated Lewis on going through an intensive four-week rehab but warned him it was only the beginning of a long road.

“That’s a drop in the ocean. That’s nothing. Treatment is a lifetime event for you,” Ginn said. “You have to have somebody in your life to kick the backseat of your britches when you don’t do what you are supposed to do.”

Ginn also told Lewis that he needed to find faith in a higher power within the universe to guide him and keep him strong.

Evergreen Packaging, a large paper mill in Canton, is seeking a new water pollution permit for the Pigeon River.

The paper mill sucks roughly 29 million gallons a day out of the river and uses it in myriad aspects of the paper making process — from cooling coal-fired boilers to flushing chemicals through wood pulp — and then dumps it back in the river again.

The river downstream from the mill is far cleaner today than anytime in the mill’s 100-year history. The Pigeon River was once so polluted few fish species could survive and it was unsafe for people to swim in.

During the 1990s, the mill embarked on a $300 million environmental overhaul, spurred partly by expensive lawsuits.

Environmentalists and downstream communities want the mill to make further improvements. But instead, it seems progress has plateaued.

“While the river has gotten cleaner since the 1980s, we can’t allow North Carolina to end the river cleanup until it’s clean and free of odor, foam and significant toxic discharges,” said Chris Carswell, who lives downstream of the mill in Cocke County, Tenn.

But Derric Brown, the director of sustainability for Evergreen, said progress going forward will be measured in much smaller steps than the progress of the past, mostly because of the giant steps already made.

“Incremental improvement is becoming increasingly difficult,” Brown said.

Sergei Chernikov, an environmental engineer in charge of the state permit, said it will take exponentially more effort to make less noticeable improvements as time goes on.

“The law of diminishing returns is in full force,” Chernikov said. “What they are working on now is the remaining 10 percent. It is definitely getting harder with each step. But they are making progress.”

The biggest environmental victory of the 1990s was getting the mill to drastically reduce dioxin, the most toxic chemical discharged into the river. The final health advisory against eating fish caught downstream of the mill was lifted in 2005. Fish once wiped out by the mill’s pollution are being reintroduced in a joint effort between the mill and state wildlife and environmental agencies.

Chernikov called Evergreen the cleanest paper mill in the state and among the cleanest in the world.

“If you look at other facilities throughout the nation and Canada, (Evergreen is) doing much better,” Chernikov said.

Hope Taylor, executive director of Clean Water for NC, disputes that claim, however.

“There is no way this can be called the cleanest paper mill in the world,” Taylor said.

Taylor said the pollution from the mill is all relative to the size of the Pigeon.

“You put an enormous paper mill on a tiny river, it is still a huge amount of pollution being released into a tiny river,” Taylor said.

The mill has faced repeated lawsuits, including class action claims, from downstream landowners in Tennessee over the past two decades. A federal lawsuit by three local landowners from Haywood County was filed this fall, claiming the pollution deprives them of the right to enjoy their property along the river.

The mill’s current pollution permit, dating back to 2001, sets limits on the pollution and mandates water testing on a daily and weekly basis to ensure compliance. The permit expired in 2006. The mill has been operating under an extension while drafting a new permit, which is now up for review.

The mill is operating within state pollution limits on most counts. The current permit allows a variance in two areas: temperature and water color. In the new permit, the mill is again seeking a variance for temperature, but feels a variance for color is no longer necessary.

Temperature

A major source of contention is steaming water released by the mill into the river, which raises the overall water temperature.

In September 2008, for example, the water taken out the river was 66 degrees on average, but was a piping 93.5 degrees when put back in the river. Even half a mile downstream of the mill, the river was still 11 degrees hotter than it should have been — with a temperature of 66 degrees upstream of the mill compared to 77 degrees downstream.

In the winter, the temperature variance is even more acute, with the discharge twice as hot as the river’s natural state.

“You can actually see the river steaming in the winter,” Taylor said.

The discharges exceed federal and state temperature standards by a long shot, which cap the overall temperature increase at 5 degrees. The mill is allowed to raise the river’s temperature by 25 degrees under the variance in the pollution permit.

Chernikov said the river is hotter for only a short section, however, since side streams are constantly flowing into the river and cooling it back down.

“There will be some impact but whether it is significant or measurable is the question,” Chernikov said.

Brown said the temperature is not hurting water quality.

“There have been studies of the river showing that temperatures is not inhibiting the balance in indigenous populations of fish,” Brown said.

Evergreen uses a massive amount of water to cool its equipment and coal-fired boilers, which make electricity for the mill’s operations. It’s cheaper for the mill to make its own power from coal than to buy it.

Chernikov said the variance for Evergreen is similar to that of power plants in the state. In order to cool the water down before returning it to the river, it would require the costly construction of cooling towers. Cooling towers have a downside as well. They lead to lots of evaporation and less water is returned to the river, decreasing its natural flow, he said.

Color

The upgrades of the ‘90s also reduced the discharge of color, which darkens the river. While marked improvements were made to reduce color, the mill has still required a pollution variance for the color of its emissions.

The new permit would make small improvements in color, eliminating the need for a variance, according to the mill and state environmental officials.

Typically, the lack of a variance is a good sign, indicating the mill is meeting state standards. But that’s not necessarily the case with color, Taylor.

Regulating color discharge is a tricky proposition for the state under its current protocol. The state doesn’t have a hard and fast limit, but instead limits color to an “acceptable” level.

“The color is psychological. For some people it may look fine, for some people it may not,” Chernikov said. “The color is really a very subjective parameter.”

Taylor said the mill agreed to make what she considers undetectable changes to its color discharge and in exchange the state suddenly deeming it within the “acceptable” range — thus no longer requiring a variance.

“They are trying to PR their way out of this variance,” Taylor said. “They are cooking the books to make it sound like they have improved in the past decade but they have not.”

Taylor wants the state to adopt a numerical standard for color.

“Without a numerical color standard, there is no way to tell whether they have met an acceptable color standard,” Taylor said.

But Brown said the subjective measure is appropriate.

“Color is aesthetic,” Brown said. “Different people perceive color differently.”

What’s acceptable in the mountains, where rivers are much clearer, could be much different than what’s acceptable along the coast, where rivers are sometimes black and briny by nature. Taylor said the state could still set numerical standards, however, by using a sliding scale based on the natural color of the river compared to the discharge.

Brown said the color discharged by the mill has no environmental impacts but is purely an aesthetic issue.

Taylor disagrees.

“We say color is an indicator of an adverse chemical soup that includes some toxins,” Taylor said. The less color, the less the overall discharge, and the better off the river is in general, she said.

Water gets tainted with color when flushed over wood fibers. Color leaches out of the pulp and ends up in the discharge that goes back into the river.

The mill proposes to reduce color over the next four years from 42,000 pounds a day allowed under the current permit to 39,000 pounds a day, a step the mill has already achieved. The mill’s goal is to reduce color to 37,000 pounds a day within four years. The improvement is small in comparison to the major reductions made since the late 1980s, when the mill discharged 380,000 pounds of color a day.

Taylor is also dismayed that water would be sampled and monitored less frequently under the new permit. Evergreen does the monitoring itself and submits the stats to state regulators. But Taylor wants testing by an independent third party to spot check the mill’s data.

“This mill has been so controversial for so long it is time for there to be independent testing,” Taylor said, calling for “full transparency.”

Dirty water

An environmental advocacy group Environment North Carolina has just issued a report that analyzes industrial pollution of waterways based on monitoring data from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007. The report is titled Wasting our Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act.

Major findings of the report include:

Blue Ridge Paper Products released 123,856 pounds of toxic chemical waste into the Pigeon River and was the 10th largest reported polluter of toxic chemicals in North Carolina in 2007.

The Pigeon River is ranked 7th in North Carolina for most cancer-causing chemicals, with 10,740 pounds of chemicals linked to cancer discharged by the Blue Ridge Paper Products plant in 2007.

Want to weigh in?

A public hearing on a water pollution permit for the Pigeon River by Evergreen Packaging will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 26, at Tuscola High School in Waynesville.

For more information on how to comment or about the draft permit, go to h2o.enr.state.nc.us/NPDES/documents/BRPPPublicHearing.pdf.

Television viewers in Jackson and Macon counties who get their reception the old-fashioned way — with an antenna — have been without UNC-TV for the past month.

The UNC-TV translator on Coweee Mountain malfunctioned in early December. New equipment finally arrived last week, and station workers hoped to make the repairs to restore the signal this week.

“The only problem now is having the weather cooperate with new installation,” said Steve Volstad, spokesperson for UNC-TV.

Getting antenna reception in the mountains isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Just ask Tim Lewis, who lives on Piney Mountain south of Dillsboro. He positions his TV by the window with the antennas aimed out. To enhance the signal, he crafted a makeshift dish out of aluminum foil and props it on top of the TV.

Even then, he only picks up two stations: UNC-TV and FOX.

Since the signal outage, Lewis has been craving his favorite PBS shows like “Antiques Roadshow,” “Masterpiece Theatre,” “NOVA” and the channel’s myriad nature and science programs. Lewis isn’t the only one frustrated by the outage.

“One friend has given up and gotten her dish hooked up,” Lewis said.

As for Lewis?

“I have never paid a cable bill and never owned a dish,” said Lewis, an artist and photographer. And he doesn’t plan to start now.

Volstad doesn’t know how many of the station’s viewers rely on antennas for their reception. Nationwide, the number is about 12 percent.

“It is certainly not a majority, but it is not insignificant,” Volstad said.

While UNC-TV has gone digital, FOX is still analog, which means Lewis has gotten quite good at hooking and unhooking his digital converter box depending on which station he wants to watch. Every day since the outage, Lewis reroutes the wires behind his TV and connects the digital converter box to see if UNC-TV is back on the air yet. Disappointed, he unhooks it all and goes back to FOX.

The outage was caused by an electrical failure in the antenna on the Cowee translator the second week in December, unrelated to any of the snowstorms of late. Crews put in a temporary antenna, but it doesn’t reach nearly as far.

“It is stopgap. It is not full power so there would be some places that might not get a signal at all,” Volstad said.

Translators are a smaller version of full-blown towers.

“It is what we use to get the signal into nooks and crannies, which you have so many of in the mountains,” Volstad said.

Lewis’s biggest complaint during the wait was that UNC-TV didn’t post a word of the outage on its Web site to communicate with other viewers like him.

Volstad said the station usually does so when an outage affects a large area, but agreed a web posting would have been a good idea in this case as well.

An attorney that forged judges’ signatures was caught thanks to the sharp eyes of a law enforcement officer, a fellow attorney and a court clerk who noticed red flags.

But for at least a year, fraudulent driving privileges provided to clients by Attorney John Lewis remained under the radar. The scam began unraveling last fall, leading to a state investigation and culminating with guilty pleas by Lewis in court this week.

The first sign of the fraud arose after one of the drivers sporting a fake document from Lewis was stopped by a law enforcement officer in Swain County. When asked for his license, the driver pulled out the limited driving privileges he’d gotten from Lewis.

“The officer found it was suspicious in nature just by looking at it,” said Grayson Edwards, a State Bureau of Investigation agent who investigated the case.

The biggest red flag was that Lewis had signed his own name on the line where a clerk of court is supposed to sign. A signature of Judge Richie Holt also appeared on the document. But the officer was skeptical that Judge Holt would have granted limited driving privileges to this particular driver. So the officer called Holt, who confirmed he’d never signed such a document for that person.

The confused driver called Lewis to find out what was going on. Lewis owned up to the fraud, but asked the driver to keep it under wraps. Lewis told the driver to call the clerk of court and say that he’d gotten the document in the mail.

“After (the driver) hung up the phone, he changed his mind and decided he didn’t want to lie for something that he had not done. So he called the Swain County Clerk’s office back and told them where he’d gotten it,” Edwards recounted in court.

In a second case, a Swain County driver bearing one of Lewis’ forged documents was stopped by a police officer, this time outside the region. The driver whipped out his limited driving privileges, but when the officer pulled the driver’s record, it didn’t show up in the computer and the driver got a ticket.

Confused why his limited driving privileges weren’t valid, the driver called Lewis. Lewis asked for the document back without saying why. The driver got suspicious and photocopied it first.

The driver took the photocopy to another attorney to figure out what was going on, all the while hoping he could get the limited driving privileges back. But the attorney instead referred it to the district attorney’s office.

In yet another bizarre incident, Lewis forged the name of Judge Monica Leslie in a custody case terminating parental rights. No sooner had he filed the fraudulent court order with the Jackson County Clerk of Court than he apparently thought better of it and asked for it back. The clerk wouldn’t give it back, since a signed order submitted as part of the court record can’t be removed from the file. An agitated Lewis came back twice over the course of the day trying to retrieve the document.

“At one point he even went around the partition in the clerk’s office with a sticky note that said the order was void and put it on the file,” said Reid Taylor, assistant district attorney. “The clerk had some serious issues with Mr. Lewis and the way he was conducting himself over that document and was raising all kind of red flags.”

Lewis grew up in Jackson County and came from a low-income family, according to Lewis’ attorney. He excelled in basketball, playing at Smoky Mountain High School then at Western Carolina University and finally Mars Hill. From Mars Hill, he went to law school at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island before returning to Jackson County to practice law. Lewis and his wife live in Glenville.

District Attorney Mike Bonfoey said Lewis’ actions are puzzling for a person who worked so hard to go to law school.

“To come back home where he grew up and throw it all away? For who? People who weren’t entitled to drive?” Bonfoey asked. “Enabling people who shouldn’t be on the road to drive is appalling to all of us. It is appalling to my office, and it is appalling to all of us as attorneys.”

Investigators did not determine what payment if any Lewis got from his clients in exchange for purportedly landing them limited driving privileges, Bonfoey said.

There may be more people out there who think they have a valid document from Lewis. If you are one of those people, contact the sheriff’s office in your county.

Duke Energy could start tearing down the Dillsboro Dam any day after Jackson County lost a final and critical legal battle this week.

Judge Zoro Guice denied a move by the county to temporarily halt demolition on the Dillsboro Dam. Jackson County hoped to exercise eminent domain to take the dam away from Duke and make it the focal point of a new riverfront park along the shore of the Tuckasegee. The county was seeking a restraining order against Duke to stop them from tearing down the dam while the condemnation suit played out.

The case hinged on state’s rights versus federal pre-emption — whether the opinion of a federal agency superseded state law that grants counties the power of eminent domain.

Guice ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission trumped state law and agreed Duke could proceed with tearing down the dam. After the dam is torn down, the county can use eminent domain to go after the river shore if it still wants to, the judge said.

Fred Alexander, Nantahala district manager for Duke Energy, said in a written statement demolition could begin in early February. Alexander cited the benefits of restoring a section of free-flowing river, intended to offset the environmental impacts of its myriad other hydropower dams in the region.

Jackson County Commissioner Chairman Brian McMahan said he had not had a chance to explore the implications of the ruling as of press time on Tuesday afternoon. The ruling was handed down Monday (Jan. 11).

“We will discuss it fully at our meeting and take some kind of action,” McMahan said of the commissioners meeting scheduled for at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 12.

The county’s choices are presumably to throw in the towel or appeal the decision.

Commissioner Tom Massie isn’t surprised. For the past year, he has been the lone commissioner opposed to the protracted legal battle. Massie said he supported the county’s stance philosophically but felt the chance of success was too slim to justify the legal costs of continuing to fight Duke.

“I think they had to see for themselves where it was going to go,” Massie said. “Now it has played out to its conclusion.”

Massie said the Tuckasegee River could still make a wonderful backdrop for a park without the dam. Duke had all along planned to turn the river shore over to the county as part of the environmental mitigation required under the Clean Water Act in exchange for operating its other dams.

In a further blow to Jackson County, Duke can proceed with a countersuit for its legal costs, Guice ruled. Duke has filed a lawsuit against Jackson County for legal costs, as well as a lawsuit blaming Jackson County for an abuse of power. Jackson hoped the judge would throw out Duke’s countersuits, but he did not.

“I am disappointed we don’t have more leverage to negotiate with Duke. If we had gotten something more positive from the judge’s ruling, Duke may have been more willing to talk to us about an (out of court) settlement,” Massie said.

Elk could lose their status as a species of special concern under a new rule change proposed by the N.C. Wildlife Commission.

A public hearing on proposed changes to state hunting and fishing rules will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 13, at Southwestern Community College in Sylva. Organizations that provided financial support for the reintroduction of the elk are prepared to speak out against the proposed rule change.

It is illegal to shoot an elk — both inside the national park boundaries and outside the park. Despite a delisting as a species of special concern, elk would retain their status as a “non-game” animal, making hunting them illegal even if they wander outside protected national park lands.

Tom Massie of Jackson County said the proposal is causing a great deal of confusion, however, and questioned the rationale behind it.

“There have been a lot of people who have spent a lot of time and effort and money to get the elk herd reestablished,” Massie said. “It is a huge economic draw for this region of the state. Why even do it right now?”

Massie said he would like to see the state do a management plan for the species to compliment the national park’s management plan. Elk are frequently wandering out of the park and are beginning to establish satellite herds.

The Wildlife Commission cites the success of the elk restoration project and growth of the herd, which makes the listing no longer necessary.

“This is primarily an administrative change,” said Brad Howard, private lands program coordinator for the Wildlife Commission. “There is no documented evidence we need to have a special concern status on the elk species right now.”

Howard said the move will mirror the national park’s change in status expected later this year, which will shift from “experimental release” to an official “reintroduction.”

“The park has said ‘OK it worked. Let’s see if this population will sustain itself in Western North Carolina,’” Howard said.

Hunting, fishing regs undergo annual review

Every year, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission suggests adjustments to their regulations to accommodate hunters and fishermen while protecting natural resources.

Public input can be made at one of nine hearings held statewide, including one at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 13, at Southwestern Community College in Sylva, or in writing.

Go to www.ncwildlife.org and click on submit comments online. Scroll down to see the list of proposed changes and click to comment. The deadline to comment is Jan. 22.

After collecting and considering all public comments, the Wildlife Commission will meet in March to decide whether or not to adopt the proposals.

Hunting

• Elk — Proposal would remove elk from the list of species of Special Concern. The only elk in the state are found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park after being reintroduced to the park. Hunting elk would still be illegal within the park.

• Bobcat and otter — Trappers would no longer have to get tags for bobcat and otters they intend to sell. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is no longer requiring tags for bobcats and otter being sold for commercial purposes, so the state wildlife commission aims to follow suit.

• Armadillo — While armadillo aren’t native to North Carolina, they are beginning to crop up and are being considered a nuisance by the wildlife commission. There is no game law that applies to armadillos, and this proposal aims to set up a year-round open season on armadillos with no bag limits.

Fishing proposals

• Franks Creek in Graham County — Proposal would end stocking and ban use of live bait under a new designation as Wild Trout/Natural Bait waters.

• Tellico River in Cherokee County — Proposal would ban use of natural bait and allow artificial lures only under new designation of Wild Trout waters.

• Nantahala River and tributaries in Macon and Clay counties upstream of Nantahala Lake — Proposal would end the exemption that allows fishing during closed season on hatchery supported waters.

• West Fork Pigeon River in Haywood County — Proposal would end stocking on the upper 3.7 miles of currently Hatchery-Supported waters and re-designate as Wild Trout Waters, which would ban live or natural bait, lower the daily limit from 7 to 4, and impose a minimum catch size of 7 inches. The change will better protect the wild brown trout population. The lower 1.7 miles will remain Hatchery-Supported Trout Waters.

• French Broad River — Proposal would decrease the size limit on muskies from 46 inches to 42 inches. Regulation dovetails with statewide rule change to set minimum size limit on muskies at 42 inches and one fish daily catch limit.

The move will conserve spawning stock by protecting 4- to 5-year-old sexually mature fish.

Foreclosure against Balsam Mountain Preserve could happen by month’s end barring a last-ditch financing deal by developers in the next couple of weeks.

A court order gave lenders the go-ahead to move forward with foreclosure at a hearing last week. The now imminent foreclosure was successfully put off by developers for three months while they attempted to raise capital to satisfy their lender. They say there is still a chance that they can do so, although the window is closing.

The property will be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction on the steps of the Jackson County Justice Center in late January or early February. Once there is a starting bid, prospective buyers have 10 days to file an upset bid. Each time there is an upset bid, the 10-day clock is reset.

Typically, the starting bid belongs to the lender, which is out to protect its outstanding debt on the property, a total that now tops $22 million, according to the lenders.

The sum continues to grow larger with each passing day. Lenders are tacking on costs for legal fees, property management and interest at a higher-than-normal default rate — making it increasingly difficult for developers to rally the capital they need to bail themselves out.

Balsam Mountain Preserve initially took out a loan of $19.8 million from the private equity investment firm Trilyn in 2005 to help develop and market the property. Balsam Mountain Preserve had paid down some of the loan, but since defaulting has racked up $4.5 million in interest, giving rise to the substantial payoff now required.

Jay Coward, a Sylva attorney representing Balsam developers in foreclosure, challenged the lender’s claim of more than $1 million in legal fees and administrative costs associated with foreclosure proceedings in the hearing last week. Coward said Trilyn will need to provide documentation detailing the alleged costs.

Who’s in charge?

Lenders wrested control of the property from Balsam Mountain Preserve and placed it in the hands of a third party in November. The outside company, called Radco, is charged with upkeep of the property, mainly security and maintenance.

Radco has tapped a profitable niche in the faltering real estate economy: reviving or at least stabilizing distressed property developments. Radco has repeatedly declined requests for an interview since assuming control of the property, but was featured in a November article in the New York Times profiling Norman Radow, Radco’s founder.

“Banks hire him to resurrect developments gone awry, particularly those half-empty condominium towers and gated communities that sprang up like weeds during the boom and are now in foreclosure,” according to the article.

The company is at the helm of $2 billion in real estate properties nationwide, Radow estimated in the article.

In some cases, the firm completely takes charge of the development in hopes of accomplishing what the ousted developer failed to do, namely making a profit.

The lender often puts Radco at the helm for the long haul, hoping to recoup their investment in the property. Radco makes tough decisions, like paring down luxury amenities initially promised to buyers by the developer or slashing prices to unload lots and raise cash rather than simply waiting for the market to turn around.

But property owners question how another company could do any better than the original developers, the well-capitalized firm Chaffin and Light with a strong national reputation for quality, high-end eco-developments.

“The only way out of this deal is you have to sell more dirt, and it isn’t going to happen until the economy recovers somewhat,” said Ron Hanlon, a homeowner in Balsam Mountain Preserve.

Property owners in Balsam Mountain Preserve don’t know how long Radco will remain in the shoes of the developer. For now, Radco has been mostly tasked with upkeep of the property, a move pushed by the lender to protect the property’s value while foreclosure proceeds. If maintenance was neglected, it could lead to decline in value, which would be bad for the lender. If no one bids on the property during foreclosure and the lender becomes the new owner, they may keep Radco on board.

Radco is currently involved in drafting an annual budget for the community association and the operation of the recreational amenities, including an Arnold Palmer designed golf course, dining room, swimming pool, horse stables and myriad other features.

Homeowners’ concerns

The fate of recreational amenities is the top concern of property owners in Balsam Mountain Preserve these days.

“If we are paying dues, we need to have the amenities,” said Dave Sparks, a homeowner in Balsam Mountain.

The initiation fee for the amenities was $75,000, which is mandatory when buying a lot in the development. There is also an annual fee for the upkeep of amenities, which could rise this year.

Theoretically, annual dues by property owners will pay for the upkeep and operation of recreational amenities, but a balanced budget usually isn’t possible without a critical mass of individual homeowners. But until then, the developer often chips in to subsidize them.

Chaffin and Light has been heavily subsidizing the amenities within the development in recent years. It is, after all, in the best interest of the developer to ensure the amenities are functioning at full tilt, a calculated selling point when courting new lot buyers. But new owners likely won’t subsidize the costs to the extent the current developers are, according to property owners involved with the issue.

The Arnold Palmer designed golf course in particular carries a hefty annual operating cost. Opening up the golf course at Balsam Mountain Preserve to outside memberships is one of the many options on the table.

Property owners hold one trump card to ensure the amenities are maintained and kept open. They could stop paying their dues. The developer — whoever that may be post-foreclosure — would be stuck footing the entire bill to keep the recreational amenities presentable in order to fuel future lot sales.

“We hope Trilyn and Radco realize it is important to keep us happy,” said Sal Guerriero, a homeowner in Balsam who sits on the community association board.

Two-thirds of the 354 lots in the development have been sold already. There are 120 lots still to go, and those lots are largely where the profit margin lies.

“That’s why the amenities need to be taken care of,” Guerriero said.

While an annual membership for the recreational amenities is voluntary, homeowners pay mandatory dues as part of the community association, which is responsible for road maintenance and security. That, too, has been heavily subsidized by the developers, but the financial burden will be shifted almost entirely to property owners this year, according to Guerriero.

In the long run, homeowners are confident the groundwork has been laid for a one-of-a-kind mountain community.

“We don’t anticipate there will be any significant change in the format of the community. The only question is who is going to own it,” said Hanlon, a homeowner. “Two years from now, we’ll look back on this and say it was an unfortunate dip in the road.”

They haven’t gone quietly, and they haven’t gone quickly, but Christians are losing the battle over prayer in public life.

Courts have banned public displays of the Ten Commandments in a religious context. School prayer has been demoted to a moment of silence. Prayers are no longer trumpeted from loudspeakers at the start of high school football games. Nativity scenes that once adorned courthouse lawns at Christmas have been supplanted by generic displays of candy canes. The nonsectarian rallying cry even threatened to restore the Pledge of Allegiance to its original version by stripping the words “under God.”

But in Western North Carolina, one vestige of religion in the public sphere still stands strong. Christian prayers before government meetings continue to thrive in Haywood, Macon and Swain counties.

Federal court precedent already on the books stipulates that commissioners avoid references to Jesus Christ in their prayers at meetings, and a pending ruling in a Forsyth County case (see “Latest prayer case rekindles controversy”) would strengthen that requirement. The controversial court case has ignited a passionate philosophical debate.

Minority rights

Swain County Commissioner David Monteith doesn’t see how it is possible to pray to God but not Jesus.

“That is a bunch of baloney,” Monteith said.

Monteith feels strongly that his prayers would be compromised if he could not offer them in Jesus’s name.

“If a man put a gun to my head and said I cannot say a prayer and worship Jesus Christ, I would say go ahead and pull the trigger,” Monteith said.

Those of other faiths say they are excluded when prayers are cemented in Christ’s name, however. Zvi Altman, a spiritual leader at Mountain Synagogue in Franklin, said he is sensitive to that whenever he leads a public prayer.

“When I offer a public invocation, I am mindful that I am praying on behalf of the entire community, and not just for myself or my faith community,” said Altman.

Altman said he purposely avoids language that excludes people from those prayers or implies that solely his religion is valid.

“Only Christians pray ‘in Jesus’ name,’” said Altman, adding that many in the Christian majority, especially in the South, do not reflect enough on the prayers.

“They just think, well, we’re not excluding anyone — not the Catholics, or the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the folks at Church of God, or Church of Christ,” said Altman. “But they are excluding Jews, Muslims, Hindus and anyone else who is not a Christian.”

Altman said he prefers to think that those who exclude him in their prayers are not doing so purposefully, just that they haven’t thought carefully about their actions.

“People have to adjust to a way of thinking that is broader and more tolerant,” said Alex Cury, the chair of the Western North Carolina chapter of the ACLU.

“We’re a multicultural country,” said Lu Lewellen, 69, an atheist in Waynesville. “All of these cultures should be respected.”

Lewellen said the prayer is more likely to offend non-Christians with faiths of their own than atheists like herself, however.

“Unlike some other minorities, it’s easy for us to pass,” said Lewellen.

Lianna Constantino, high priestess of the Sylva Hearth Pagan Temple, said prayers that specifically reference Jesus Christ in Haywood, Swain and Macon counties persist simply because the practice has never been challenged. In her opinion, holding any one group above another promotes an atmosphere of intolerance.

In Constantino’s view, it will take a long time for major change, somewhat due to the makeup of WNC society.

“There hasn’t been a lot of diversity like there has been in other parts of the country,” said Constantino. “As a simple fact, this is a pretty homogenous Christian-entrenched society in the South.”

Gibbs Knott, head of the political science department at Western Carolina University, said religion has long been important to life in WNC. That long-established influence means an uphill battle for ending prayers before government meetings.

“Church groups have been organized for political issues in the past,” said Knotts. “I would fully expect that many members of WNC’s religious community would get together and speak out.”

Haywood County Commissioner Kevin Ensley said the context of a local community and its prevailing faith should count for something.

“I think it is part of our community. You have 200 churches in Haywood County,” Ensley said. “If you disregard that fact, then you are catering to the atheists and the other 1 percent.”

Haywood County Commissioner Mark Swanger said as elected leaders, they are obligated to represent all their citizens, including the minority, however small.

“Lots of people would use the argument that the founding fathers were Christian and the vast majority of people in Haywood County are Christian,” Swanger said.

But that is not the premise of Constitutional freedoms, whether it’s freedom of the press or the right to vote.

“These protections are not to protect the majority. They are to protect the minority,” said Swanger, a retired special agent in the FBI.

Competing doctrines

Despite a great divide between the two camps, each side has proudly waved the U.S. Constitution in an effort to justify its standpoint.

At war are the equally compelling values of separation of church and state, and freedom of speech and religion.

“The Constitution should be honored,” said Alex Cury, chair of the WNC chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is not a Christian nation .... We don’t live in a theocracy.”

Constantino, high priestess of the Sylva Hearth Pagan Temple, said endorsing Christian prayers before meetings blatantly violates a precious partition between religion and state.

“I think it is rude, arrogant and presumptuous to impose any singular religious tradition on a religiously diverse society,” said Constantino.

Opening meetings with a prayer perpetuates the impression that one must be a believer of God to attend, according to 69-year-old Waynesville resident Lewellen.

“They could pray to almighty Zeus as far as I’m concerned,” said Lewellen, a member of WNC Atheists. “Just leave religion out of government. It doesn’t belong there.”

Meanwhile, the same Constitution that mandates separation of church and state also affords for freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Swain County Commissioner Phil Carson said telling him what he can — or can’t — say in a prayer violates his freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Carson’s fellow commissioner David Monteith argued that his rights to practice religion are being stripped by outsiders with different beliefs.

“To me, this is people who in the United States want all of our rights and freedoms, but they don’t want to give us our rights,” Monteith said.

Yet the courts aren’t dictating to people how they can pray on their own time or in private settings, said Mary Teslow, a resident of Macon County and president of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Franklin. Instead, the court rulings are trying to prevent the government from promoting one faith at the exclusion of others.

“We would absolutely support their freedom of religion as an individual, but they are doing the work of the community and that is a shared responsibility. They have every right to have their own religious preference in their own lives, but this is the life of the community,” Teslow said.

Cury pointed out there are plenty of other arenas for prayer in Western North Carolina.

“There are churches all up and down the Main Streets of these towns,” Cury said.

A compromise that Lewellen and Constantino both support is switching to a moment of silence to allow for personal prayer.

“I don’t know any pagan who would have a problem with that,” said Constantino. “That’s a very considerate option.”

With 30 years of experience in interfaith work, Constantino said making everybody happy is not easy but it is possible.

Why pray?

Whether offered by guest pastors or by the commissioner themselves, invocations generally call on God to help the elected leaders make wise decisions, but they often touch other aspects of life as well. Commissioners have thanked the Lord for spring rains that nurtured farmer’s fields, asked for assistance in preventing an H1N1 epidemic, prayed for the safety of soldiers overseas, and asked God to be by the side of a well-known family who had lost a loved one.

At one Haywood commissioners meeting in April where a throng of angry citizens packed the audience, the prayer even thanked God for the democratic process and for living in a country where people were permitted to express their opinions.

“As a Christian, you always want to ask for blessings on all the business that’s going to transpire,” said Macon County Commissioner Ronnie Beale. “Speaking for myself, I have to ask him everyday for his guidance and direction in my life.”

While few could argue against the noble effort by elected leaders to make good decisions on behalf of their constituents, it is possible to do so without elevating their religion above others, said Mary Teslow, a resident of Macon County and president of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Franklin.

Teslow said commissioners could opt for a “shared affirmation for the work at hand,” a common ritual at her own church where the congregation cuts across several different faiths. Before church meetings, they take a moment to reflect on their shared purpose, center themselves and come together as a community.

“We would be supportive to the commitment of shared work but we would rather it not have such strong Christian language. We would rather it be inclusive, whether from a religious or cultural or gender perspective,” Teslow said.

Teslow would like to see the Macon County commissioners take a similar tact by saying an inclusive prayer rather than one that excludes people of different beliefs.

“We would like the circle widened of the people who participate in our community and public life,” Teslow said.

Commissioners generally initiate the prayer at meetings with “Let us pray” or “Please bow your heads.” It poses a conundrum for Lewellen, an atheist in Waynesville, who doesn’t believe in prayer at all. Whenever she encounters prayers at events, Lewellen said she might stand up but not bow her head or move her lips. If she’s in a bad mood, she might even walk out in protest.

“I don’t believe in supernatural beings, and I don’t pray to them,” said Lewellen.

When Constantino, a pagan, comes across a prayer at a Christian function, she bows her heads respectfully and says amen. But if the prayer occurs in a public setting, Constantino said she is more likely to sit with her head up and her eyes wide open.

Rotating faiths

Macon County’s practice of inviting rotating pastors to give an invocation closely mirrors the prayer patterns in Forsyth County targeted in the latest federal suit. Like in Forsyth, Macon County leaders say the floor is open to pastors of all faiths to take a turn at the podium, but in practice, the prayers are always Christian.

Ronnie Beale, chairman of the Macon County board of commissioners, said the board has never rejected a request to lead the prayer thus far. Furthermore, no one has ever complained.

Beale said the board does not tell the ministers it invites how to pray.

“We don’t set no standards and say this is what you must say or don’t say,” said Beale. “We’re not going to dictate to people how they pray.”

Mary Teslow, a resident of Macon County and president of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Franklin, said there is an underlying flaw with the notion of rotating guest pastors.

“In theory that would be nice, but in practice that doesn’t work. If you were in Atlanta or New York, you might get a variety, but in functionality, you don’t get that here,” Teslow said.

Those with different religious views are in the minority here and likely wouldn’t feel welcome showing up at a commissioners meeting to share their prayer. In other cases, they might lack an organized church with an official pastor, and could either be overlooked or not pass the vetting process, Teslow said.

In Haywood County, commissioners give the invocation rather than guest pastors, but Commissioner Kevin Ensley said he would support a request to do so from someone of another faith.

“I think if there are other faiths that want to pray during the meeting, I think you have to let them do that. You have to let the minority have their turn, too,” Ensley said.

Like Haywood, Swain commissioners take turns saying the prayers. No one from another faith has ever asked to offer the invocation at a Swain commissioner’s meeting, said Swain Commissioner David Monteith. But if they did, they could make use of the public comment period at the start of a meeting.

“We don’t ban them from standing up and praying to whoever they want to,” Monteith said. “If he signs up for his three minutes, he can say whatever he wants to. He can talk about why the sky is blue if he wants to.”

Still, it could be perceived as a double standard for commissioners to allow Christian prayers as part of the official meeting, but relegate those of other faiths to sign up to speak for up to three minutes during the public comment period.

Founding fathers

Supporters of prayer point to the long-standing practice — one as old as the nation itself — of beginning meetings with an invocation, from town halls to the halls of Congress.

“It’s part of our heritage here that we start every meeting with prayer,” said Swain County Commissioner Phil Carson, adding that the country was founded on the principles of God.

“‘In God We Trust’ is still on the money, even though people are trying really hard to take the principles of God out of our country,” said Carson.

Macon County Commissioner Ronnie Beale argued that Judeo-Christian values shaped the Constitution.

“Our country was founded pretty much by Christians,” said Beale, though he added that the government does allow people of other faiths to practice.

Jackson County Commissioner Brian McMahan holds the opposite view.

According to McMahan, the intent of the country’s founding fathers was to deter any sort of organized, government-sanctioned religion. Since so many had immigrated to the U.S. to escape religious persecution, the leaders wanted to allow everyone to worship in whatever way they pleased.

Leading a prayer at a commissioners meeting that references Allah, Jesus or another specific religious figure would be equivalent to endorsing a particular religion, McMahan said.

“That’s not what we’re there for,” said McMahan. “I think that goes against the U.S. Constitution.”

With the government gradually stripping away vestiges of Christianity from its sphere in recent decades, some are lamenting the loss of Christian principles.

“I think it is part of the downfall of our country,” Carson said. “If we all honored God and loved our neighbor, the world would be a much better place.”

Macon County Commissioner Bob Simpson agreed, stating that he was raised in a culture that respected the practice of saying the Lord’s Prayer before the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school.

“It’s just the way I was raised,” said Simpson. “We’re taking religion out of everything. It’s made a difference in the world as we see it today ... since they took it out of schools, our morals started going downhill.”

Steve Bryant was fresh out of law school and just learning his way around the courtroom when the judge hearing his case one day threatened to throw him in jail.

The judge had announced a recess, and Bryant seized the opportunity to pass a file to a clerk. But when the clerk in turn passed the file to the judge, Bryant was blamed for interrupting the judge’s break — a sin apparently justifying jail time.

“I thought he was dead serious,” Bryant said. Distraught, he called the partners at his Bryson City law firm and gave them the bad news that his legal career was over.

But it turned out Judge Robert Leatherwood was infamous for such admonitions and old-fashioned tongue lashings during his reign in the 1970s and ‘80s. For the lawyers and clients on the receiving end, they spent their days in court navigating an invisible minefield for fear a misstep would invoke Leatherwood’s ire.

“People were afraid of him, and the lawyers were afraid of him,” said John Snow, a judge for 28 years and now a state senator. “When I became a judge, that was one of the things I made a conscious effort to do, to make people feel comfortable in the courtroom.”

Nine years after Bryant’s embarrassing day in court, he became a District Court judge himself. Leatherwood committed suicide in the parking lot of Moody Funeral Home in Bryson City in the mid-1980s, and Bryant was appointed to fill the vacant seat. Like Snow, Bryant didn’t want to the run the kind of courtroom that Leatherwood had.

“I was conscious of the fact that the courtroom under the volatile circumstances of my predecessor made for an unnecessarily uncomfortable workplace,” Bryant said.

Lawyers constantly feared a clash with Leatherwood would land their clients harsher sentences with no apparent reason other than a moody day on the bench. Bryant instead strove for a “degree of predictability.”

“If you are an even-keel person, and day in and day out you handle your interactions with lawyers on the same basic plane, it makes it easier for the lawyers to advise their clients of a likely outcome,” Bryant said. “I don’t think you can worry about if they like you or don’t like you or think you are smart or an idiot, but it is important that everybody who comes to the table has their day in court.”

Judge Danny Davis came on the bench about the same time as Bryant, and likewise had experienced the Leatherwood courtroom.

“I think we both lived through that in our early days practicing law and understood the downside of that,” Bryant said.

Over the next two decades, Snow, Davis and Bryant conveyed a courtroom demeanor that was ultimately institutionalized as standard operating procedure within the 30th Judicial District, a court circuit spanning the seven western counties from Waynesville to Murphy.

“Everybody that came to practice after that, they realized they were going to get a fair shake and be treated with respect,” Snow said.

As a result, the 30th Judicial District is the envy of lawyers elsewhere in the state.

“We’ve had such a good set of judges for so long, lawyers that practice in other counties like to come here and do cases because they know they and their people will be treated fairly and courteously,” said Steve Ellis, a Waynesville attorney running for judge. “Even if they ruled against you, you knew they had made a thoughtful decision, and it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction.”

Bob Clark, a Waynesville attorney who has practiced in other districts, said the judges here are simply the best.

“Most of that is a consistency in temperament,” Clark said. “The judge won’t be in one mood one day and a different mood another day. Court runs well when you have judges who are clear in their rulings and dealings with others so you don’t have a tense situation of wondering what is going to happen next.”

That temperament is appreciated across the legal community.

“Judges should allow attorneys to try their cases without walking on eggshells,” said Roy Wijiwickrama, an attorney who lives in Waynesville and serves as prosecutor for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

What’s known as “judge shopping” — when lawyers jockey for a slot on the schedule to have their cases heard by the better judges — happens little in District Court here. Attorneys for the most part can roll into court without stressing about which judge they get.

“It’s something that is not so certain going forward given the amount of change we are facing,” Ellis said.

After two decades of relative stability, the 30th Judicial District is in major flux. Of six District Court judges now in office, three are new to the bench in the past five years. With the retirement of Davis and Bryant, two more seats will change hands. In all, five of the six District Court judges will be new since 2004 — with their combined experience being fewer years than any of their predecessors claimed alone.

Davis said demeanor is perhaps the most important quality voters should size up when picking from the daunting list of District Court judge hopefuls on the ballot this election year.

“The demeanor of who is on the bench is important. I think the main thing is to be courteous to people and to be fair to them and have patience, which is tested from time to time,” Davis said. “You can read about the law and listen to the evidence, but temperament and demeanor are sometimes hard to teach and hard to learn.”

The demeanor promulgated by tenured District Court judges and coveted by the legal community isn’t lost on candidates posturing for the open seats.

“We have been extremely fortunate here to have judges with a great judicial temperament that are fair and objective. We need to take care to ensure that continues,” said David Sutton, a Waynesville attorney running for one of the seats.

“It is the best bench in the state and always has been,” said Justin Greene, a Bryson City attorney running for judge. “They are not unapproachable. They are not bullies. If you need help, they will help you. They will work with you. They are all professional in their jobs. I would take a lot of pride in being part of that.”

Despite candidates’ pledges to carry on the tradition, this election can’t help but “change the flavor of the bench,” said Greg Boyer, a Franklin attorney running for judge.

“They are big shoes to fill,” Boyer said.

Those appearing in District Court come from all walks of life. But despite their socio-economic status or the crime they’re charged with, Davis said everyone in court deserves dignity.

“I still say ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No ma’am’ to folks in court. Even if you are getting ready to sentence them, they deserve a certain amount of respect,” Davis said.

It doesn’t go unnoticed by practicing attorneys.

“They look at people no matter what their station in life as individuals,” said Donna Forga, a Waynesville attorney running for judge. “They treat people with respect.”

The attitude is infectious throughout the court system.

“The key thing I have seen is a caring about people in the court system,” said Greg Boyer, a Franklin attorney who practiced in Florida prior to moving to the mountains. “They aren’t just a number or a cog in the wheel. The judges and the lawyers still see individuals. They see people.”

Another hallmark of the 30th Judicial District is the absence of an ivory-tower philosophy.

“One thing I always wanted to avoid as a judge is being enamored with my position, thinking that just because I am a judge, I am a special person,” Snow said. “You don’t want to be thought of as acting that way.”

The behavior of those appearing in court has gotten more raucous over the years, however, and doesn’t always make the judge’s job easy. Davis often finds himself telling people: “This is not Judge Judy’s court.”

“Some of these court TV shows are not realistic, but people think that they are,” Davis said.

Davis said the nature and volume of cases has changed for the worst.

“You have a front row seat for a lot of ills of society,” Davis said. “It is hard work. It is also emotionally draining. From time to time you will see things you don’t want to see. It is not the same job it was in 1984.”

There has been one improvement. Judges have their own office in the courthouse now, unlike in Davis’ early years.

“People would drive out to my house to get orders signed,” Davis said.

It’s a watershed year for the legal community in Western North Carolina as attorneys gear up for a hotly contested election for three open judge seats.

There’s at least nine and possibly 10 candidates running for the three seats. Two of three seats are being vacated by retiring judges. The third has been occupied for less than a year, so the sitting judge doesn’t have an entrenched toehold on the seat yet.

“There is a bit of leveling of the playing field that is attractive,” said Judge Steve Bryant, who is among those retiring.

A competitive race for judge is rare occurrence, let alone for three seats the same year. Candidates realized it was a “now or never” moment.

“This is a confluence of events that might not come back at another point in my career,” said Justin Greene, a young Bryson City lawyer running for judge.

Sitting judges tend to step down in the middle of their term. The Governor appoints a new judge, who has a de facto leg-up as the incumbent by the time a real election rolls around for the seat.

Challengers to sitting judges have a slim chance — so slim that elections usually go uncontested. Judge Bryant never faced an opponent in 24 years, and Judge John Snow was challenged just once in 28 years. As a result, judges typically park themselves in a seat for a quarter century, making 2010 all the more unusual.

“This is something that I will not see again in my legal lifetime,” said Donna Forga, a Waynesville attorney joining the race.

Two seats are wide open due to the pending retirement of long-time judges Danny Davis and Steve Bryant. The third seat up for election isn’t quite so cut and dry.

The seat is currently held by Judge Danya Vanhook, who was appointed last May by the Governor to fill a vacancy. Her short tenure on the bench — along with the fact that she hasn’t won an election — isn’t enough to give her a true incumbent’s edge, and the race promises to be competitive.

The result: three judge’s seats are in flux.

“I don’t think that has ever truly happened where we had three open seat elections at the same time,” said Caleb Rogers, a Waynesville attorney running for one of the seats.

An even-keel district

The legal community has been spoiled by years of relative stability, with only the occasional turnover at digestible intervals. But now, in a six-year span, the district will usher in five new District Court judges. (see A history of District Court judges).

“The biggest concern that anyone would have is how will it affect the judicial temperament and the judicial abilities?” said Bob Clark, a Waynesville attorney. “How does one as an attorney best represent his or her clients in front a judge they are not familiar with?”

The election is marked by a plethora of young candidates with only a few years of law experience under their belts.

The majority of candidates are in their early 30s. Others went back to law school later in life. Either way, the majority of the candidates have just a few years of legal experience. It’s making some attorneys a tad nervous.

Steve Ellis, a Waynesville attorney running for judge, is the only candidate who’s been practicing law in the state longer than a decade.

“We had a period of extreme stability for a long time,” said Ellis, 60. “It was clear there would be an enormous change in the court system. I saw a need for an experienced person on the bench.”

Of course, those long-time judges now retiring were young when they took the bench. Bryant was 34, and Davis was only 31. Judge John Snow, an esteemed judge who retired in 2004 after 28 years on the bench, was just 31 when he was appointed.

“We’ve had several judges over the past 25 years that have been appointed in their late 20s and early 30s, and I think they have been outstanding judges, and I think the legal community would agree we have been very lucky to have them serving on the bench,” said Roy Wijewickrama, a candidate for judge with nine years of legal experience, which actually places him at the front of the pack.

There’s an important difference in the current concatenation of events. Over the past three decades, a new District Court judge joined the bench every five years or so. Now, there will be five new judges in nearly as many years.

“There is a wealth of experience that is going to go away,” Snow said. “I am sure these young folks getting in there are going to do fine, but I can see how people will be a little nervous with the things they are used to going away.”

The two judges retiring this year have 49 years of experience between them.

“I think it is monumental just because those years are leaving the bench,” said Earwood, who is running for Bryant’s former seat. “There is no way that anyone could fill his shoes.”

Come next year, all six judges combined will have less than 30 years experience — the majority falling solely to Judge Richie Holt, soon to be the senior District Court judge. He’s known for his fair decisions, thoughtful hearings and approachability. Holt has 15 years of experience, a respectable number. But tenure declines rapidly from there. Second in seniority is Judge Monica Leslie with just six years on the bench.

New judges often lean on and draw from the experience of other sitting judges, but the bench could lack a critical mass of experience to make that possible. Clark said a new judge with less experience must be willing to accept advice from the more experienced attorneys trying cases — without being defensive.

“You have to be the type of individual that realizes ‘I am a brand new judge and I need to get to work.’ If you are willing to do that, you can overcome a lack of experience and boost your knowledge quickly, but you will have to be willing to accept help and seek others advice when you have a thorny question,” Clark said.

Bucking tradition

Bryant and Davis are breaking ranks from tradition by retiring the same year their seats are up for election. Usually, judges step down in the middle of their term, paving the way for a handpicked predecessor by the local legal community. While the governor ultimately makes the appointment, local attorneys vote on the slate of nominees and forward their pick to Raleigh.

It’s a far easier route to the bench. And it allows those in the legal community a high degree of influence, rather than the wild card of voting booths.

Despite the milestone year for the bench in the region — and the requisite media attention the race will garner as a result — voters have their work cut out.

Snow said only voters who care enough to ask around will learn enough about the candidates. Others will walk into the polls clueless.

Snow will be only slightly better off than the average voters this year.

“The problem I have is some of these folks who are running, I really don’t know them,” said Snow, who retired as a judge in 2004 to run for the state legislature.

A changing of the guard in the greater legal community hit home when Snow recently attended the Bar Association’s annual Christmas Party for the region.

“When I got there, I was kind of astounded at how few people I really knew,” Snow said.

Candidates share the problem of how to reach voters with their message.

“Certainly the challenge will be to separate yourself from the other candidates,” Rogers said.

But that’s easier said than done in a seven-county district where voters likely haven’t heard any of the names before. It’s also non-partisan, so voters don’t have the benefit of Democrat or Republican labels to guide them.

“The voters should become invested in it even though it is not party politics, because the decisions of the District Court judges effect citizens’ day-to-day lives,” said Judge Danya Vanhook. “We are deciding who is out driving on the roads. We are deciding where to put a child when two parents can’t agree in a divorce.”

Thousands of people filter through District Court in a year.

“It is the meat and potatoes of our court system,” Attorney Kris Earwood said of District Court.

A history of District Court judges

The 30th Judicial District will witness 85 percent turnover in a six-year period with the passing of this year’s election. Of six District Court judges, five will be new to the bench since 2004.

• 2004: Judge John Snow retired after 28 years. Judge Monica Leslie is appointed to the vacancy, won a subsequent election, and still holds the seat.

• 2006: The region scores an additional District Court judge seat, bringing the total number from five to six. It is filled by Judge Richard Walker.

• 2009: Judge Brad Letts leaves the District Court bench to fill the seat of Superior Court Judge Marlene Hyatt, who retired. Judge Danya Vanhook is appointed to the vacancy.

• 2010: Judge Danny Davis and Judge Steve Bryant announce their retirement the same year their seats are up for election, triggering a free-for-all.

• 2011: With the election over, Judge Richie Holt will become the longest serving judge with 16 years on the bench. The other five judges will have less than that combined.

Dozens of local businesses owed money by Ghost Town are mulling over ballots this week that will ultimately decide the amusement park’s fate.

Ghost Town, which landed in bankruptcy a year ago, owes a total of $13.5 million. It hopes to regain its footing and become profitable again, eventually paying off what it owes over the next seven years.

Ultimately, everyone owed money will get to vote on whether to accept the reorganization plan or force Ghost Town into a liquidation — namely selling off the mountaintop property to the highest bidder and using the proceeds to pay off the debt.

Some 200 businesses, many of them local contractors and small businesses in the region, are collectively owed more than $2.4 million by Ghost Town. They are at the bottom of the list to be repaid.

Wallace Messer of Dickson Auto Parts in Waynesville is skeptical he will ever see the $11,000 he is owed for parts and supplies.

“I just don’t see them turning a profit enough to pay off what they owe,” Messer said. “If you want my honest opinion, they will never pay off what they owe. They can’t come out from under it.”

Messer said he will vote for a liquidation and hope that a sale of the property brings enough to pay everyone back.

Mike Plemmons, the owner of Plemmons Plumbing and Heating, wants to give Ghost Town a chance to stay open and try to turn a profit, however. There is $11 million in debt owed ahead of small businesses like Plemmons, and if the property is sold off, it might not fetch enough to pay off those at the bottom of the list, he said. He thinks Ghost Town staying open is the best chance he has to get paid back.

“I’d rather go down fighting and have some chance as have no chance at all. Slim is better than none,” said Plemmons.

Plemmons is owed $8,000 for supplies, which he ordered especially for Ghost Town from distributors then had to cover out of his own pocket when Ghost Town didn’t pay.

Bruce Johnson, the owner of Champion Supply, doesn’t hold out much hope Ghost Town will ever pay off its $16,000 bill for cleaning and janitorial supplies under either scenario.

“I don’t think we are going to get money either way,” Johnson said.

So he is going to mark his ballot based on what he thinks is in the community’s best interest.

“I think it is better for the economy if they keep operating,” Johnson said. “The people they pull in help everyone.”

Johnson said he should have put a hold on Ghost Town’s supply account sooner than he did.

“They kept saying they would get us a check,” Johnson said. “We took our eye off the ball.”

Johnson did finally put Ghost Town on a cash account, and it has continued buying supplies from him over the past year, this time, paying up front.

Messer said he regularly sold parts to the previous Ghost Town owners. When new owners bought the park in 2007, they continued making purchases under same account, which had a good track record.

“I should have started a new account,” Messer said.

Plemmons said local businesses operate on good faith and is disappointed someone violated that trust.

“All your family businesses are run by people getting up every morning trying to make an honest living,” Plemmons said.

But in Ghost Town’s case, they kept promising to pay. Plemmons thought they were just being slow and allowed them to keep ordering more supplies. Eventually they quit calling him back and he was in the dark until the bankruptcy papers came through.

Those owed money have to mail their ballots by next week. The plan must be approved by the majority of creditors, and by those holding two-thirds of the total debt.

The rules prevent one big lender like BB&T, which is owed $9.5 million by Ghost Town, from swaying the vote. It also prevents dozens of smaller companies from tipping the scale by virtue of their numbers, even though the amounts they are owed is much smaller.

As for the 215 companies collectively owed $2.4 million, Ghost Town’s reorganization plan pledges to pay them back over seven years out of profits. The plan calls for dedicating 6 percent of net revenue received each year to pay back the small business owners.

However, the park hasn’t turned a profit in two years. Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver blames the recession for lackluster ticket sales the past two years. The 1960s-era amusement park also had far more issues lurking beneath the surface than its new owners realized when buying the park in 2007, requiring costly repairs and upgrades that weren’t in the original business plan. The recession made it impossible to secure financing, but Shiver says he has now found a lender that will help put them back on stable footing.

Shiver said the park was planning to open for the season in late May, then the landslide happened.

“We are extremely concerned that we can’t open this season — for all of us and the Maggie Valley tourist industry,” Shiver said. “To be fully prepared and geared to open and then have this happen ... but the owners are committed to seeing this through.”

The reorganization plan initially called for paying back only 25 percent of what the businesses are owed over a seven-year period using a portion of net profits, but was amended to call for 100 percent payoff.

Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park was behind on its general liability insurance payments in the months leading up to a massive landslide that originated from its property.

Ghost Town has been struggling with bankruptcy for the past year. It was three months behind on payments for its general liability insurance coverage when the slide occurred on Feb. 5, according to paperwork filed as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

Ghost Town had an arrangement with a finance company to make insurance payments on its behalf. In return, Ghost Town was supposed to make regular payments to the finance company, First Financial.

But Ghost Town got so late on payments that the finance company sent a “notice of cancelation” of coverage effective Jan. 28.

“Your insurance coverage referenced above is hereby cancelled as of the cancellation date indicated,” the notice states. The notice states that Ghost Town had “already received the statutory written notice of our intent to cancel and any cure period has expired.”

Another two weeks passed before Ghost Town sent a payment. On Feb. 10 — a few days following the landslide — Ghost Town wired $27,400 to the finance company to cover the past due bill from the last quarter of 2009 and the current quarter of 2010.

The status of Ghost Town’s account with First Funding for the liability insurance was found online. A payment of $13,000 was due in November of 2009. Three statements were sent out demanding payment over a three-month period.

The words “cancel status” then appear beside the account on Jan. 28. Account records show payments totaling $27,400 were wired on Feb. 10.

Lynn Sylvester, a Ghost Town partner and CPA, said the late payments to the finance company did not result in a lapse of insurance.

“Fact is, our insurance coverage did not lapse, and in fact, was always paid in full by the finance company, First Funding,” Sylvester said. However, First Funding filed paperwork with the bankruptcy court on Jan. 29 stating it had canceled the policy.

Representatives with the insurance company, First Mercury Insurance, would not say whether Ghost Town had general liability coverage at the time of the slide — which falls in the two-week window between the cancellation notice issued by First Funding on Jan. 28 and when the payments were wired on Feb. 10.

“That is between us and the insured,” said Bill Costello, a claims adjuster for First Mercury Insurance Company. Costello is handling a few other liability claims against Ghost Town, but said the company has not received any claims relating to the landslide that he is aware of.

Marcia Paulson, the vice president of administration with First Mercury Insurance in Southfield, Mich., also would not say whether Ghost Town’s insurance had lapsed during the window.

“I don’t know that I could address that. You are not the insured or the insured’s counsel,” Paulson said.

Ghost Town took out the general liability policy with First Mercury Insurance Company in May 2009 with an annual premium of $61,000, according to bankruptcy filings.

A company in bankruptcy reorganization is required to stay current on its insurance. The physical property of a bankrupt company is the only collateral for its debts. The property must be properly insured to protect the interests of those owed money.

BB&T, which is owed $9.5 million by Ghost Town for loans taken out to buy the property and fund upgrades, has the most at stake in bankruptcy proceedings. BB&T filed court papers on Feb. 3 objecting to Ghost Town falling behind in payments for its general liability policy. BB&T attached the notice of cancellation for the policy as an exhibit in the court filing.

Ghost Town had also received cancellation notices for its auto, property and fire insurance, which BB&T entered into the record as well.

BB&T is pushing for liquidation of Ghost Town’s property to pay off its debts rather than allowing it to continue operating under reorganization in the hope it can turn a profit and regain its footing.

The slide originated from Ghost Town’s property where a massive series of terraced retaining walls gave way. Geologists either haven’t determined or aren’t saying whether the slide was due to natural causes or was triggered by failure of the retaining wall.

Ghost Town hired a contractor to make repairs to the retaining wall when a portion collapsed in 2007. But some of the old railroad tie walls were left in place, resulting in a combination of new and old work. That in turn has led to finger pointing by Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver and Carolina-A-Contracting of Maggie Valley, which did the work in 2007.

Ed Williams is an expert when it comes to spotting the telltale signs of sewage seeping into creeks.

“You get an eye and a nose for it,” Williams said. “You put the boots on and get in. You just start at the mouth and walk up, keeping your eyes open and looking for funny smells, too.”

Williams has put his reconnaissance skills to work along the primary urban creeks running through Waynesville and Sylva. He’s found sewage oozing from the tip of storm pipes, seeping from soil along the banks and even bubbling out of manhole covers.

Williams runs a special unit of the N.C. Division of Water Quality that restores polluted or impaired mountain creeks. Both Richland and Scotts creek were flagged due to high bacteria counts associated with raw sewage.

Two years later, however, the once unhealthy levels of fecal coliform in the creeks are under control. Both creeks are popular for recreation. Children wade and splash in Richland Creek as it courses through the Waynesville Recreation Park. Fishermen can be seen from the greenway along its banks most afternoons.

At the mouth of Scott’s Creek in Sylva, a public park serves as a put-in for dozens of rafters and paddlers daily in the summer. Some swim and float in Scott’s Creek while waiting their turn to launch.

“It is wonderful for people who are waiting for their kayak and raft shuttles to cool themselves off without risk of getting some disease,” said Roger Clapp, director of the Watershed Association of the Tuckaseigee River. “Based on the old data, it was unwise. Now it is safe.”

In the water

Figuring out where and how the raw sewage was getting into the creeks wasn’t simple, however. Sylva and Waynesville are both riddled with aging sewer lines that often spring underground leaks. The creeks are also plagued by failing private septic systems and even remnants of straight-piping — once a common practice in the early days of indoor plumbing when pipes simply ran through the yard and dumped into the creek out back.

Before Williams dons his waders for an in-stream survey, he spends weeks creating a map of potential hot spots. He takes periodic water samples the length of the creek — as well as side branches — and sends them off to the lab for analysis.

The results give him a snapshot of where the fecal coliform counts are highest.

“The numbers make it blatantly obvious that there is something going on in an area,” Williams said.

Along Richland Creek, Williams sampled 75 points from Lake Junaluska to its headwaters in Balsam.

Sometimes, finding the culprit on the ground wasn’t easy, however. Occasionally, Williams had to smoke them out.

Workers with the town of Waynesville’s sewer department would open up manholes and pump smoke into the lines while Williams and his team watched for it to seep up from the ground, revealing the spot in the line where the leak is.

Other times, they slipped a little green dye into the sewer line, while Williams stood in the creek looking for a green plume.

Along one stretch, high readings clearly indicated a hot spot but even the smoke and dye trick was unable to turn up a leak in the town’s lines. Not easily stumped, Williams cast about for other suspects and settled on a restaurant which sits along the creek. When his team flushed green dye down the restaurant’s toilets, sure enough, the creek turned green just seconds later.

Williams said the town of Waynesville spends $250,000 a year systematically repairing sewer lines. The town was willing and eager to work with Williams targeting the leaks and quickly fixed them.

In Sylva, Williams traced most of the problem to just two main offenders. One was an overflowing manhole. It wasn’t hard to spot the sewage bubbling out of it, Williams said. The Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority patched the leak.

Along a side branch, Williams found a failing septic tank draining into the creek.

“It looked as if someone had rammed a pipe into the septic field to release the pressure and that was going into creek,” Williams said.

The homeowner didn’t have the money to fix the problem, however, but she was able to get financial assistance through the Waste Discharge Elimination Program, a state initiative to pinpoint and fix failing septic tanks.

Fecal coliform levels in Scott’s Creek initially came to the state’s attention thanks to regular sampling done by volunteers from the Watershed Association of the Tuckaseigee.

“We petitioned the state to come down and take a look,” Clapp said.

The state got similar results, and Scott’s Creek was put on the impaired list in 2005.

“I had no idea at that point that it would be down to the level it is now,” Clapp said.

Miles to go

There are 490 miles of stream in the 19 western counties on the state’s list of impaired waters. There are several reasons a creek or river lands on the black list. One is bacteria from raw sewage. Another is high loads of sediment and erosion, or a deficiency of aquatic life.

The state hasn’t always been involved in fixing streams. It listed impaired waters but had no staff to do anything about the bad news.

“As far as a hands-on approach, we hadn’t done that so much,” Williams said.

In 2007, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources began its first-ever stream restoration program.

Richland and Scott’s creeks were the first in the 17-county area chosen to get help. It was a lucky break, since only a couple of waterways could be tackled at a time.

Priority goes to those with critical habitat for endangered species or popular creeks for recreation — which is why both Richland and Scott’s creeks were picked.

A 2007 article in The Smoky Mountain News about the public health risk at the rafting put-in at Scott’s Creek was a major factor in its selection, as well as lobbying by WATR, Williams said.

WATR volunteers often serve as the eyes and ears for the state water quality division, which doesn’t have the staff to sample all the streams that need monitoring. Haywood Waterways Association serves the same role in Haywood County.

This fall, WATR has partnered with Western Carolina University environmental science students to sample Savannah Creek, another hot spot in Jackson County for fecal coliform, and to do follow-up monitoring along Scott’s Creek to make sure high levels don’t resurface.

“It is exciting that WATR and our partners will be testing more streams to confirm clean water or to identify problems,” Clapp said.

Meanwhile in Waynesville, Richland Creek is still parked on the list of impaired waters. The reason: it lacks key aquatic species that a mountain stream should have.

Decades ago, pollution from Waynesville factories wiped out species. While the water is cleaner now, fish haven’t been able to repopulate Richland Creek.

“Lake Junaluska stands in the way as a barrier to fish migration, so we have had to physically pick the fish up and bring them up there,” Williams said.

Several species are being reintroduced and should improve Richland Creek’s biological integrity, and eventually get it off the list of impaired waters. The N.C. Wildlife Commission and Tennessee Valley Authority have helped with the reintroductions.

“Whatever it takes to fix the stream, we are trying to do,” Williams said. “We can never really say mission accomplished and go home and it is fixed. You have to keep monitoring forever.”

Scott’s Creek improvement

Fecal coliform levels in Scott’s Creek show marked improvement following efforts in 2007 to cleanup sources of contamination

State standard    200

Average reading in 2005    2,150

Average reading in 2008    170

Average reading in 2009    100

Average reading in 2010    130

* Measured in fecal units per 100 milliliters of water. Samples taken at the mouth of Scott’s Creek just before its confluence with the Tuckasegee River. Data provided by Division of Water Quality.

Haywood County is headed to arbitration in a lawsuit over the $8.2 million renovation to the historic courthouse.

The contractor sued the county for $2 million after being fired from the job in May 2008. The county claimed the contractor was “significantly behind schedule” and was “incapable” of finishing the job they were hired to do.

Meanwhile, KMD Construction claims it was working off inaccurate blueprints. As a result, the project took a lot longer than expected, and was more expensive.

The county refused to pay for cost overruns, however. KMD says it was left holding the bag and wants the county to pay up. The suit cites wrongful termination by the county and negligence by the county’s architect.

Last week, the county learned arbitration to settle the ongoing dispute has been scheduled for May 2011.

The county and contractor butted heads for most of the project, but the final straw came when the county learned the contractor was cutting corners that compromised the structural integrity of the building, according to court filings. Specifically, a cinder-block wall of an interior staircase at the rear of the courthouse was being put up without proper internal support.

“KMD management was aware of the unsafe, improper and defective construction and intended to cover it up,” the county claims in court filings, defending its firing of KMD.

Another construction error involved leaky conduit for electrical lines feeding an emergency generator. The conduit was not properly sealed, and leaks damaged the switch for the emergency power supply, according to the county.

In yet another mishap, kerosene heaters were left burning unattended to make drywall mud dry faster. One malfunctioned and smoke and soot got into the ventilation system and filled the building.

KMD, however, says the architectural plans were inadequate and failed to meet building code, leaving out key support beams in several places.

The construction plans also failed to reflect the condition of the historic building, such as the varying thickness of the stone exterior walls and undulating slopes in the floor, which required extensive leveling, KMD claims in its suit.

The county admits that the blueprints weren’t perfect, but that goes with the territory when making renovations to a historic 1930s-era building.

“Haywood County admits that the project designs required revisions through the course of construction to meet unknown conditions in the existing building,” wrote Bob Meynardie, an attorney representing the county, in court filings.

The county countersued the contractor, claiming it racked up additional expenses of its own during the drawn-out project. It had to pay rent on satellite office space during the renovations, pay architects for additional time and hire a scheduling consultant to keep the project on task.

The county withheld payments from the contractor to cover most of the extra costs it incurred as a result of the quagmire, while other costs were picked up by a surety bond taken out by the county as insurance against just such a scenario. As a result, the county didn’t pay any more for the project than it had budgeted originally. It was completed a year late, however.

What now?

Arbitration will bring a final resolution to the dispute and is similar to a court trial.

“The contractor will present their case, we will present our case and the arbitrators will decide whether or not to make an award to either side,” said Meynardie.

Both sides will present evidence, call witnesses and put on exhibits.

The only difference is that arbitration isn’t held before a judge. Instead, the decision rests with a three-person panel selected jointly by both sides: one chosen by the county, one by the contractor, and the third chosen jointly by the first two. The American Arbitration Association certifies architects, engineers, contractors and lawyers to serve as arbitrators. In this case, the panel will be comprised of three construction lawyers.

The architect and engineer for the project are named by KMD in the suit as well, but the county will hold the primary burden of countering KMD’s claims.

It does not appear that the county will try to point the finger at the architects and engineers in order to absolve itself.

“We believe the contractor had more responsibility for what wrong out there than anybody,” Meynardie said.

Issues with the contractor’s work were brought to the county’s attention by the architect. The architect also recommended firing KMD. But the county stands behind its decision.

“The contractor didn’t live up to its contractual obligation. We had to make our own assessment of that,” Meynardie said.

Even if the county prevails at arbitration, it will still be out the legal costs of defending itself, Meynardie said.

After months of debate, Haywood Community College leaders emerged victorious this week in their quest to build a $10.3 million building where craft industries will be taught.

From weaving to pottery to woodworking, the new building will be a showcase for the college and a centerpiece for the vibrant arts and crafts community in Western North Carolina.

Haywood County commissioners had final say on whether the college could move forward, but for months they have been playing hardball over the building’s price tag. Ultimately, the commissioners approved the building Monday in a 4 to 1 vote.

Commissioner Kevin Ensley was the lone dissenting vote, but the other commissioners made it clear their support was tempered.

HCC President Rose Johnson said she is thankful the commissioners approved the project and the college can move forward with construction. The process was far more controversial than Johnson likely anticipated, however. A new craft building had long been the college’s top construction priority — since before Johnson became president.

“There was no way I could foresee how complicated it was going to be,” Johnson said.

Ultimately what convinced commissioners was unanimous backing by the college board of trustees itself. Until recently, the college trustees had been split on various aspects of the project, from the total building price tag to solar energy features. But last week, on the eve of a final vote by the county, the trustees convened and unanimously endorsed the project.

“They wanted to go to the commissioners with a unified vote,” Johnson said.

Mark Bumgarner, chairman of the HCC board, admits the move was critical. Commissioners said as much as well.

“If you had come in here today and it was still a 6-5 decision, I would be uncomfortable that you didn’t have a stronger consensus,” said Commissioner Chairman Kirk Kirkpatrick. “I don’t want to be in the position as a commissioner to stop a project another board wants to go forward with. If they are all in consensus now with the project, I would feel comfortable approving it, but not because I am sold on it completely.”

“Now that you have a consensus I feel a lot better,” agreed Commissioner Bill Upton.

The college has trimmed nearly $1 million from the project over the past month. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bring the price tag any lower than before. Bids from contractors came in higher than architects had estimated, forcing the college to cut elements of the building just to hold the line on the cost.

The higher-than-expected estimates came as a shock to both the college and commissioners. The depressed economy has, in most cases, led to lower building costs as contractors compete for limited work.

“This is the first project I have heard of in two or three years that came in above the estimated cost,” Ensley said.

Ensley said the reason the college had such high bids was the cutting-edge nature of the design. Ensley said he heard from contractors who either didn’t bid at all or who bid high because some eco-components of the building were unfamiliar.

Commissioners didn’t pass up one last chance to lecture college leaders over the price tag before signing off on the project. The building will be paid for out of a special quarter-cent sales tax approved by county voters two years ago. The county had pledged to dedicate revenue from the quarter-cent sales tax to community college construction if voters would approve it.

But Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said the county is ultimately on the hook for the loan.

“If something happened to the sales tax and it went south, that means the county would have to pick it up,” Curtis said. Curtis said the county doesn’t want to have to raise taxes in the future due to poor financial planning today.

Swanger warned the college not to bank on the special pot of sales tax money as being their own forever.

“I think it is important that all of us go into this with our eyes wide open,” Swanger said.

A decade from now, there will be a different cast of characters, with different priorities and campaign pledges than today’s board, Swanger said. While today’s commissioners pledged to devote the special sales tax to the college, it could easily be co-opted by a future board for a different use, he said.

It makes it all the more critical that the college be certain they want to burn through the lion’s share of the money on this one building, Swanger said.

Commissioners told the college not to come back later asking for more money for other projects.

“You know the lack of funds we have for projects for the community college outside this pool of money,” Kirkpatrick said.

When the recession hit, the county cut the building maintenance budget for the college by two-thirds. Commissioners said it could be a long time before that maintenance budget is restored. That means the college may need to dip into the special pot of sales tax money for regular maintenance.

When commissioners first broached that possibility earlier this year, supporters of the college came out in force to protest what they saw as commissioners reneging on their earlier promise to devote the sales tax money to campus expansion and new construction.

But times are tough, Ensley said.

The Wildlife Commission has unveiled its proposed changes to hunting and fishing rules, but the list is a super short one this year and controversial proposals are markedly absent.

A public hearing on the proposed changes will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15, at Haywood Community College.

The list is a benign one compared to the past three years, which were all packed controversy.

A firestorm erupted last year over one of the proposed changes that would have weakened protection for the Smokies elk herd. While it is illegal to hunt elk, the change would have given landowners wider discretion to shoot an elk if it was causing private property damage.

The Wildlife Commission backed off and dropped the proposal following public outcry, however.

The previous year, public outcry temporarily sidelined a proposal to lift the daily bag limit for deer. While there is a still a cap on the number of deer a hunter can shoot over the course of hunting season, there is no longer a daily cap.

Hunters in the mountains protested, fearing the slacker rule would hurt the deer population.

The Wildlife Commission tabled the proposed change for a year, but has now enacted it anyway. This hunting season will be the first year it goes into effect.

The Wildlife Commission also caught flack over a proposal to allow falconry on Sundays and bow hunting on private land on Sundays. Hunting is otherwise illegal on Sundays. Critics feared the changes would open the door for full-blown Sunday hunting down the road.

The year before, a proposal to allow bear hunting with dogs in the popular Dupont State Forest recreation area in Henderson County was derailed by public outcry.

This year, there are no hunting rule changes that affect the mountains. There are only two fishing changes: one is to remove the “Public Mountain Trout Waters” designation on Ellijay Creek in Macon County, and the other is to clarify boundaries of the delayed harvest waters on the Tuck in Jackson County as between the N.C. 107 bridge and U.S. 441 bridge.

To comment, go to www.ncwildlife.org and click on “submit comments” on the right hand side.

— By Becky Johnson

Swain County officially signed a cash settlement with the federal government in a moving and historic ceremony Saturday, ending a bitter decades-long dispute over the North Shore Road.

Swain will received $52 million from the government, and in exchange will drop its claims to a 30-mile road the government flooded 66 years ago and never rebuilt.

“It has taken Swain County 67 years to reach this point today,” said County Commissioner Chairman Glenn Jones. “The journey has not been easy folks.”

Congressman Heath Shuler, a Swain County native and football star, received three separate standing ovations during the ceremony for his critical work to bring the settlement to fruition.

“When you were up here playing football for the Maroon Devils, who would have ever thought you would be the missing piece of this puzzle?” Jones said.

Shuler fought tirelessly to win political support in Washington, including within the White House, for a settlement and to secure the first round of appropriations.

“It is not just about the money. It is letting go of something in the past that has divided us,” said Shuler, who choked up during one part of his speech. “I think maybe that’s why God has put me here, to bring a divided community back together.”

Under the cash settlement, Swain will get $12.8 million now and the rest in increments over the next 10 years. The amount of the settlement is based on the value of the road at the time it was flooded, plus interest.

“What we have tried to do in this whole issue is get an injustice for Swain County done and over with,” said Claude Douthit, a father of the cash settlement movement, following the ceremony. “I have tried and tried and tired for all of these years to bring people on board and educate them. It has taken me a long time to ever get the stars right so to speak. It finally came about.”

Luke Hyde, an attorney and leader of the cash settlement movement, led an invocation at the beginning of the ceremony, which was held at Swain County High School.

“Bless what the public officials will do here today and go with us into the future so we can do a better job for our children and our children’s children,” Hyde said.

The money from the settlement will be placed in a protected trust fund. The county will get the annual interest, which will amount to more than $3 million a year once the full settlement is received.

Jones referenced the motto on a sign outside the high school where the ceremony was held, declaring “Our best and then some.”

“We want to put this note in our kids’ pockets and say ‘We have given you our best and then some,’” Jones said. “Some way or another every citizen in Swain County will benefit from this cash settlement. I can see great things to come.”

The signing

The Secretary of the Department of Interior Ken Salazar was scheduled to appear and sign the settlement in person. But as a major snowstorm barreled down on Washington, D.C., late last week, Shuler and his staffers rapidly concocted a contingency plan.

The document required four signatures, one from each of the original signers to a 1943 agreement promising to rebuild the road. Shuler dispatched his aide Ryan Fitzpatrick on Thursday to collect the signatures ahead of time and deliver them to Swain County in time for the ceremony. After getting Salazar’s signature in D.C., Fitzpatrick promptly flew out to Raleigh and met with Gov. Beverly Perdue. He was scheduled to fly out from there to Knoxville on Friday to collect a signature from the Tennessee Valley Authority, but impending winter weather in the mountains led him to change his plans and fly on to Knoxville that night, and finally on to Swain County by car on Friday.

At each stop, he took a celebratory photo of the document with his cell phone and sent the picture back to Shuler. The documents never left his side during the two-day journey.

“I had them either on my lap or in the passenger seat right beside me,” Fitzpatrick said.

The final two signatures — that of Swain County Commissioner Glenn Jones and Congressman Shuler as a witness — were saved for Saturday’s ceremony.

Salazar sent written remarks, delivered by Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

“It is not often one can end a 70-year old controversy with the stroke of a pen,” Salazar wrote.

The settlement was good news to environmentalists, who have spent decades fighting the road through a large, remote territory of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“I was afraid I would die before I got it done,” said Ted Snyder, a Sierra Club activist who has been part of the fight since the 1960s. “It is an enormous win.”

When Duke first broached the idea of tearing down the Dillsboro dam eight years ago, Mark Singleton thought he would see this day come much sooner than it did.

A champion of dam removal both for the ecological and recreation benefits, Singleton had a front row seat last week on the banks of the Tuckasegee when a hoe ram struck its first blow, taking a tiny but symbolic chip from the top of the dam.

“It’s a historic day for the river. It’s also nationally significant,” said Singleton, a Jackson County resident and paddler. “Dams like this don’t come down very often.”

Singleton hardly slept the night before, wondering what the river would look like in its natural state. Before the dam came down, you could barely make out giant rock formations lurking beneath the surface. The dam was also rumored to sit on top of a rock ledge. That would all be exposed as the water dropped, revealing what Singleton hoped would be fodder for a paddlers playground.

“What kind of cool features are waiting under there?” Singleton said. “It is like Christmas. You are unwrapping a present.”

Singleton also wondered whether the large rock formations would create shallow tide pools, something his own children like to explore.

“All of that is underneath here. We just haven’t seen it in 100 years,” Singleton said.

Singleton said the former dam site will be a construction zone for a few months yet, but by summer, he hopes to be paddling down the new stretch of river. A big spike among paddlers could be witnessed the first year, but Dillsboro will likely find itself as a new hub for recreational paddlers even after the novelty wears off, said Singleton, the executive director of American Whitewater, a national paddling advocacy group.

“It is a great thing. I am glad to see the river is free-flowing,” said James Jackson, a local paddler and business owner. “I think it will be a great addition to the county.”

Meanwhile, environmental benefits of dam demolition were also cheered by biologists who had lobbied for dam removal.

For starters, nearly a mile of slow moving backwater behind the dam will be restored to a natural mountain river. Also, with the dam gone, fish will once again have free range to migrate up and downstream, expanding their reach, according to Mark Cantrell, biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Aquatic species have been “bumping their head on this dam for years,” Cantrell said.

One such species is the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel. The eggs of elktoe mussles hitchhike on fish, which unwittingly play host to the developing larvae in their gills. The baby mussels eventually jump ship and wherever they land becomes their new home. Dams that block fish consequently block the distribution of the elktoe mussels.

Dam removal will allow previously isolated elktoe populations to unite and in turn build back up the gene pool, Cantrell said.

Dam removal will also help the sicklefin redhorse, an extremely rare fish that Cantrell would like to see placed on the list of endangered species. It is found on only five rivers in the world, all of them here in the mountains.

Like salmon, but on a smaller scale, the sicklefin redhorse swim upstream to spawn. But the Dillsboro Dam blocked them from doing so. Removing the dam will it allow access to new spawning grounds.

The sicklefin redhorse traditionally returns to where it hatched to spawn. Since the fish currently aren’t found upstream of the dam, it could take generations for them to discover the new territory if left to their own devices.

But Fish and Wildlife biologist have lent a helping hand by rearing sicklefin redhorse in captivity and releasing newly hatched fry upstream of the dam every year, imprinting the fish to return to the same spot one day when laying eggs of their own.

The sicklefin redhorse don’t spawn until the fifth year of their life, but the biologists are now in the fifth year of the releases — with a total of about 5,000 released over that time. Within a year, the first of those imprinted fish should reproduce naturally on sections of the Tuck upstream of Dillsboro, giving rise to a new population of the threatened sicklefin.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife has conducted species assessments above and below the dam, and will watch eagerly to see if the numbers and diversity increase in the years following dam removal.

“This is what it is all about,” Cantrell said. “The intent of dam removal is to see these environmental benefits.”

As the dam came down

While the river ecology will improve over the long run with the dam down, biologists were concerned about immediate impacts of chunks of the dam and backlogged sediment washing downstream during the demolition process. While Duke was required to dredge some of the sediment prior to demolition, a lot still remained.

“As the water levels drop, we will see some of that sediment that was previously sequestered behind the dam be redistributed downstream,” said Cantrell, whose agency is monitoring ecological issues in the Tuck before, during and after dam demolition.

A large cloth net was strung across the river to strain out debris coming down, but it wasn’t a catch-all.

So water monitoring stations were set up above and below the dam to measure sediment during demolition. If sediment levels got too high, the rate of demolition could be slowed. Another tactic would be releasing more water from Duke’s other dams higher up the river to dilute the ratio of sediment in the water being flushed downstream, Cantrell said.

Safety precautions were also in place, including a lifeline strung across the river should a worker fall overboard, and a motorized lifeboat moored at the river bank to go after someone.

What’s next?

As onlookers watched the water level drop last week, they braced themselves for the ugly scene that would be revealed: a giant, barren pit of mud and muck stretching along the riverbanks.

Duke is supposed to do steambank restoration to kick-start revegetation, and it’s something both the community and biologists hope Duke will do well.

Duke is working on a massive landscape plan to revegetate the banks, according to Hugh Barwock, the project manager for dam removal and a senior environmental resource manager for Duke out of Charlotte.

TJ Walker, owner of the Dillsboro Inn, is keeping his fingers crossed that Duke does a good job with streambank restoration. For now, the view from his inn on the banks of the Tuck is that of a fresh mud flat. But Walker says the project manager has promised it won’t look that way for long.

Walker initially fought dam removal, but backed down a couple of years ago.

“My sense of abandonment is replaced with a sense of hope,” Walker said last week.

Want to learn more?

The Fish and Wildlife Service has created a Web site dedicated to removal, including demolition photo and facts of environmental benefits at www.fws.gov/asheville/htmls/projectreview/DillsboroDam.html