While buckling and cracks were readily visible in old retaining walls built out of railroad ties at Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park owners failed to officially notify anyone with Haywood County of the town of Maggie Valley.

Mountainside construction regulations passed by Haywood County in 2007 likely could have stopped the massive landslide in Maggie Valley from happening, if the right people had known about the potentially unstable slope being held back by a series of terraced retaining walls.

But the county planning and engineering department did not know, and even if it had, it would have lacked jurisdiction.

Ghost Town, where the slide originated, is in the town limits of Maggie Valley and the county’s slope laws don’t apply there.

The town could “opt-in” to the county’s slope ordinance, but hasn’t done so. Maggie could choose to adopt its own slope ordinance, but it hasn’t done that, either. Town Manager Tim Barth said the town board has never discussed whether the town should adopt the county’s slope ordinance or one like it.

Had the county slope ordinance applied, and had County Engineer Mark Shumpert been alerted to possible instability, he could have stepped in.

“I didn’t know there were any problems up there. That is news to me,” Shumpert said.

The county slope ordinance is usually triggered when an earth-moving project exceeds a certain threshold — depending on the height and pitch of the excavated slope. It typically does not apply to slope work prior to 2007 when the ordinance was passed.

But there is an exception. The county engineer has the authority to declare any slope that poses an imminent danger a “critical slope,” and force a property owner to make repairs regardless of whether the work pre-dated the passage of the ordinance.

“If it is a critical slope that looks like there is a potential for failure, we could require something to be done,” Shumpert said. “I didn’t know there was a wall up there in imminent danger of failing.”

Repairs to the giant system of terraced retaining walls were made in 2007. If that work had fallen under county’s slope ordinance, Shumpert would have inspected the site and likely realized that problems were still lurking, he said.

While many people in Maggie Valley knew — from Ghost Town employees to residents living below it — no one informed the county. Neither Shumpert, nor County Planner Kris Boyd, nor Erosion Control Officer Marc Pruett were alerted to the problem.

Barth said he was not aware of anyone with Ghost Town reporting the potential of an unstable slope to the town.

Shumpert is usually called in after a slope has already failed. There were roughly half a dozen small slope failures in the county last year, more than in the previous years due to higher rainfall in 2009. He also got a few pre-emptive calls for the first time from people concerned about the potential of a slope failure. None rose to the level of being designated a critical slope, however, he said.

“For the most part, we are getting calls after the fact. The stuff we are getting preemptively, we have been able to help them get a contractor involved before it gets worse,” Shumpert said.

Last winter, there were two landslides in Maggie. In one, a home was reduced to matchsticks with a family inside, but they miraculously escaped alive. In another, a slope below a house slumped away but stopped just sort of taking out the foundation.

In both, the county forced the property owners where the slide originated to make repairs.

One of the homeowners ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The home was foreclosed on and the county is now putting the bank on the hooks for repairs, Shumpert said.

Five years ago, a woman in Maggie Valley was killed when a landslide crushed her home.

Shumpert said the rash of landslides in Haywood County have all been a result of earth-moving. None occurred naturally on an untampered site, but all originated from a spot where excavation or construction had occurred.

On a positive note, no slope failures have occurred at sites subject to the county’s ordinance since its passage in 2007 — suggesting the ordinance works when followed.

The problems instead have all occurred on sites that were exempt from the slope ordinance — either because they predated the regulations or, in the case of the recent slide, fell outside the county’s jurisdiction.

One legislator’s fight for safety

A bill percolating in the state legislature would force the myriad mountain counties and towns that still lack slope ordinances to adopt them. The bill spells out the bare minimum for such an ordinance — modeled almost identically to Haywood County’s — but allows counties to go tougher if they want to.

It has been stalled for four years, stuck in various committees unable to garner widespread support it needs to pass, however.

“I am a bit frustrated,” said Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, who has championed the bill. “We are dealing with a situation where human life is at stake.”

Rapp said the bill doesn’t aim to stop mountainside construction, but does insist it is done safely.

“They are going to have to build to exacting standards so we don’t put people’s lives at risk,” Rapp said. “This is unacceptable, what is going on now.”

Rapp said he plans to keep introducing the bill until he can get it passed.

“What we are getting is a slow erosion of opposition. I just hope we don’t have to lose lives in the process,” Rapp said. “I think this would be a wake-up to county commissioners in counties without any slope ordinances as well as a wake-up call for the North Carolina legislature.”

The signing of a cash settlement deal for Swain County last week was a heartbreaking end to a lifelong struggle for many.

For decades, road supporters held on to hope — hope that the government would honor the promise it made in the midst of a wide-scale evacuation to make way for the creation of Lake Fontana in the 1940s. The lake flooded the only road that led to their former communities, but they believed one day it would be rebuilt, allowing them to visit their former home sites and family cemeteries inside the Smokies.

To some descendents of those who lived along what is now called the North Shore, the road symbolized a connection to their past, a sense of place and a link to their heritage. The loss of the road is profound.

Charlene Blankenship, a road supporter, said family members have promised each other on their deathbeds they would never stop fighting for a road to their old cemeteries.

Linda Hogue, a leader behind the fight, said she will have more time on her hands now. She’ll spend it in her garden, with family and being more active in church, she said. But she also plans to turn her energy toward this year’s county commissioner elections, working to unseat those who voted for the cash settlement.

On the eve of a vote by county commissioners to accept the cash settlement and give up the county’s claim to a road, descendents of the North Shore community held a teary prayer meeting. A few dozen turned out to witness the vote the next day as well as the ceremony on Saturday, but most stayed home because they could not bear to watch, said Blankenship.

A few smuggled protest signs written in black marker on hot pink poster board into the ceremony, folded up inside their jackets or purses, and unveiled them during the myriad speeches. Luke Hyde, a leader of the cash settlement movement who presided over the ceremony, asked the protestors to put their signs away.

“There will be a time and place for protests, but it is not now,” Hyde said to the crowd.

But they continued to display them. One member stood up with her back to the stage, facing the large auditorium, in a silent protest. Many wore black armbands.

Until the bitter end

When commissioners convened the day before the ceremony to vote on whether to accept the cash settlement, David Monteith, the lone commissioner opposed to the vote, stood to deliver lengthy remarks. He challenged and begged the rest of the board not to go forward with the vote.

Monteith repeated his long-standing request that the county conduct a vote to gauge public opinion. He asked if he could be put on the agenda for three minutes during the ceremony to represent the other side of the issue. He also asked to open the meeting to public comment before the commissioners voted.

He put numerous such requests in the form of motions, but none got a second from another commissioner.

Monteith said the county has a legal and binding contract from the government promising to rebuild the road, and it should stand strong rather than be sold out for a cash settlement.

“We’ve had a legal binding contract for 66 years and where has that gotten us?” Commissioner Steve Moon asked. “Do you believe they would ever build the road, David?”

“As God is my witness, yes sir, I think the road would be built if we would stand our ground,” Monteith said. “We’ve been 66 years without a road. I would rather spend another 66 fighting.”

“How long would you be willing to wait?” Moon asked.

“If they brought $52 million in with a wheelbarrow right now, I would still be opposed to it,” Monteith answered.

But Commission Chairman Glenn Jones said accepting the cash settlement was the right decision for the future.

“We need to move on. We don’t need to look at the past. We need to vote on the future for this county,” Jones said.

Carter Petty, the director of Mountain Discovery Charter School, took his class on a fieldtrip to the county commissioners meeting Friday to witness the historic event.

“I want these guys to experience it,” Petty said, as they waited for the meeting to start. “It is a tremendously emotional issue.”

A win for all

Claude Douthit, a leader among the cash settlement supporters, spent 35 years trying to convince people to set their emotions aside and look at the issue rationally. The road would never be built, so the county should try to get something instead of nothing, said Douthit, who in the mid-1970s became one of the early crafters behind the idea of a cash settlement.

“There has been a division in Swain County here for years over this and it needs to be brought to an end so the people of Swain County can get back on track trying their best to cooperate with each other instead of fight with each other,” Douthit said.

Douthit’s son, Jonathan, hopes the next generation will grow up without the division that has burdened the county in the past.

“This is right up there with the Civil War with dividing families,” Jonathan said.

Jonathan said he doesn’t see his side as the winner and the other side as the losers.

“They didn’t lose. We all won,” Jonathan said.

The cash settlement, once it reaches $52 million, could reap more than $3 million a year in interest — nearly a quarter of Swain’s entire budget right now.

“I see the availability for a better quality of life for a lot of people,” Jonathan said. “I think it will be a boon to Swain County and some might not realize it now, but they will see how much vision has been shown by doing this for the future.”

As for Douthit, there were times he thought his dream would never come to fruition, or that he wouldn’t live long enough to see it. An organization formed to advanced the cash settlement, known as the Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County, has met monthly for 10 years, right up until last week.

“Why did I keep on? That’s the only thing I know, I reckon,” said Douthit.

Suddenly finding a lot more time on his hands is perhaps the one thing he has in common with road supporters.

The first day of demolition on the Dillsboro Dam attracted hundreds of spectators last Wednesday.

A roadside pull-off overlooking the Tuckasegee afforded a bird’s eye view of the machinery chipping away at the dam below. Some vying for a spot arrived early and loitered all morning, while others double parked, jumped out and snapped a photo with their cell phone, then went on their way.

Many watching from the roadside were clearly disappointed with what they were witnessing.

“I don’t see no point in it,” said Jake Dills. “It wasn’t hurting nothing to let it stay like it was.”

Like so many who grew up in Jackson County, fishing downstream of the dam was a big part of Dills’ childhood.

The wide waters below the dam are known for exceptionally large fish. The dam blocked fish from swimming any further upstream, making it fertile ground for fishing.

It was also a place fishermen could call their own, free from rafters and kayakers. A stone’s throw further downstream is a major put-in for commercial rafting companies and a favorite launching point for paddlers. Once the dam is gone, Duke Energy has pledged to add more put-ins upstream of Dillsboro. Fishermen fear an encroachment by paddlers along a stretch they once had to themselves.

“It will mess everything up for the local people and fishermen,” said Dills. “I hate to see it go.”

Oscar Woodard, 66, said taking out the dam will ruin the fishing.

“There’s some big ones in there,” Woodard as he watched from the roadside. “It’s a sad time, but it’s progress, I guess.”

Some even lament the loss of the slow-moving backwater behind the dam. John Hall, 60, liked to kneeboard and water ski on the pseudo-lake behind the dam. He also fished in the deep waters behind the dam, and even trapped muskrat around it.

“I don’t like it one bit,” Hall said, as he watched equipment hammer a hole in the dam. “I can’t understand why they’re doing it. The local people won’t benefit.”

But some onlookers were more positive.

Two friends, Lauren Cress and Casey Smith, like floating down the river on rafts and inner tubes. With the dam gone, they will have more river to play on.

“I think it is a good day,” said Smith, 28. But Smith said he understands why a lot of the “old-timers” don’t feel that way.

A few onlookers, despite their personal convictions in support of keeping the dam, said it was about time that the county commissioners stopped fighting a losing battle against Duke at the expense of taxpayers and let demolition proceed.

The river through Dillsboro will be far narrower with the dam gone. The dam was 310 feet long, as was the river above and below it. The natural river will be just 50 feet wide. Many watching the demolition during those early hours had a hard time visualizing what such a drastically smaller river would look like.

“I am anxious to see what it looks like when they get done,” said Brandon Ashe, 33.

Swain

The Swain County board has four commissioner seats and one chairman. All five seats are up for election every four years. A party primary in May will narrow down the field of candidates on the ticket to four Democrats and four Republicans for commissioner, and one from each party for chairman.

There will be at least two new faces on the Swain County Board of Commissioners following the 2010 elections.

Chairman Glenn Jones and Commissioner Genevieve Lindsay will not run again after each served eight years on the board.

“We need some good people to step up and fill that void,” said Commissioner Steve Moon, who will run for re-election.

Commissioner Philip Carson will run for chairman instead of commissioner this election, but that will merely leave his commissioner seat wide open along with Lindsay’s — still resulting in at least two new faces on the board.

Lindsay consistently ranked first or second in vote totals in past elections. But she said the last four years have “been very stressful to say the least.”

The Swain County board has been dogged by persistent critics on several issues. A handful of activists have served in a watchdog role that at times has been quite zealous. They tape county commission meetings, make frequent public records requests and regularly speak out during the public comment period at commissioner meetings.

“It is really hard to do things for the county and concentrate like you would like to when there is always opposition regardless of what decision you make,” Lindsay said. “So I felt like it was time to hang it up.”

Lindsay said, however, that she is very concerned about the needs of the county and wishes the next board well.

Jones chose not to run again because that was always his plan.

“I always said I was going to run for two terms and would step down after that regardless and give the ball to someone else,” Jones said.

As chairman Jones has advanced several projects in the county, including a new jail, expanded recreation facilities, a new senior center, and buying property for a new middle school. He is poised to accomplish one of the biggest goals of his tenure just in time: a cash settlement for the North Shore Road, which incidentally was the biggest source of contention among the critics.

Carson said he is running for chairman to help the county maintain continuity during a critical economic time.

“For a brand new person, it would take several months to bring them up to date on exactly what has been going on,” Carson said.

In Swain County, the elected chairman takes an active role in running county operations alongside the county manager, far more than in most counties.

“I had the time to do it. I am by there every day. I am not in every meeting, but I at least know what is going on,” Jones said.

While Carson could parlay his past four years as a commissioner into the greater responsibilities that come with chairman, it’s not to say he will be without challengers. There are a few rumors running through the mill, but none confirmed as of press time.

Commissioner David Monteith said he is running again but did not specify what seat on the board he will run for.

One candidate who performed very well four years ago, missing election by just a few votes, is Ben Bushyhead, a Swain resident and member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Bushyhead will not be running again this time, however. He is now retired and enjoys the flexibility to pay frequent visits to grandchildren out of state.

Carson is looking forward to the next four years being better than the last.

“A lot of the projects we wanted to see done had to be put on back burner until the economy improves,” Carson said. “This past year has been sort of difficult.”

A defining moment in the decades-long debate over the North Shore Road will play out in Swain County this week.

Commissioners are slated to vote in favor of a cash settlement from the federal government in lieu of building the controversial road — ending Swain’s bitter 66-year battle once and for all.

“It will be a historic vote for the county,” said Swain County Chairman Glenn Jones.

The vote will be held at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 5, at the county administration building. On Saturday afternoon, a signing ceremony is planned to ink a new agreement with the federal government.

Under the cash settlement, Swain would get $12.8 million now and a total of up to $52 million by the year 2020 — the full amount that Swain has been seeking as compensation.

“The completion of this agreement will be the most significant event in the history of Swain County and certainly the most positive,” said Leonard Winchester, an advocate of the cash settlement and chair of the Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County.

Since the 1940s, the people of Swain County have been waiting for the federal government to rebuild a rural highway that was flooded by the creation of Lake Fontana. Failure to make good on the promise relegated Swain to relative isolation with few roads in and out, a dead-end destination hemmed in against a national park and large mountain lake.

Under the new agreement, Swain County will forgo its long-standing claim for the road under an old agreement with the federal government dating back to 1943.

“The 1943 Agreement is hereby extinguished and superseded and shall be of no further effect,” the new agreement states.

The lone vote against accepting the cash settlement will come from Commissioner David Monteith, an ardent supporter of building the road.

“My heritage is not for sale,” Monteith said.

Many families who once lived in the North Shore area before it was made part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are deeply resentful of any attempt to let the government off the hook.

Monteith is skeptical that Swain will get a penny more than the $12.8 million currently on the table. In the 1943 agreement, the federal government pledged to rebuild the flooded road “as soon as” Congress appropriated money to do so — not exactly a hard and fast promise.

The new agreement is likewise vague, stating that Swain will get “additional sums” as appropriated by Congress not to exceed the grand total of $52 million.

“It is a sellout to say ‘if and when’ funds are made available,” Monteith said. “It is the same as before. It is not worth the paper it is written on.”

But Jones said the agreement to be voted on Friday gives Swain far more leverage to collect than the old 1943 agreement ever did.

Through a clever bit of lawyering in the 1943 agreement, the federal government inserted a hold-harmless clause stating: “failure on the part of Congress for any reason to make such appropriations shall not constitute a breach or violation of this agreement.”

The new agreement contains no such hold-harmless clause. In fact, it says the opposite.

“This Agreement is binding on the parties, through their officials, agents, employees and successors,” the new agreement states.

It was important language that the county fought hard to get inserted this time around. Also in the new agreement, the government admits that the cash settlement is being offered as a substitute for the road it never rebuilt.

“At least the federal government has made a commitment and they are saying ‘We do owe Swain County’,” Jones said. “If it is not all paid, I think you would have a leg to stand on.”

To make good on the promise of a full $52 million by 2020, Congress would have to appropriate an additional $39.2 million over and above the $12.8 million that’s been secured already. It amounts to about $4 million a year.

Winchester said he is hopeful that will come to fruition. Instead of being left up to Congress, Winchester said the $4 million appropriation for 2011 appears in the President’s budget.

Jones said he was “very confident” that additional annual payments will be made to Swain County.

Money received from the cash settlement will be placed in a trust fund with the N.C. State Treasury. The state will remit interest off the account to Swain County, but the principal cannot be touched unless supported by two-thirds of registered voters in Swain County. The interest off $12.8 million would be close to $800,000 a year.

Whether Congress ever makes good on the agreement could depend on a congressman from Western North Carolina effectively lobbying for it. To date, Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, a Swain County native, has done just that.

“He’s the one we have to give the credit to,” Jones said.

The $12.8 million already on the table for Swain was secured by Shuler. Shuler also worked hard to negotiate the agreement being voted on Friday.

During initial talks, the park service was reluctant to sign on to a new agreement that included the dollar figure of $52 million, but Shuler lobbied for the past year to bring them around.

“We appreciate the exceptionally hard work of Rep. Heath Shuler and his staff to bring this matter to closure in a way that will benefit all the citizens of Swain County forever,” Winchester said.

Some background

When the federal government flooded a road leading from Bryson City to Tennessee with the construction of Lake Fontana in the 1940s, it signed an agreement promising to rebuild it one day, but only completed a small segment.

Historically, the flooded road connected many small communities, but the territory was evacuated and made part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Building a new road today would mean traversing some 30 miles of Smokies backcountry. It would carry a price tag of more than $600 million.

The $52 million cash settlement sought by Swain is based on the value of the road at the time it was flooded plus interest and inflation.

Tony Elders didn’t realize quite how much on-the-job exercise he was in for when he was hired to oversee Jackson County’s new development regulations three years ago.

He often must lace up his boots and take off cross-country, GPS unit in hand, trekking up and down mountainsides to plot the elevation change between a ridgeline and the neighboring valley. Jackson County bans building on ridgelines, but the definition of a ridgeline requires some technical reconnaissance work.

“You have to do it on a site-by-site basis,” Elders said.

When a ridge is 2,500 feet or more in elevation and at least 400 feet higher than the nearest valley floor, then it falls under the county’s ridge law.

But it isn’t always clear what counts as the neighboring valley. Does a small holler below the ridge count? And at what point does a creek flowing off the mountain become the bona fide valley floor?

Simply determining what’s a ridge is harder than it might seem, Elders said. Each major ridge has little finger ridges leading off it. Do those count, too?

Ultimately, it’s a judgment call.

“I just try to see how visible and how prominent and how environmentally problematic that house site is going to be,” Elders said. If Elders deems it a protected ridge, the roofline of the house must be at least 20 feet below the ridgeline.

The cumbersome nature of enforcing the ridge law has made it a target of discussion by the county planning board in recent weeks, in turn renewing a more general debate over whether Jackson’s development regulations are too tough.

The ridge law was only a small part of the sweeping steep slope and subdivision ordinances passed in Jackson County three years ago, but supporters are willing to fight to keep it.

“Up on the ridgeline, especially when you cut the trees, you have something that is exposed to anyone looking in the general direction of the mountains,” said Roy Osborn, a Jackson County resident who supports the regulation.

But some see the ridge law as overreaching.

“The fact that they are revisiting it is almost an admission on their part that they overdid it,” said Ron Poore, a critic of the regulations. “Obviously we don’t want something that looked like a spaceship landed on the ridgetop. But at the same time we need reasonable regulations.”

Elders countered that it is only a discussion right now.

“No one is loosening restrictions. We are just trying to find a better way,” Elders said.

While it doesn’t take much to reignite opposing sides in the debate over Jackson’s development regulations, it’s time to revisit the ordinance to assess which parts should be refined, according to Linda Cable, the county planning director.

“After you have been enforcing an ordinance for a year, you automatically go back to review and see what the difficulties are and issues that have surfaced,” Cable said. “One of the issues that has surfaced is how to identify the protected ridges.”

But Elders has also questioned whether the building ban on ridges is wise policy. Sometimes the views and environment are worse off when someone is forced to build on the side of the mountain instead of a flat spot on a ridge, according to Elders.

“The only way to get a house site on the side is to bench it into the mountain. That requires cutting a lot of trees,” Elders said.

If too many trees are cut during construction, they have to be replanted under the county’s ordinance. But it could take decades for the trees to grow tall enough to screen a house on a steep slope, Elders said. Meanwhile, a ridge with a wide, flat spot can accommodate a house with far less excavating or tree clearing, Elders said.

Elder’s either-or scenario — either build on the ridge or gouge up the mountainside — is a fallacy, according to Myrtle Schrader, a Jackson resident and supporter of the ridge law.

“That’s not the only choice,” Schrader said.

With proper building design and site selection, homes can blend with the landscape without protruding above the ridgeline or scarring the side of a mountain, Schrader said.

Poore questioned the added engineering costs.

Rollback or refinement?

The ridge law was discussed at the most recent Jackson County Planning Board meeting. The planning board explored an alternative method for defining protected ridges. Elders suggested an advanced mapping program that gauges how visible a particular ridge is. That raised an equally complicated question: visible from where?

The mere fact the subject was broached prompted criticism that the county might roll back its development regulations.

“I think the concept of letting anyone build on a ridgeline is not a good idea,” said Myrtle Schrader, a Jackson resident and supporter of strong development regulations who attended the meeting. “That’s what the ordinances were about to begin with.”

Schrader does not want to see the regulations weakened. But that is not the intention, according to Elders and Cable.

“I don’t think there is any intention in relaxing any of the regulations,” Cable said. “It is just a different way of trying to determine what those ridges are that need to be protected.”

County commissioners have been taken off-guard by the discussion, however.

“I did not know this was an issue,” said Commissioner William Shelton.

Shelton said the logistical challenge of classifying protected ridges is not a reason to change the ordinance.

“I can see where there would be some technical questions but I don’t think rewriting that portion of the ordinance is a priority at this time,” Shelton said.

Shelton said there are other mechanisms to deal with gray areas that don’t have easy answers.

“It would seem like that is why we have the review board in place, to look at individual cases that deviate from the norm,” Shelton said.

For now, it seems Elders will continue getting his exercise.

Some existing lots sit squarely on a ridge, making it impossible to site a house further down the mountain and still stay within the property lines. If such a lot predates the ordinance, an exception is granted. Otherwise the lot would essentially become worthless for the owner.

But for new lots, Elders makes a site visit before the property deed is recorded. He makes sure the lot lines extend down the mountainside enough to accommodate a house site well below the ridgeline.

Lackluster development

The ridge law is the only part of the ordinance that Elders has seen problems with. Of course, there haven’t been many developers launching new subdivisions lately. Since passage of the regulations three years ago, only two developers have mapped out new subdivisions under the guidelines.

“It was not as bad as they thought. It just requires more careful planning,” Elders said. “Both of them are better developments because of it.”

Despite the paltry number of new subdivisions in three years, Elders doesn’t think the regulations deterred growth.

“It is hard to say because the economy tanked coinciding with our ordinance,” Elders said.

But Poore disagreed. He says the regulations — and more specifically, the moratorium on new subdivisions while the regulations were being written — caused Jackson’s real estate and construction industry to collapse earlier than the rest of the region.

“They basically put a stop to construction,” said Poore, who plans to run for county commissioner chairman as an unaffiliated candidate in the fall.

The next planning board meeting is Thursday, April 8, at 6 p.m. on the second floor of the Jackson County administration building.

Haywood Community College leaders say county commissioners are unfairly accusing them of overspending on a new $10.2 million complex where arts and crafts will be taught.

Last week, Commissioner Kevin Ensley called it the most expensive building per square foot that he has ever seen in the county.

Now, HCC has dug up research to show that its creative arts building will cost less than similar construction at other community colleges in the state.

Ensley had compared HCC’s cost per square foot to that of recent construction projects in Haywood County, including the new jail, justice center and Bethel Elementary School. But HCC countered that community colleges are subject to stringent new state energy standards that lead to higher expenses. Plus, the craft trades require specialized equipment, from a $15,000 dust collection system for the woodworking shop to a $16,000 pottery wheel.

“I think the main thing is that everyone is talking about the same thing when they’re talking about the cost,” said Debbie Trull, director of administrative services. “It can be complex, and it can be confusing.”

But Commissioner Mark Swanger said Ensley’s comparisons are valid, even though they include different types of buildings.

“Every construction project has special features,” Swanger said. “In a school for example, you have a whole restaurant inside it. The jail, of course, has a complete security system.”

HCC claims that state requirements for energy efficiency could have added as much as 4 percent to the construction cost. The energy-hungry pottery kilns, welding equipment and shop tools made it especially costly to meet state guidelines — forcing the college to install more energy saving features than normal to offset their high energy use.

At a board of trustees meeting last Wednesday, HCC claimed that its new facility would cost $203.97 per square foot. According to HCC’s research, the average total project costs for such buildings are $283 per square foot statewide.

HCC also cited a national study conducted by McGraw-Hill that showed construction at colleges routinely costs 160 percent higher than K-12 schools.

“We need to be comparing apples to apples, instead of apples to oranges,” said HCC President Rose Johnson.

But County Commissioner Kevin Ensley said the college is the one that’s not comparing apples to apples.

“What they are doing is dancing around the numbers,” Ensley said.

To come up with a square foot cost of $203.97, the college omitted architect fees and site preparation and used only the estimated cost of the construction contract. But when taking the total project into consideration, the cost is $245 a square foot: $10.2 million for 41,000 square feet.

As for numbers from other colleges, HCC factored in the total project cost, including architect fees and site preparation — creating an unparallel comparison to its own numbers.

When Ensley was doing his comparison of recent construction projects, he used the total project cost — even if that meant factoring in the cost of buying land and putting in a septic system in the case of the new Bethel school.

Ensley said HCC is pushing the envelope on environmentally-friendly features for the new building and that’s what is driving up the costs. The building as planned would likely qualify for the “platinum” level green building designation.

“I think they want a platinum building, and we aren’t in a platinum economy right now,” Ensley said. “Some of these initiatives are extremely expensive.”

But HCC leaders say that isn’t the case, according to pricing they’ve done on the building with and without the green features.

Trull maintains that the college has already tried to be as cost-conscious as possible, but it won’t initiate a total redesign to please commissioners.

“The design is at the point where it would cost money to go back,” said Trull.

But Ensley said it is not hard for a contractor bidding on the project to provide a baseline cost estimate along with a separate breakdown of extras, Ensley said. Ensley wants county staff to review the construction documents and see if there are potential savings.

“I’m going to continue looking at it,” Ensley said.

Ultimately, county commissioners have to approve the college’s loan on the building. It will be paid for with revenue from a special quarter cent sales tax. County voters approved the special tax in 2008 for the express purpose of funding community college expansion.

It brings in enough each year to cover payments on 15-year $12 million loan, which is more than enough to pay for the creative arts building. But the college has a wish-list of other expansion projects it hopes to fund with sales tax money. Commissioners would like to see the money stretched further.

“I don’t want to see $10.2 million eaten up by this one building,” Ensley said.

Swanger and Ensley didn’t say whether they would hold veto the project if costs aren’t brought down, but they aren’t satisfied at this point. Swanger said he will keep an open mind and is eager to hear whatever new information the college plans to present.

“We all want this to work,” Swanger said. “We want the community college to have good, updated, safe facilities. That’s the reason we are looking closely at this. We want the money to go as far as it can to reach that goal.”

Building costs

Haywood Community College researched construction costs at five other colleges that spent far more on their buildings, including:

• Alamance Community College, which spent $301 per square foot for its technology center.

• Catawba Valley Community College, which spent $226 per square foot for industrial and technical building.

• Wilson Community College, which spent $320 per square foot on a heath & technology building.

With federal and state grants in hand, work will soon get underway to stabilize the remnants of a massive landslide still looming precariously over Maggie Valley.

“You can see the cracking of the soil. It is obviously very unstable and just hanging there, if you will,” said Mike Hinton, manager of the federal Emergency Watershed Protection Program administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Raleigh.

The landslide originated from Ghost Town in the Sky, a mountaintop amusement park, and damaged five homes along its 3,000-foot path. But several other households are in the potential line of fire if the remaining portion of the mountainside gives way, essentially leaving them without a home until something is done to fix the unstable slope.

A chief concern right now is spring rain. A good, soaking rain could easily trigger a second slide, which makes time of the essence, Hinton said. But not at the expense of a carefully crafted plan.

“I know it is an emergency, and I know the people who are out of their homes are anxious for work to be started. I know if I was in their shoes I would be thinking ‘This is taking forever,’” Hinton said. “But at the same time, we need to make sure that whatever we do does not cause further damage and takes into account the workers’ safety.”

While a second slide would certainly solve the problem of trying to stabilize the precarious slope — it would simply come crashing down on its own — a second slide could be even worse than the first one.

Only a portion of the slope collapsed in the first slide. Far more is still vulnerable.

While a second slide would likely follow the same route down the mountain, it would be deeper, wider and faster — and travel further. Houses unscathed last time could be taken out by a second slide, Hinton said.

Plus, giant piles of dirt and debris left in the landslide’s track would get caught up in a second slide, creating even more momentum, Hinton said.

A daunting challenge

But figuring out how to shore up the remaining mountainside remains elusive. Clearly, it can’t all be stabilized in place. Some will have to come down, Hinton said.

“That is easier said than done: how do you remove it?” Hinton said. “That part is really the dilemma.”

A contractor who was at Ghost Town the same day Hinton was surveying the site said he was willing to get on his dozer and just start pushing dirt off the side. But if the whole slope began to give, the man on the dozer would have had a wild ride to the bottom.

Hinton said it would be impossible to be stationed on the slope itself while performing the work. Equipment would have to far from the edge and on stable ground. But from that far back, could it reach out far enough to knock loose the unstable part?

Another option is evacuating everyone who lives below and blasting the soil off — not in one big blast but a series of smaller, controlled blasts.

“But who is to say one little blast wouldn’t trigger the whole thing?” Hinton said. So that option would likely be frowned on.

Simply coming up with an estimate was challenging. They obviously couldn’t scamper along the face of the slope. Hinton wasn’t willing to stand at the bottom and look up at it either. So all they could do was stand at the edge and look down on it.

As a result, the estimate of $1.47 million is an estimate in the truest sense of the word.

“That amount could change dramatically,” Hinton said. “This is really a starting point if you will. We had to come up with an estimate in order to request the funds, so that’s what we did.”

The first order of business now is to hire a geotechnical engineer to do a more thorough assessment. Once work does get underway, Hinton has no guess how long it may take, since the approach hasn’t even been figured out.

Last on the list will be cleaning up debris left along the track of the first slide. The area is steep, wooded and inaccessible, so carting off truckloads of dirt from the slide’s wake may be difficult, Hinton said.

“You would likely create even more of a problem, so the question is ‘Can we stabilize it on site?’” Hinton said. “I think everyone would agree just throwing grass seed on it isn’t going to do it.”

But, it could be possible to recontour the mounds of debris and build some retaining walls that would hold it. Rich Cove Road, which winds up the mountain to Ghost Town, is crossed twice by the slide’s track.

“For a while every time you get a rain, it is going to wash some of that across the road,” Hinton said.

For now, that’s the least of their concerns.

“The main thing is to stop a major movement,” Hinton said.

In the meantime, Hinton does not foresee Ghost Town amusement park opening until the slide is stabilized, although it is not an area his agency has jurisdiction over.

“I don’t see how they could,” Hinton said. “I wouldn’t want a crowd up there on a Saturday and that thing decide to let loose.”

Ghost Town has been struggling with bankruptcy for the past year. Foreclosure against the park is scheduled for June by BB&T, which is owed $9.5 million on the property. However, Ghost Town owners are optimistic that investors or some sort of financing will materialize between now and then. If so, BB&T has said it would call off foreclosure.

Haywood Community College leaders are at odds with county commissioners over funding for the college.

The county slashed capital contributions to the community college by two-thirds due to the recession. The college counted on the annual funding for repairs and renovations and is now hamstrung by the loss.

Unable to produce what was promised during better times, the county commissioners have pitched another solution: dipping into a special pot of money earmarked for expansion projects.

College leaders don’t like the idea. Dipping into the special pot of money to cover repairs — like new roofs or paving jobs — would sideline some of their expansion plans for new buildings.

College leaders responded with a two-fold appeal to the commissioners. They want their annual maintenance funding restored. And they want the special pot of money to be placed in a lock box to fund new construction only.

The college is entirely dependent on the county for construction dollars, whether it’s filling potholes, patching holes in the roof, replacing carpet or building new facilities. While the state funds community college operations, from salaries to the light bills, it doesn’t pay a dime toward upkeep of buildings or new construction. That is left up to counties.

“They have a responsibility to build the buildings the community college needs,” said Bill Bird, a supporter of Haywood Community College. “They need to find the money to do it.”

But the county claims it is cash-strapped and can’t afford to restore the funding that was cut.

“I am looking for a win-win situation, and it is tough to have a win-win situation when you don’t have money,” Commissioner Bill Upton said.

Bird said that the commissioners seem to find the money “to do they things they want to do,” however.

Recession hamstrings county

When the recession hit, commissioners slashed the county’s budget by $7 million. No branch of county government was spared. As a last resort, commissioners even enacted a slight property tax increase to avoid deeper cuts.

The college saw its annual contribution for maintenance and construction drop from $500,000 to $165,000.

“Capital outlay across the board was reduced by two-thirds. No particular entity was singled out,” County Manager David Cotton said.

Nonetheless, it created a backlog of repair needs at the college. The nursing building has no insulation and the siding is deteriorating, for example. That was on the list to repair this year, but got pushed back, said Debbie Trull, executive director of administrative services.

“I understand the commissioners are in a real problem financially with the amount of taxes they collect and the amount of wants,” said Larry Leatherwood, the leader of a group that supports full funding for the college’s needs. But the county can’t simply let the buildings at the college crumble, he said.

“If you don’t take care of what you got, you end up spending more in the long run to fix what you had,” Leatherwood said.

College leaders argued that HCC is an economic driver in the community. Its practical degrees, both for young students and the unemployed trying to re-enter the workforce, are invaluable. HCC even partners directly with industry in the county to provide job-specific training.

Enrollment has increased in recent years, and HCC will serve more than 10,000 students this year.

“That is a number, but behind that number is a lot of pressure on the college and its facilities,” said Dr. Rose Johnson, HCC president.

Even before the cuts, the annual funding wasn’t enough.

“We have a lot of buildings there now and to maintain what you own takes right much money every year,” said Neal Ensley, a member of the college board of trustees.

It certainly wasn’t enough to fund expansions. The master plan calls for a new building for the flagship arts and crafts program, an expansion of its equally renowned natural resources department and a new building for emergency services instruction.

“The money you get for maintenance is not sufficient to build new buildings or to make major additions,” Ensley said.

That’s why the college needed a special pot of money. And the perfect solution just happened to come along. In 2007, the state gave counties the option of enacting a quarter cent sales tax. In Haywood County, it would raise about $1.5 million a year — a nice sum to pay for HCC’s expansion plans.

Typically, counties don’t have the power to enact sales tax, but the state made an exception. It came with a hitch: counties could enact the quarter cent sales tax only if it was put on the ballot and passed a countywide vote. Commissioners decided to take the gamble, pledging to dedicate the sales tax proceeds to HCC if the measure passed.

Supporters of the community college mounted a campaign to convince the public to approve the measure, and it worked. The sales tax passed with 57 percent of the vote in May 2008. Haywood County was one of only a few counties where the voluntary tax passed muster with voters.

“I have to thank the people of Haywood County for passing that. It shows the people of Haywood County think the community college is a real source of help for them,” Neal Ensley said.

The pitch to voters throughout was clear. The sales tax would be set aside for construction and expansion on the campus of Haywood Community College.

“The money we were going to raise with the quarter cent sales tax was new money not to supplant or take the place of or eliminate the maintenance money,” said Larry Leatherwood, the chairman of Neighbors of Haywood Community College, a group that formed in 2008 with the express purpose of lobbying the public to pass the sales tax.

College leaders are upset at the prospect of using the special pot of money for general maintenance.

But Julie Davis, county finance director, sees the situation far more positively. The sales tax money offers the college a lucky break.

“If it weren’t for the sales tax, I don’t know that the county could come up with the money without increasing taxes,” said Julie Davis, county finance officer. “Thank goodness we have the sales tax to give.”

In reality, the county is only proposing that a small sliver of the quarter cent sales tax go toward maintenance: about $800,000 for two major roof repairs. The rest would still be going to new construction projects for now.

College leaders fear the commissioners are setting a precedent, however. Instead of restoring the annual capital outlay to pre-recession levels, the county may stick with the lower contributions and rely on sales tax proceeds to make up the difference.

“If we spend the quarter cent sales tax on anything but new buildings, we won’t get the new buildings we need,” Ensley said.

Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said that’s not what he intended nor what the voters were told.

“I looked at it as this was money you would have in addition to what we already gave you,” Curtis told the college leaders. “We have to decide which way we are going to go. Are we going to say we aren’t going to give them any money because the quarter cent sales tax satisfies their needs?”

Tension at work session

Community college leaders and county commissioners met last week to hash out the issue. Despite civility by both sides, the tension was obvious.

Commissioner Bill Upton opened the meeting in a friendly fashion, but admitted upfront that everyone may not get what they want.

“Tonight is for us to listen,” Upton said. “We’ll find out what we agree on and what we don’t agree on. We won’t always agree, but we will go away happy knowing that people are listening.”

“I appreciate you laying the groundwork for this being friendly and informative conversation. That’s how we are approaching it also,” Johnson replied.

The format wasn’t exactly what the college desired, however. The commissioners took their usual place behind a long meeting table at the front of the room, while college representatives sat in the audience. To speak, they had to take turns coming up to a podium and speaking into a microphone.

“We envisioned we would all be sitting at a big conference table to allow for more give and take,” Johnson said at one point in the meeting.

The community college came armed with a slide presentation, replete with bar graphs and charts. The first half was aimed at demonstrating the value of the college to the community, followed by budget numbers illustrating the funding shortfall.

The college produced staggering figures: $33.2 million is needed between now and 2014. The number includes new construction, repairs, renovations, equipment and infrastructure.

The figures weren’t pulled out of a hat. Johnson said college staff spent the past two weeks getting estimates from contractors for every item on the wish list.

Of the total, new buildings and major additions account for the lion’s share — $25 million. It would take 30 years for the sales tax revenue to cover it all — even if none of it is diverted for maintenance and repairs.

County Manager David Cotton said the college clearly has needs beyond what the sales tax will pay for at the moment, but there’s nothing the county can do about that.

“I understood the agreement was ‘pay as you go’ and the quarter cent sales tax, whatever that amount was, would be the cap,” Cotton said.

Flagship in tatters

The first new building the college plans to tackle is a creative arts building, one of the college’s renowned degree programs. The college teaches commercial woodworking, pottery, weaving, jewelry making and more, along with a business component that helps artists thrive as entrepreneurs.

“It so well-known that people move here to do that program. It has been very important to us,” Neal Ensley said.

But the arts and crafts building is also one of those most in need of repair.

“It was falling down around the students,” Leatherwood said.

The old one will simply be demolished after the new one is built. The cost is estimated at $10 million.

The quarter cent sales tax is on track to bring in $1.5 million this year. It’s enough to cover payments on a $12 million loan over 15 years. That leaves another $2 million on the table for other projects that could be wrapped into the loan and tackled immediately.

Plus, the sales tax will likely reap a little more each year as commerce increases.

“When the economy does recover, I would anticipate some natural growth in the sales tax so I would think over time there would be additional funds annually,” Cotton said.

Not every penny of the sales tax proceeds will go to the loan payments, leaving more to work with.

But, the problem remains whether the county will restore the college’s annual contribution, which went toward maintenance.

“If we don’t get that annual allocation, we can’t function as a college. So that is the true issue,” Johnson told commissioners.

Buildings on campus are valued at more than $50 million, and it takes money to maintain that kind of facility, said Neal Ensley, an engineer and a member of the HCC trustees.

“If we don’t get that [appropriation], it will be a serious problem for the college,” Ensley said.

But that’s something the commissioners can’t answer right now. Next year’s budget is still in its infancy. It will be refined over the next two months as commissioners grapple with the usual tough decisions.

With the economy holding steady if not improving slightly, the county’s revenue should begin looking up. As commerce increases, so do sale tax revenues, which the county gets a part of. And as construction returns, new homes and businesses get added to the property tax base.

The uptick will be slight if anything, and for now the county is banking on a flat budget for the coming year.

“We don’t have the money right now, and it is hard to make people happy when you don’t have money,” Upton said.

“This budget is going to be tough,” Commissioner Skeeter Curtis agreed. “We cut millions of dollars in the current budget. The employees gave up time and money out of their pocket to get us where we are.”

“And jobs,” Commissioner Mark Swanger added.

“We cut the school system, we cut the county, we cut a lot of other people,” Upton said.

The county would be in a difficult position if it restored the budget for the community college ahead of everyone else, Upton said.

“I’m sure our school people would come to us and say ‘How about reinstating our capital outlay,’” Upton said.

Root of the conflict

An underlying source of contention is whether the county has failed to deliver on financial promises it made to the college over two years ago.

In 2007 — before the quarter cent sales tax idea was on the horizon — county commissioners and college leaders struck an agreement to give the college an advance on their annual funding. The college had a couple larger than normal projects it wanted to carry out — projects that exceeded the $500,000 capital outlay it was getting from the county each year.

So the county commissioners agreed to take out a $2.6 million loan on behalf of the college to fund the work. The county would then deduct the loan payments from future contributions each year until it was paid off.

“We couldn’t see anyway to get anything done at HCC unless we borrowed the money and paid it back with the $500,000,” Upton said.

The college got to work preparing construction documents and paperwork for the loan. But the construction documents were held up at the state level. In all, the process took two years.

With everything finally in hand, the college came to the county last month ready to make good on the offer of a loan.

But along the way, things had changed. Most notably, the recession had a stranglehold on the county. As part of countywide cuts, the college saw its maintenance and construction funding slashed by two-thirds, from $500,000 to $165,000.

The county commissioners couldn’t guarantee when the annual funding would be restored. That threw a wrench in the plans for a loan. The annual contributions were supposed to cover the loan payments but were no longer enough to do so.

Upton said the commissioners were somewhat surprised when the college showed up last month asking the county to make good on the loan promise made over two years ago.

“For two years, we really haven’t talked about the $2.6 million,” Upton said.

“I disagree,” Dr. Johnson replied.

“Where was it talked about?” Commissioner Mark Swanger asked Johnson.

Johnson said the college board of trustees and the college strategic planning committee regularly referenced the pending loan from the county. County Manager David Cotton was a part of those meetings, and Johnson assumed he was reporting back to the commissioners.

“There seems to be a disconnect between what has been discussed very thoroughly in strategic planning meetings and what has been presented to the commissioners from those meetings,” Johnson said. “We made decisions based on what we were understanding from county staff.”

Johnson said that appears to be the source of the misunderstanding.

Cotton took issue with the comment and called it disparaging.

“You address your board and I address mine. I feel I have kept them up to speed on the process. I did take offense to that remark,” Cotton said.

Johnson apologized and said she didn’t intend it that way. Johnson said the college trustees “moved forward in good faith” on things that apparently weren’t hard and fast decisions.

Swanger said discussions the college leaders had with county staff during planning meetings are just that: discussion, not decisions.

“They are not binding,” Swanger told Johnson. “We need to make sure that monetary decisions are not made based on conversations that were not formally endorsed by this board.”

However, Johnson assumed she would have been corrected somewhere along the way if the loan had been taken off the table.

Upton asked why it took so long for the loan to get squared away.

“Our request for that construction was stalled at the state level for many, many, many months,” Johnson said. “It was not lack of work on the behalf of the college. It was beyond our control.”

Johnson said county staff was updated regularly of the status.

The college had two projects in mind for the $2.6 million: $1.8 million for an expansion and $800,000 for major roof replacements.

As the college waited and waited to get construction documents approved on the expansion, it chose to move forward with the roof repairs. To pay for it, the college borrowed from flood settlement funds. The flood money stemmed from the 2004 flooding along the Pigeon River, which destroyed several satellite HCC buildings near downtown Clyde.

The flood money was supposed to go toward only new construction, theoretically to replace the destroyed classroom buildings, and not things like roof repairs. But the college planned to pay back the borrowed flood money as soon as the loan from the county came through.

Johnson said it is “critically important” to repay the flood money.

“We need to repay the flood settlement fund for monies that have been diverted for other purposes,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the county had previously agreed to pay back what was borrowed from the flood account with the $2.6 million loan.

Commissioners seemed puzzled, however, and asked County Manager David Cotton if he could remember such a promise.

Johnson said she thought the commissioners passed a resolution to that effect. Cotton disagreed. The commissioners did pass a resolution pledging to help the college with a loan, but it made no reference to paying back what was borrowed from the flood settlement fund.

“I wasn’t aware there was an agreement for you to spend money and get reimbursed,” Davis said.

“I wasn’t aware of it,” Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said.

“I wasn’t aware of it,” Commissioner Mark Swanger echoed. “I wasn’t even aware that money was being used. I reviewed the minutes, and it is not reflected in the minutes.”

Mark Bumgarner, chairman of the HCC Board of Trustees, then stepped up to the microphone and said the more important issue was that the county had promised to take out a $2.6 million loan on the college’s behalf. The college was counting on that, he said.

The college will still get the money, Davis chimed in. It will just come from a different source now.

The sales tax has been accumulating since October 2008. In another few months, there will be just the right amount saved up to cover everything the college needs without taking out a loan.

“We will end up with $2.6 million sitting there,” Davis said. “They are going to get the money, it’s just we aren’t going to have to borrow it.”

“And that is from the quarter cent sales tax money,” Dr. Johnson clarified.

“Right,” Commissioner Kevin Ensley said.

Ultimately, county commissioners voted not to do the loan, but instead to use money from the quarter cent sales tax.

Using the accumulated pot of sales tax money won’t affect the county’s ability to still take out a $12 million loan for the creative arts building, Davis said.

Pinching pennies?

Commissioners questioned whether the college is making the best use of the money it has.

Commissioner Kevin Ensley did a cost comparison of the creative arts building and other construction projects in the county in recent years, including the new jail, justice center and Bethel Elementary School.

“I am a little it concerned with the cost. This is the most expensive building per square foot that I have seen in Haywood County by far,” Ensley said.

“You would have to compare apples to apples,” Johnson replied.

Johnson said the creative arts building requires dust collection systems for the woodworking classrooms, air ventilation for jewelry making and extremely high-energy use for pottery kilns. The college also has to meet energy efficiency mandates imposed by the state for new buildings. The energy used by the kilns and shop tools made it particularly costly to meet those state mandates.

Under Johnson, the college has embarked on green initiatives aimed at sustainability. Commissioner Swanger questioned whether green features incorporated into the building cost more.

Johnson said the building’s green features don’t cost any more than a traditional design would, according to estimates of both.

Nonetheless, Ensley asked the college leaders to go over the plans for the creative arts building and look for savings.

“I want to be a good steward of taxpayers money, and I really wish y’all could take a good look at this,” Kevin Ensley said. “That is my honest opinion — it is a couple, three million too high.”

But it may be too late to realize substantial returns.

“We may have approached the creative arts facility a little differently knowing the facts we know today, but we are sufficiently on the train tracks, and it is really hard to make changes,” said Bumgarner, chair of the HCC trustees.

Commissioner Skeeter Curtis asked why all this mattered since the money is coming out of a special sales tax fund anyway.

“I think we have lost focus here,” Curtis said. “The people in this county voted that in and the quarter cent belongs to the community college. It is their money.”

Swanger said it is still tax dollars being paid by county residents, and it should be spent prudently.

In this case, Curtis said, it was up to the college to be prudent with the money.

Swanger disagreed. If the college overspends on the creative arts building, “then the college comes back to us for additional appropriations to fill in other gaps,” Swanger said.

“We aren’t picking up the gap anyhow,” Curtis countered.

Curtis made it clear that he wasn’t happy about the cuts the college suffered at the hands of the county.

“By law, the county is supposed to keep it up, and we just let it go a long time. It was falling apart out there. We have let a lot of our facilities end up like [that],” Curtis said.

“We have to decide what are we going to take care of. This is going to get worse as years go on. That’s the reason we are in the situation we are in now because we haven’t done anything,” Curtis said. “We need to keep this from happening to the next board.”

Curtis expressed similar sentiments last month when the commissioners became the new owner of the fairgrounds. The Haywood County Fair board had relied on an annual contribution from the county to pay off a loan for a new arena. When the recession hit and the funding was cut, the fair board couldn’t pay the loan and faced foreclosure.

So the county stepped in to rescue the fairgrounds, anteing up the money to pay off the loan after all and assuming ownership of the fairgrounds from the nonprofit in the process.

Curtis had the unique stance of voting against a slight property tax increase last year during the thick of the recession. His reason: it wasn’t enough of an increase. Curtis felt the cuts to the county budget went too deep and too far. Curtis’ seat is up for election this year, but he is not running.

Commissioner Ensley pointed out that the county is paying $300,000 a year on a loan for the construction of the HCC Child Development Center, a teaching institution and daycare combined.

“I think it is important that everyone know the full contributions the county is making,” Swanger chimed in. “The child development center is substantial.”

The county also donated a tract of land to the college for future expansion that is valued between $650,000 and $900,000.

What can you do with a foam pad, rain pants, sleeping bag and an old T-shirt?

A whole lot apparently, according to students who have been through wilderness medical training with Landmark Learning.

Broken leg? No problem. Dislocated shoulder? Gotcha covered. If you get hurt in the backcountry, just keep your fingers crossed one of these guys will find you.

“We teach a lot of improvisation,” said Rob Barham, one of Landmark’s regular instructors.

During a recent course, Barham walked students through the finer points of fashioning a full-leg cast on the fly to stabilize a torn ACL.

“This is mimicking a commercial knee splint with materials you would typically have in your backpack,” said Barham, 34, who lives in Jackson County.

Landmark, based in Cullowhee, offers dozens of outdoor rescue and wilderness medical training courses every year. The most advanced course is a Wilderness EMT, a four-week course that equips students to do everything from drive an ambulance in an urban setting to treat major medical emergencies far from civilization.

A recent wilderness EMT course conducted by Landmark attracted people from across the country and from all walks of the outdoor industry: camp counselors, outfitters, park rangers, you name it.

“We have a lot of injuries in the backcountry, and rangers are the first person to come up on them,” said Kathleen Fleet, 23, a park ranger at Carlsbad Caverns who came for the training.

Two students claiming the longest distance traveled dropped in from Antarctica. They are usually stationed on a ship funded by the National Science Foundation, which hosts rotating research teams every few months off the Antarctic coast. Medical training in such remote surrounds seemed like a wise undertaking.

The course also attracted college students studying to be doctors and nurses — including some already in the profession.

Robin Pope, a physician’s assistant with Sylva Orthopedic Associates, obviously had the basic medical knowledge of the EMT training under his belt already. So he joined the class for only the final week, when instruction shifts to the wilderness module.

Pope is the scout master of his son’s troop and wanted to adjust his thinking to treating emergencies on camping trips versus a clinical setting.

“When a patient comes into the office, it’s a controlled setting, the light is good, the temperature isn’t freezing,” Pope said.

But outdoors, it’s an entirely different ballgame with factors out of your control.

“What do you do with six or seven other kids sitting around looking at you going ‘What are you going to do about this?’” Pope said. “It’s just kind of a different way of thinking.”

Sometimes treating injuries in the backcountry requires a heavy dose of psychology, said Justin Padgett, the owner of Landmark who often leads courses.

“If someone has had a fractured femur in the backcountry, what do they need? Your ensolite pad and fleece, or a surgeon? They need a surgeon, so your ensolite and fleece has to look really good,” Padgett told students as he walked them through yet another leg brace exercise.

After Padgett surrounded the leg of a willing volunteer with stout sticks and a rolled up sleeping pad, snugged in with anything fleece he could get his hands on, he began compressing it with torn strips of T-shirt to create a rigid unmovable mass.

“Be super intentional with your padding. Epically intentional if you will,” Padgett said. “Some people call it anal retentive. That’s not what this is. I call it ‘specificness.’”

Following the demo, students broke into teams of three to try their own hand at stabilizing each other’s legs.

“Once you have a winner, take it apart and build another winner,” Padgett said as he moved around the room critiquing the splints.

The students by now were used to serving as each other’s patients, whether it was building arm slings or manhandling each other into stretchers. The repeated hands-on practice would allow students to let their instincts and training kick in when faced with a real emergency in the field.

The climax of the course was a series of mock rescue exercises staged in the woods the final two days. Volunteer patients were decked out with fake blood and given scripts to follow during the rescue scenario.

The rescuers realized the most difficult part of treating wilderness emergencies can be the diagnosis. Extracting information from a half-passed out screaming patient on the verge of panic isn’t easy. A rock climber that falls from a cliff could be paralyzed, or merely have a dislocated shoulder, requiring a litany of field tests.

“When you ask them if they can move, there is a difference between I can’t and I won’t. Sometimes you have to be commanding and tell them ‘I need you to move on the count of three. One, two, three, go,’” Padgett said. “We need to know do they have neurological damage or do they have pain?”

Waynesville is a leader when it comes walkable communities, according to a consultant hired to develop a long-range pedestrian plan for the town.

“I would like to say this is a unique situation,” Terry Snow with Wilbur Smith Associates told the town board during a meeting last month. “We came into a town that already had a pedestrian plan in place. You are already doing this and doing a great job.”

The town systematically analyzes its sidewalk system for where missing links are needed. It builds new sections each year, gradually building out the network. The town has a short greenway and a master plan to extend it. It even requires commercial developers to build sidewalks as part of new construction, whether it’s Super Wal-Mart or a hair salon.

Mayor Gavin Brown said the town board has placed an emphasis on creating a pedestrian-friendly community.

“We believe it is an important part of the social fabric of our community,” Brown said. “We firmly believe in the concept of ‘build it and they will walk.’”

After a year-long process, Snow presented the finished product of a long-range pedestrian plan to the town board. It outlines immediate sidewalk priorities, plus those five, 10 and 15 years from now.

“I think it is wonderful to have these kind of points out in the future that we need to meet,” said Alderwoman Libba Feichter. “This board is committed to enhancing our walkable community, and I believe this community is committed to that.”

The pedestrian plan was funded with a grant from the N.C. Department of Transportation. Public input was sought at meetings and in surveys.

“There was overwhelming support for having an interconnected system,” Snow said of the public input. People wanted more sidewalks, more greenways and less speeding.

The consultant made just one recommendation: way-finding signage. These customized signs are often mounted on eye-level posts pointing the way to shops, parks and the like.

Not all developers are fans of the town’s sidewalk requirement. Some question why they should build a sidewalk in front of their building when the property to either side doesn’t have one.

“It’s the age-old problem of putting in a sidewalk to nowhere,” Snow said. “But it is harder to build a continuous sidewalk project. It is a lot easier to fill in the gaps.”

The reason is funding, which can be scarce while building sidewalks are expensive.

There has been talk of giving developers the option of paying into a sidewalk kitty, which the town could apply to somewhere else in town if a particular development genuinely doesn’t warrant a sidewalk.

Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park could be foreclosed on as early as June unless investors step forward with a cash infusion between now and then, according to Ghost Town’s bankruptcy attorney.

The theme park in Maggie Valley has been struggling with bankruptcy for the past year. Owners pledged to pull through and become profitable again.

But as of now, the company doesn’t have the money to ramp up to open for the summer season, according to David Gray, bankruptcy attorney for Ghost Town.

“We don’t have any funding to open the park,” Gray said in court last week.

Meanwhile, BB&T has been pushing to collect on its $9.5 million loan to Ghost Town. The current owners took out the loan to buy the park in 2007 and make major repairs. A frustrated BB&T has been calling for a court-ordered liquidation of Ghost Town, essentially a forced sale of the park to pay off its debts.

Ghost Town chose not to put up a fight in bankruptcy court last week and instead agreed to let BB&T start the wheels of foreclosure with one caveat: that it not take place before June. The move bought Ghost Town owners three months to continue their hunt for funding.

“They are going to try to put together some sort of financing,” Gray said.

Gray said it takes $250,000 to $300,000 to open the park for the season. Most of that goes to hire some 200 employees and pay their salaries until revenue from ticket sales starts to roll in, and to spruce up the grounds and get everything working again.

Ghost Town was supposed to formulate a plan on how it would emerge from bankruptcy and repay some $13 million in debt. Such a reorganization plan is required by the bankruptcy court.

The park owners came up with a plan that requires $2.3 million in new equity this year in order to pull off a reorganization, according to the bankruptcy administrator. But the plan fails to say where the new equity will come from. Gray said the park owners need more time.

Gray said Ghost Town will revise its reorganization plan — which faced serious court objections anyway — and present a new one if it can find the necessary capital.

If that doesn’t happen by June, Ghost Town will be sold to the highest bidder. CEO Steve Shiver could not comment on negotiations with potential investors but is positive about the eventual outcome.

What will become of Ghost Town?

If Ghost Town can come up with a new, viable plan between now and the June foreclosure proceedings, BB&T will likely be willing to work with Ghost Town and halt the foreclosure, Gray said. If Ghost Town is sold in foreclosure, it is unclear whether it would fetch enough to cover what BB&T is owed.

Ghost Town includes 288 acres and a collection of amusement park rides. Often with foreclosures, the bank holding the mortgage ends up owning the property.

“Do you think BB&T wants it?” Grey asked. “It’s the tar baby. What are they going to do with it?”

Prospects of a buyer are complicated by a mudslide originating from Ghost Town’s property last month. Who’s liable for the cleanup and stabilization is still being debated.

Maggie Valley Mayor Roger McElroy just hopes that it stays an amusement park rather than getting turned into a real estate development.

“Whoever can make a go of it will be what’s best for the town, whether it is this group or another group,” McElroy said.

Ghost Town is zoned commercial by the town. Residential is not allowed without an exemption. If a future owner wants to turn the mountaintop into a residential development, they would have to seek an exemption from the town zoning board of adjustment.

When Ghost Town’s current owners appeared on the scene in 2007, the park had been closed for five years.

“A lot of motels and restaurants were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. When Ghost Town opened back up, it made a difference,” McElroy said.

Lacking start-up capital for the season is not new, however. Ghost Town faced the same problem last year. Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver went on an extensive but unsuccessful hunt for public funding from the Town of Maggie Valley, and courted numerous local and regional tourism and economic development entities but to no avail.

The town was unwilling to pledge tax dollars to help the struggling amusement park reopen with no guarantee it would be paid back. Investors, many of them Maggie Valley business people, chipped in to provide the capital to get the park open.

Brenda O’Keefe, owner of Joey’s Pancake House, invested in the park’s new owners out of her love and devotion for Maggie Valley. For four decades, Ghost Town was an anchor attraction that pulled tens of thousands into Maggie Valley each summer and fall. Like so many, O’Keefe was eager to see it reclaim its former glory.

“Was I 100 percent sure it was going to make it? No. But the motel owners have to have people come into Maggie Valley and stay overnight to make it,” O’Keefe said. “I am a member of this community, and I want to see it thrive.”

So she and others stepped up to the plate.

When Ghost Town reopened in 2007 after five years of being closed, it garnered lots of media attention. Now, it could be worse than if it had never reopened at all.

“A closed amusement park is one thing. A failed amusement park is much worse,” O’Keefe said.

Feedback from customers who had visited Ghost Town was all positive this year, which hasn’t always been the case, O’Keefe said. O’Keefe said that shows the park and its employees were trying their hardest to provide tourists with a positive experience. O’Keefe believes the park is almost where it needs to be, but has been a victim of the economy.

“If you got the figures for all theme parks last year, it wasn’t good,” O’Keefe said. “Everybody’s figures were way down. It is not just Ghost Town.”

O’Keefe credits Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver for doing all he could.

“He has worked very hard to try to keep it going. He has put a lot of money into it certainly more than anyone else,” O’Keefe said. “It is just a matter of having enough capital to go forward. It has always had a problem of being undercapitalized.”

Like McElroy, O’Keefe is concerned about the impacts to Maggie Valley business owners if Ghost Town doesn’t open this year.

“We are very distressed about it,” O’Keefe said, adding that it is time for the town to get creative. “We are certainly going to be looking for something else to bring people to Maggie. We are not going to sit on the sidelines.”

Ghost Town buys time to find financing

When Ghost Town agreed to a June foreclosure by BB&T, what could have been a lengthy and dramatic courtroom showdown last week was reduced to less than five minutes.

Had Ghost Town pushed ahead with the reorganization plan in its current form, it’s unclear whether a judge would have approved it. It faced serious hurdles due to inadequacies, according to Alexandria Kenny, a federal bankruptcy administrator who works for the bankruptcy court.

Kenny wrote in her objection that the plan is “vague, ambiguous and not feasible,” and even called one portion “absurd.”

A handful of major stakeholders objected to the plan.

BB&T claimed the plan was not proposed in “good faith.” BB&T also objected to the general way Ghost Town has conducted itself during bankruptcy proceedings. Ghost Town’s reorganization plan was slow to materialize, requiring several court extensions. It has repeatedly failed to meet other court-imposed deadlines for filing various financial documents.

Failure by Ghost Town to pay its taxes in 2009 led both Haywood County and the town of Maggie Valley to object to the reorganization plan. Both are still owed taxes from 2008 as well.

Everyone owed money by Ghost Town could vote on the plan. Other than BB&T, there are 225 companies collectively owed $2.5 million from Ghost Town for everything from radio ads to souvenir merchandise to plumbing parts. Of those, 90 sent in ballots and 84 voted in favor of the reorganization, Gray said. It’s not surprising since those companies stand at the back of the line. Under a foreclosure or liquidation, the park’s 288 acres would have to sell for more than $10.5 million before those companies saw their first nickel.

Under reorganization, Ghost Town proposed paying back those 225 companies starting in summer 2011 based on a 6.5 percent cut of the park’s revenue. Kenny objected that Ghost Town should pledge a specific minimum dollar amount it would pay each year.

Still piling on debt

While in bankruptcy protection, Ghost Town got a hiatus from bill collectors and old debt. But the park continued to rack up new debt during 2009.

Financial filings show past due bills of more than $400,000 still lingering from last year. Some are for goods and services rendered, like attorney’s fees, termite exterminators and a marketing consultant.

But there are also hefty utility bills. Ghost Town owes a water bill of $4,430 and power bill of $20,000, both of which were cut off due to failure to pay at the end of the season last year. It owes AT&T $2,000.

Other past due bills from 2009 include $85,000 in property taxes to the town of Maggie and Haywood County. Both are still owed taxes from 2008 as well.

Ghost Town also owes the state $10,500 in sales tax from 2009 and $4,800 in amusement tax. It owes the IRS $2,300.

In addition to $400,000 in past due bills from 2009, Ghost Town owed investors and partners $712,000 that was put up over the course of the year. Ghost Town has listed the $712,000 from as part of its debt to be repaid.

Ghost Town’s current reorganization plan forecasts the park would continue operating at a loss until 2013, even with the infusion of new equity to the tune of $4 million over the same three year period, according to the bankruptcy administrator.

A water pollution permit for the Canton paper mill has come under fire by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The pollution permit is up for a periodic review by the state. The EPA isn’t pleased with the standards the state has proposed and is calling for tougher limits.

If the state doesn’t ratchet up the controls, the EPA has threatened to step in and handle the permit itself. The EPA gave the state 90 days to respond with a rewritten permit. Such intervention is rare.

The state environmental engineer who wrote the draft permit was barred from speaking to the press after making controversial comments to other newspapers last week. Sergei Chernikov told media outlets that the standards suggested by EPA would come with astronomical costs that are financially out of reach for Evergreen Packaging. He also defended the mill and spoke out against the tougher requirements being sought by EPA. After the comments appeared in print, the Division of Water Quality press office took over media inquiries related to the EPA intervention.

“The information Sergei expressed was the information he had when he designed the draft permits. But we have other information being evaluated,” said Susan Massengale, public information officer for the Division of Water Quality. “It is a much bigger picture.”

Three hearing officers will ultimately decide on how stringent the state permit is, not the engineer who wrote the draft permit. The suggested limits in the draft permit are only part of what the hearing officers will consider when making a final decision, Massengale said.

They will take into account numerous comments from the public input period, from environmental groups to mill supporters. The EPA falls in that category as well, Massengale said.

“It has submitted its comments for this process the same as any other commenter,” Massengale said.

But unlike the other commenters, the EPA carries regulatory weight and can mandate pollution limits by taking over the permit.

Massengale would not comment on what limits the EPA wants tightened up.

“I am not going to parse the language. That is up to the hearing officers,” Massengale said.

To Hope Taylor, executive director of Clean Water for NC, the EPA recommendations don’t go far enough.

“If you were going to bother objecting to the permit, why not do so in a way that could accomplish a lot more?” Taylor said

For example, the color limit recommended by the EPA of 36,000 pounds a day is only 1,000 pounds less than what the mill is discharging now. And while the EPA is taking a tougher stance on temperature, it would only look at monthly averages, which does nothing to rein in spikes of hot discharges that can lead to fish kills, Taylor said.

During the 1990s, the mill embarked on a $330 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.

As for Evergreen Packaging, they released a written statement about the news saying that the EPA comments were part of the permit process, which is designed to consider all voices and viewpoints.

“We look forward to continuing to work with regulators on finalizing a permit to continue the progress that has been made,” the statement read.

What the EPA wants

Evergreen paper mill in Canton 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 EPA wants the mill to reduce the dark color of its discharges slightly beyond what the state is calling for and wants to see a study of color going into the Pigeon River. The state was willing to reclassify the mill as being in compliance with the state’s color standards and no longer in need of a color pollution variance, but the EPA maintains that the mill should not come out from under the oversight of a color variance.

The water the mill puts back in the river is much hotter than the river’s natural temperature. The EPA also wants tougher limits on the temperature than the state asked for.

The state also was willing to drop testing of fish tissue for dioxins, since there is no longer a warning against eating any of the fish species from the Pigeon. But the EPA still wants to see testing every other year. The state proposed monitoring dioxin discharges based on a monthly average, but the EPA wants a maximum daily limit imposed as well. The EPA also called for more monitoring in several areas the state was willing to overlook.

Progress Energy customers can now claim a fraction of their power comes from the sun.

A new solar farm is on line in Canton sporting 2,340 solar panels on four acres — generating enough electricity to power 51 homes. A new state law that mandates utilities get 12.5 percent of their power from renewable sources by the year 2021 was the catalyst for the solar farm.

“A project like this really starts with good policy,” said Michael Shore, president of FLS Energy, which installed the solar field.

To help meet the renewable mandate, Progress Energy pledged to buy solar power from FLS at a set rate for the next 20 years.

While the solar field cost FLS $5 million up front to build, a sure-fire revenue stream in the form of a 20-year contract with Progress essentially guarantees a pay off down the line. Nonetheless, financing wasn’t easy, especially during an “economic calamity,” Shore said.

“Banks don’t have experience financing solar farms,” Shore said. “Even though we know we have a secure revenue stream backed up by Progress — what could be more secure? — we still had to get banks comfortable with it.”

Now that the ground has been plowed, Shore hopes subsequent projects will be easier. After 10 years, the debt will be paid off, and solar becomes quite profitable, Shore said.

“The lynchpin is you have to have somebody willing to buy the electricity,” Shore said.

And without the state legislation that forced utilities to invest in renewable energy, it is unclear whether a buyer would step up to the plate.

Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, said this was exactly what lawmakers had in mind when passing the renewable energy legislation three years ago.

“We wouldn’t have this project if we didn’t have those kinds of incentives. We wouldn’t be creating these jobs and moving toward an authentic alternative energy portfolio,” Queen said.

Progress now has 11 megawatts of solar power feeding its grid from solar farms across the state.

“This is a significant step in our balanced approach to bring clean, reliable and affordable power to the people across North Carolina,” said John Smith, Progress Energy’s vice president for the western region.

While this solar farm is only half a megawatt, add that to another half a dozen that have come on line in the past year, and it starts to add up, Shore said.

“This is just the beginning. When we stared this project two years ago, there were no solar farms in North Carolina. There were no solar farms in the Southeast,” Shore said.

The business of solar

Solar technology has long been considered cost prohibitive. But in the industry, it is finally reaching a critical mass.

As demand for solar grows, the technology gets better and cheaper. The cost of solar panels has come down 50 percent in three years. It’s similar to any electronics, from iPods to flat screen televisions, which come down in price the longer they are on the market, said Queen.

But in the meantime, the state has offered substantial tax incentives to spur solar development.

Apparently it worked, because soon those tax incentives won’t be needed anymore, according to Matt Card, director of business development for Suniva, which manufactures solar panels in Atlanta.

The cost of solar panels will continue to come down, while the cost of electricity continues to rise. Eventually, the industry will reach “grid parity.”

“At that point, it becomes just as cheap to build this as another power plant,” said Card.

As solar grows, so do associated jobs. FLS went from three to 50 employees in five years. The installation of the solar field in Canton provided full-time work for 15 of its staff for half a year.

The maker of the solar panels, an American company based in Atlanta, likewise is on the move. Suniva has gone from two to 150 employees in under three years. It plans to add another 75 manufacturing jobs this year to meet the skyrocketing demand for solar panels, Card said.

“There is a very tangible connection to job creation,” Card said.

It’s an industry where Haywood County is eager to make a name for itself.

“Hopefully it will be the beginning of other renewable energy projects in the future for our county,” said Mark Clasby, Haywood County economic development director.

In response to the solar farm, Haywood County passed an incentive package that gives alternative energy companies up to an 80 percent reduction in property taxes for investments made here.

Maintaining solar fields requires very little maintenance and no fuel costs like other power plants do. The panels just sit there soaking up the sun. They don’t even have to be cleaned, with that job left to the rain.

It’s unknown just how long they could last. They come with a warranty for 25 years, but could last twice as long.

Solar panels do wear out over time, degrading at about a quarter of a percent a year in their output. At the end of 25 years, they could be generating only 80 percent of what they were their first year, Shore said.

A ribbon cutting for the solar field was held this week. U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, commended Progress Energy for getting on board the renewable energy train and the state of North Carolina for its progressive energy policy.

“North Carolina has really taken the first steps in that and is much further along than most states are,” Shuler said.

Shuler said he hoped WNC could become a “national hub for green energy.”

Shore was an environmental lobbyist in Raleigh for years before becoming an entrepreneur and starting his own solar company. For him, seeing the solar field up and running was emotionally moving.

“For years there was always the promise of renewable energy, but there was something standing in the way of making it happen,” Shore said. [Now,] “it’s powering real houses, and there’s a real business case behind it.”

A Cherokee archaeological site spanning from at least 6,000 years ago to the 18th century stands in the way of bridge widening project over the Tuckasegee River in Jackson County.

Plans call for widening the N.C. 107 bridge over the river from its existing width of just 20 feet to 50 feet at a cost of $4.2 million. The new bridge will be three lanes with shoulders and a sidewalk.

Landowners and the N.C. Department of Transportation are at odds over the project. The archaeological site is on land owned by the Moses family for 120 years. The family has taken pride in the site and hosted university sponsored archaeological digs on its property through the years.

While a wider bridge has been in the making for more than a decade, plans initially called for building a new bridge in the same place, leaving the archaeological site untouched. Plans were altered in 2007, calling not only for a much larger footprint but also shifting the bridge over to sit on top of the site.

The DOT failed to notify the landowners of the change until now, according to Cherrie Moses of Tuckasegee.

The family got a phone call a few weeks ago from DOT to discuss purchasing their property for the widening.

“We were in total shock,” said Moses, 52, a retired school teacher. “This is the first time we are hearing about this, and it is already a done deal. It was like all you need to do is sign on the dotted line, and the bulldozers are ready.”

Since 1997, Moses said she was told the site would be protected.

“The plans that my family had been given stated that the bridge was going back basically where it is, that the site would not be compromised,” Moses said.

Pam Williams, a bridge project planning engineer, said the Moses family was made aware of the new plan, but they must not have fully understood.

The DOT was well aware of the archaeological site in the path of the bridge widening. It plans to excavate the site first and document all the artifacts that are found, said Matt Wilkerson, a DOT archaeologist.

Wilkerson said one of the most intriguing aspects of the site is relatively recent Cherokee occupation dating to the 1700s. One house site was excavated in an archaeology dig by a university team a few decades ago, and Wilkerson thinks there may be more.

The site won’t be destroyed by the bridge, Wilkerson said. If anything, the bridge project will allow the secrets of the site to be uncovered with an archaeological dig.

In crafting an excavation plan, DOT consulted with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the state historic preservation office. Both signed off on the project with the caveat that the artifacts be saved in advance of the bulldozers.

Moses doesn’t understand why they included everyone except the landowners.

“That is not right. We would have liked to been in on the meeting and voiced our concerns,” said Moses, who also happens to be the chair of the Jackson County Historic Preservation Commission.

The site is on its way to being listed on the National Historic Register after being recommended by the DOT archaeologist.

Federal law requires a formal public process when impacting sites that are eligible for the National Register, but no one ever sought out participation by the Moses family.

Chain of events

The bridge was targeted for replacement more than a decade ago due to its age and narrow width. It is technically deemed “structurally deficient” and “functionally obsolete.” It is still safe, Williams said, but won’t stay that way forever, and maintenance costs will increase.

The existing bridge has 10-foot lanes and no shoulders.

“We have had several side swipes over the past few years,” Williams said.

The new bridge will have three 12-foot lanes, 4-foot shoulders that will double as bike lanes and a sidewalk on one side.

It will also have a left-turn lane for Shook Cove Road, which sits 100 feet from the bridge. The turn lane will be 200 feet long in all. Some left-turn lanes may only be 50 feet — just long enough for a couple of cars to queue up while waiting to make a left. Why is Shook Cove’s turn lane so long?

“There are a lot of variables actually to determine how much traffic would back up on the main line,” Williams said.

Williams cited an increase in development up Shook Cove as justifying the turn lane. Traffic counts in 2005 showed 4,700 cars a day passing over the bridge, with 200 vehicles making a left onto Shook Cove.

Moses questioned why the new bridge has to be so wide.

“This is a massive bridge. It is not even going to fit in,” Moses said.

Moses believes the bridge was planned with the expectation that new developments would add to traffic in the future. But the once zealous plans of developers are drastically scaled back these days, Moses said.

How it will be built

Under the original plan, a temporary river crossing would be built on the Moses property to accommodate traffic while the existing bridge was demolished and built back in the same place. To protect artifacts, heavy black fabric would be laid down and fill dirt placed on top. It would all be hauled away when the project was done. That method is no longer considered sensitive enough, however, Williams said.

Instead, DOT will use the “staged construction” method. Traffic will continue to flow on the existing bridge while the new bridge is built alongside it. Then traffic will shift to the new bridge while the old one is torn down and the other half of the new bridge built in its place.

Williams said there were two attempts to share the new plan with the public. One was a newsletter sent to property owners in December 2007. While the newsletter announces that the bridge will use a “staged construction method,” it fails to explain that such a method necessitates a larger bridge footprint.

“Reading the literature and having someone sit down with you and explain the plans are two different things,” Williams said.

The other outreach by the DOT was a public meeting in early 2008 on upgrades to N.C. 107, specifically lane widening and the new shoulders through the Tuckasegee community. Williams went to the meeting with the bridge plans in hand expecting residents would ask about it as part of the larger N.C. 107 upgrades.

Williams also said she twice mentioned “data recovery” to Moses in emails. But just as the term “staged construction” means little to the lay person, Moses did not realize that references to “data recovery” translated to “archaeological dig,” meaning the bridge’s footprint would consume the site and require an excavation in advance of construction.

But, by the same token, the DOT didn’t know exactly where the new footprint would be until now.

“We can’t sit down and tell them how much land we are taking until we get the design plans done,” Williams said. And at that point, property owners are contacted about buying right of way.

More information:

Construction of a wider bridge over the Tuckasegee on N.C. 107 could start by spring of 2011. The project would take 18 months. Two lanes of traffic — one in each direction — would remain open throughout.

Nantahala Outdoor Center is positioned to become a major player in the outdoors scene on the Tennessee side of the Smokies with a gigantic new outfitter’s store smack in the middle of downtown Gatlinburg.

The $4 million Great Outpost gives NOC newfound visibility to some 14 million people who pour trough Gatlinburg year round, allowing it to market outdoor gear and guided adventures to a whole new audience — one that doesn’t always connect to the outdoors despite being on a vacation to the mountains.

“There are millions of people who come to Gatlinburg every year and never set foot into the national park, so we feel like this is a great opportunity to introduce a new audience to the outdoors and break down traditional barriers,” said Sutton Bacon, the CEO of Nantahala Outdoor Center.

NOC is already known for its rafting and paddling operations headquartered on the Nantahala River in Swain County, along with several outposts on other mountain rivers. It serves half a million guests a year, branching out in recent years to fly-fishing, mountain biking, hiking and sundry forms of outdoor activities. It also has had a gear store at its Nantahala outpost for many years.

Bacon said NOC has exceptionally strong brand recognition and long legacy in North Carolina.

“But we felt there was a huge opportunity to expose the NOC brand to an entirely new audience,” Bacon said. “We felt like it was a great strategic move for us to go into Gatlinburg and establish a presence there.”

The new store is the largest retail space in all of downtown Gatlinburg. The storefront occupies what is possibly the prime piece of real estate in the throbbing tourist gateway town.

The Great Outpost is directly adjacent to the main national park entrance — the first thing you see when leaving the park or last thing you see before heading in. A signboard shows icons of paddling, hiking, camping and fishing, promoting the store as a “one-stop-shop” for any and all outdoor adventures.

Surprisingly, Gatlinburg didn’t previously have an all-purpose outfitter. It made the venture somewhat risky, but NOC took the gamble that there is indeed an underserved market in Gatlinburg among those seeking outdoor adventure.

“What can the market truly sustain? Is it more the T-shirt, souvenir-based market, or is there a strong outdoor market there?” Bacon said.

Obviously, NOC thinks the answer is yes.

Since opening four weeks ago, the store has met sales expectations for the startup period — and the main season hasn’t even started yet. The new store will also allow NOC to expand its mostly seasonal operations based in the Nantahala Gorge.

But Bacon emphasizes the mission of the new store is more than that.

“We want to expose as many people to the outdoors as possible,” Bacon said. “I am less concerned about whether they go on an NOC trip. We are all about reconnecting that community with the national park.”

To demonstrate its commitment to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at its doorstep, NOC donated $5,000 to Friends of the Smokies to mark the grand opening of the Great Outpost in early April. When shoppers ring up at the register, they are asked if they want to “round up” their purchase to the nearest dollar as a donation to Friends of the Smokies. Nearly everyone says yes, and all that change adds up quickly.

“They know it is a good cause,” said Brian May, NOC’s outreach manager.

Built green with style

Green building principles guided construction of the Great Outpost, qualifying it for gold certification under the LEED program, the national ranking system for environmentally-friendly buildings.

Green features include low-flow faucets, reduced energy consumption and lights that operate on motion detector so they don’t burn needlessly. Rainwater is absorbed by the landscaping rather than channeled into the town gutter system.

The building isn’t short on style, though, with a large, rustic wooden porch and massive stacked stone columns. Inside, floorboards and wooden siding taken from old barns made their way into the architecture, giving it a distinctly mountain flavor. Pine trees ravaged by the pine beetle and being cut down anyway were used for logs.

The siding comes from poplar bark stripped from poplar trees heading to the sawmill for lumber, reusing what would otherwise have been discarded.

The use of old materials provided green points in the certification. A building that once existed in the same spot — a long-time signature restaurant owned by the Ogle family that essentially founded Gatlinburg — was largely gutted inside and out, but the materials, even concrete block, were reused in the new structure.

All visible signs of the grandiose megadevelopment known as Cataloochee Wilderness Resorts have vanished from public view in Haywood County.

Businessmen behind the development recently vacated a Clyde office that served as their headquarters owing more than $8,000 in back rent, according to a civil lawsuit filed against them by the landlord. The water to the office was turned off for failure to pay their bill, according to Clyde town records. Boxes of files — from credit card statements to printed out emails to property blueprints — were left behind when they moved out.

Cataloochee Wilderness Resorts burst onto the front pages of local newspapers three years ago, garnering attention both for its massive scale and unconventional approach — as well as a controversial figure behind the project.

The plans called for a 4,500-acre development in Jonathan Creek with shopping malls, condos, a hotel, a movie theater, snow skiing and even water skiing, as well as hundreds of homes.

Six years into the project, however, the developers do not own a single acre of land. They have not secured financing for the project. Nor have they sealed lease agreements from retailers to fill the massive outlet complex featured in the plans.

That doesn’t mean the project is off, however, according to Frank Wood, spokesman for the project.

“It is still percolating,” Wood said. “We just aren’t ready to say anything right now. We are in final negotiations.”

The project has been stalled in the financing stage for some time. Wood said most recently the economy has posed a challenge.

“It is difficult getting financing right now,” Wood said.

But the former president of the land acquisition corporation behind the project said the economy is not to blame.

“I don’t think the economy had a doggone thing to do with it. This thing was sliding down already,” said Steve Lusk, who spent two years working for the project.

Lusk served as a property procurement agent, tracking down the owners of key parcels that the developers hoped to buy.

“I was the one getting the manure under the boots,” Lusk said.

Jonathan Creek is a rural community with a plethora of small farms. Lusk knocked on door after door, visiting on people’s porches, around their kitchen tables or in the shade of their barns.

“They are wonderful people out there, whether they were with us or against us,” Lusk said.

Lusk hung out with farmers and watched cattle being born. He was invited to Thanksgiving dinner by one family. And just last month, he went to the funeral of one person he’d grown close to during his work.

Lusk said money never actually changed hands in any of the contracts he secured. The contracts merely locked in a price that the landowner was willing to sell for.

Usually, the buyer puts up a good faith deposit to show they are serious when entering such contracts. But Cataloochee developers kept the deposit in an escrow account held by their own agent rather than with the landowner, Lusk said.

The contract terms were “extremely protective” of Cataloochee developers. Lusk said the contract language went to extreme lengths to envision scenarios that would allow the developers to walk away and not purchase the land after all.

Lusk said all the contracts he secured have expired now.

But Wood said if and when financing comes through, the contracts could easily be renewed.

“It is like anything — money talks,” Wood said. “Until the financing is in place, both sides of the table get tired of talking about it.”

Wood admittedly is not actively involved in the project anymore. He is living in Florida and is in a holding pattern as far as Cataloochee Resorts is concerned until he sees positive movement.

“When the financing hit a snag, I backed away and said ‘I’ll just wait until something comes through.’ If it ever goes, I will be running it,” said Wood, who was promised the job of development manager.

Falling out

Lusk didn’t part on quite such amicable terms. He says he was booted off the project a year ago for no reason by Dean Moses, the main player behind the development who lives in Clyde.

Lusk spent two years working for Moses on the promise of a payoff when the project eventually came to fruition — a payoff that never happened and apparently never will, Lusk said. Lusk said he got no salary for his work other than a stipend of $20 a day for food and gas.

“I was to be paid when money came in, but the financing never materialized. No one ever came forward with the money,” Lusk said.

After Moses cut Lusk out of the project, Lusk filed a civil suit in hopes of getting compensated. But this month, Lusk withdrew his claims. He was tired of trying to collect in a case he saw dragging out for a very long time.

“I am moving on personally after quite a very, very long time,” Lusk said. “I am trying desperately to restart my career.”

It’s not the only lawsuit to surface in connection with Cataloochee Wilderness Resorts.

A Tennessee man claims he was defrauded of $328,000 by Moses and his wife, Colleen. John “Thunder” Thornton of Chattanooga put up the money for down payments on property but the money was diverted to other uses, including the personal gain of Moses and his wife, according to the ongoing suit. Thornton is suing Moses for fraud, conspiracy and breach of contract.

Along with the $328,000 earmarked for land purchases, Thornton loaned another $275,000 to cover operating expenses for the project. The expenditure of those funds are not contested in the lawsuit, however.

Yet another man involved in the project has filed for personal bankruptcy, due in part to debt racked up in connection with Moses. Robert Worthington of Knoxville, who had been Moses’ attorney, co-signed on loans and credits cards on behalf of the Cataloochee development endeavor and Moses, and was held responsible for the debt, according to court filings.

“He listed several debts that were associated with Dean Moses, including loans made to Dean Moses and credit cards used by Dean Moses and his wife,” said Bill Horton, Thornton’s attorney.

Horton said he is not surprised Moses’ project has yet to get off the ground.

“He has a history of going from project to project and raising capital, and then the projects are never completed or they fail or never materialize,” Horton said. “He operates on other people’s capital.”

Moses was the figurehead behind a string of failed business proposals for the closed-down Dayco factory in Waynesville —now the new super Wal-Mart — a saga that spanned several years and eventually ended in bankruptcy court eight years ago.

Moses and his business partners created one company after another with plans to develop the dormant industrial site. They solicited capital from private investors and lending institutions, racking up debts on company credit cards in the meantime.

Files dating back to the Dayco real estate deal in 1999 were among the boxes left behind when the Cataloochee businessmen moved out of their Clyde office. When Moses’ name surfaced as a player behind Cataloochee Wilderness Resorts three years ago, spokespeople downplayed his role in the project as only a consultant. The boxes of Dayco files among the abandoned files suggest otherwise.

Lusk said that the checking account of the Cataloochee development enterprise was controlled entirely by Moses and his wife.

Prior to coming to Haywood County and promoting the Dayco deal, Moses was involved in failed developments in Tennessee.

A primary owner of Ghost Town in the Sky wants to buy the amusement park out of bankruptcy. But there’s a catch.

The owner would walk away from more than $5 million in debt, yet continue to own the park — only this time under a new corporate name.

More than 200 businesses still owed money by Ghost Town would be left holding the bag, including local contractors and laborers who did work for the park and were never paid. Myriad Ghost Town supporters in Maggie Valley coughed up cash to help the amusement park get off the ground when it reopened. They were promised a stake in the company in exchange for their investment, but they, too, would be left with nothing.

Employees who were sent home at the end of last season still owed two weeks of pay may be out of luck as well under the deal.

The deal is merely a proposal and would have to pass muster with the bankruptcy court. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, May 4. Ghost Town has asked the court to approve the sale to the new entity.

The timing is no mistake. Foreclosure of the park is scheduled to begin May 31. The plan put forward would avoid a forced auction of the park on the courthouse steps.

The bankruptcy court could opt to let the auction go forward in order to determine if there are any other prospective buyers willing to pay more.

The deal

The 1960s-era theme park was once a cash cow for Maggie Valley, raking in tens of thousands of visitors each year.

But attendance declined throughout the 1990s and the park was eventually shuttered in 2002.

It was purchased by a trio of new owners in 2006, including Al Harper, the owner of Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in Bryson City and other railroad tourism ventures, including the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Colorado.

Harper formed a new LCC just two weeks ago called American Heritage Family Parks — the entity that is now trying to purchase Ghost Town out of bankruptcy. The name of the new entity is similar to the umbrella corporation for his railroad ventures, American Heritage Railroad.

The LLC was just created by Harper on April 8, apparently for the express purpose of buying the park. The registered agent is Jon Schlegel, the former general manager of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. The address listed for the new LLC is the same as the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad headquarters in Bryson City.

The public face for Ghost Town for the past two years has been CEO Steve Shiver. It is unclear from court filings or incorporation papers what, if any, role he would have in the new park.

“It is an unfortunate situation for all of us,” Shiver wrote in an email. He directed further requests for comment to Harper. Harper did not immediately return phone calls or emails requesting comment.

When Harper bought the dated theme park in 2006, he got an aging facility that needed millions of dollars in costly repairs and modernization. Coupled with the economic downturn, the park lost money and after just two years of being open landed in bankruptcy a year ago. It owes a total of $13.5 million. CEO Steve Shiver pledged the park could regain its footing and become profitable again, eventually paying off what it owes and pulling out of bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy court requires a detailed plan spelling out exactly how a turnaround will be achieved. Shiver was unable to put together an acceptable plan.

BB&T, which holds more than $9.5 million in debt on the property, was given the green light to proceed with foreclosure. The park was slated to be auctioned off to the highest bidder as early as June.

The entity is offering to buy the park for $7.5 million, although Ghost Town has more than $13.5 million in debt.

BB&T would get $7 million and back taxes would be paid — and that’s about it. The plan calls for paying back $300,000 in select debt, though it doesn’t say to whom.

Financial filings show past due bills of more than $400,000 still lingering from last year — racked up on top of the debt Ghost Town carried with it into bankruptcy. Last year’s past due bills include everything from property taxes to utilities, which were cut off due to failure to pay at the end of the season.

Current owners had been trying to find financing to bail themselves out of bankruptcy and open the park for the summer season. Ghost Town is urging the court to quickly approve the sale to the new entity so that it can still try to open the park by summer.

However, Ghost Town is still plagued by unstable remnants of a landslide that makes the mountain unsafe, according to state geologists. Stabilization will not be completed by the start of summer.

While a hotly contested judge’s race is dominating the water cooler gossip in lawyers’ offices, the average voter likely has their work cut out for them.

The choices are overwhelming: 10 candidates running for three seats. All the names on the ballot are likely brand new to those outside the legal arena, leaving voters little to go by other than brief synopses of the candidates in the newspaper at best — and at worst the color scheme of their yard signs or a game of eenie-meenie-minie-moe inside the polling booth.

“Certainly the challenge will be to separate yourself from the other candidates,” said Caleb Rogers, an attorney from Waynesville and one of the candidates.

It’s an unprecedented level of competition for a judge’s race. But then again, it is an unprecedented state of affairs.

Once elected, judges usually park themselves in the seat and become unmovable by competition despite being up for election every four years. The only in-road to the bench comes when a judge steps down, which is what makes 2010 a watershed year.

Two of three seats up for election are being vacated by retiring judges. The third seat has been occupied for less than a year by an appointed judge, so the incumbent doesn’t have an entrenched toehold yet.

A competitive race for judge is rare occurrence, let alone three seats up for election the same year in one judicial district. Candidates realized it was a now or never moment. The outcome of the race will also bring major changes to the bench. Of six District Court judges serving in the seven western counties, three will be new to the bench within the past year and two more will be new since 2004 — leaving just one judge who has served longer than a decade.

Attorney Kris Earwood, one of the candidates, is humbled to think about the level of experience stepping down from the bench with this election: a combined 48 years between Judge Danny Davis and Steve Bryant.

“I think it is monumental,” Earwood said.

There’s another factor that could have spurred a larger-than-normal contest this year: money. The starting salary for a judge is $109,000, but can climb much higher for judges with a long tenure thanks to cost of living raises plus a bump in pay for every five years on the bench.

While the best-paid lawyers make far more than judges ever would, the economy has taken a toll on the practices of many lawyers who depended on real estate work, making the steady six-figure salary look all the more attractive.

Western North Carolina’s mental health agency may be headed for a civil war with its partner foundation.

Smoky Mountain Center, a quasi-state body that oversees mental health in the region, hopes to wrest $20 million in assets away from its sister nonprofit, citing a lack of oversight for public funds.

For three decades, the Smoky Mountain Center has relied on its nonprofit foundation Evergreen to bolster mental health and substance abuse services in the region.

But the foundation has grown increasingly estranged from the agency it was intended to support, according to board members of Smoky Mountain Center.

“There has been a disconnect there,” said Ronnie Beale, a member of the Smoky Mountain Center board and Macon County commissioner.

Communication between the two entities is sparse to nonexistent. The center’s requests for financial assistance have repeatedly been turned down, and the foundation won’t even disclose how its funds are being spent, according to Brian Ingraham, the executive director of Smoky Mountain Center.

“It is not supposed to be some organization off on their own with no public oversight,” Ingraham said.

Ingraham and his board of directors have proposed a major overhaul of the foundation to bring it under the auspices of Smoky Mountain Center.

“The bottom line is the board thought these funds should be under public scrutiny,” Beale said. “We feel it is public money, and it should be under public oversight.”

A letter was sent to foundation board members this week asking for a meeting within 30 days to discuss the issue.

Tom McDevitt, the executive director of the Evergreen Foundation, has little to say for now.

“Until whatever meeting takes place between Smoky Mountain and whoever, we are not going to be able to comment,” McDevitt said.

Until recently, the foundation and Smoky Mountain Center shared the same director — McDevitt. But McDevitt resigned from Smoky Mountain Center under pressure in fall 2008. McDevitt had come under scrutiny for using his position for personal financial gain.

He managed to hang on to his position as director of the Evergreen Foundation, however, which had a different slate of board members.

McDevitt disagrees with the line of argument Smoky Mountain Center is presenting.

“I don’t feel there is any disconnect whatsoever,” McDevitt said.

McDevitt said he has met with the board of Smoky Mountain Center whenever he’s been asked. But when Smoky Mountain Center needed an emergency meeting over state budget cuts, Ingraham said it took weeks to get it arranged.

State budget cuts axed $10 million over two years from indigent care — a fund that covers mental health and substance abuse treatment for those who can’t afford it. The 20 percent cut means poor people who need therapy or treatment won’t be able to get it now.

Smoky Mountain Center asked the foundation for a $2 million grant to make up some of the difference.

“Wouldn’t this seem like exactly why the foundation was developed?” Ingraham said.

But the foundation granted them only $200,000. Smoky Mountain Center also asked the foundation to forgive their rent for the year.

Smoky Mountain Center pays $280,000 a year in rent to the foundation for office space and a mental health and substance abuse clinic called The Balsam Center.

The two buildings were bought and paid for with state money given to Smoky Mountain Center but were then passed along to the foundation, which manages the properties.

The foundation owns the buildings as a result. Ingraham said it is wrong that the foundation won’t cut Smoky Mountain Center a break on rent when they paid for the buildings in the first place, Ingraham said.

“We gave them the money, but now they say ‘We aren’t going to help you,’” Ingraham said. “That was the point where people realized there was nothing appropriate or correct about this any longer.”

But McDevitt said the foundation’s purpose is about more than helping Smoky Mountain Center. Its mission is to support people with mental health, substance abuse and developmental disabilities throughout the seven counties.

“That is the sole purpose of the Evergreen Foundation,” McDevitt said. “We have done a very good job of that over 33 years.”

That mission, he said, can include making grants to private practices that offer counseling and mental health treatment other than Smoky Mountain Center. McDevitt said that the foundation has given out $200,000 in grants to private mental health practices this fiscal year.

Ingraham said he has asked McDevitt to share what grants have been given out and how the foundation is spending money.

“We have asked for that information, and it has not been forthcoming,” Ingraham said.

McDevitt disagreed.

“They did know about them. Of course they knew about them,” McDevitt said of the other grants.

How it all started

When Evergreen Foundation was created in the late 1970s, it was out of necessity. State agencies couldn’t buy and resell property, and Smoky Mountain Center needed to amass an inventory of office buildings for mental health and substance abuse counselors to work out of throughout the seven western counties.

But the law has since changed, and state agencies can now act as their own property management arm.

While the foundation has always had its own board of directors, it was historically tightly controlled by Smoky Mountain Center. Early on, the Smoky Mountain Center appointed the foundation board, and many of the members sat on both boards.

But in 2001, when the state launched mental health reform, everything was on the table from privatizing mental health services to consolidating the regional agencies like Smoky Mountain Center.

In the ensuing turmoil, Smoky Mountain Center feared the state would attempt a money grab to seize the assets of the foundation. So it purposely built a firewall around the foundation. Bylaws were rewritten to make it a private entity, separate from Smoky Mountain Center.

“It was done to protect the assets for their intended purposes,” said Shelly Foreman, community director for Smoky Mountain Center.

At the time, no one envisioned that the foundation would one day end up with a completely separate director and board that had little interaction with Smoky Mountain Center, Foreman said.

“It was never the intention that Evergreen be disconnected from what the service needs and funding needs are in the community,” Foreman said.

Ingraham and his board hired an auditor to track all the money that had gone into the foundation since its creation in 1977. They determined $14.5 million in county and state tax dollars have flowed into the foundation’s coffers.

Nearly all of the money was for purchasing buildings in the seven western counties — from office space for mental health counselors to substance abuse clinics to the central headquarters for Smoky Mountain Center.

Smoky Mountain Center once operated its own teams of mental health counselors, therapists and psychologists throughout the region, housed in the office space owned by Evergreen but paid for initially with state funds.

The state has since privatized mental health, so most of that office space is now rented to private mental health practices — or in some cases to whoever is willing to rent the building whether the tennant was in the mental health field or not. The foundation keeps all the rent money.

Ingraham said the foundation is operating more like a property management and investment company than a nonprofit with a mission to fulfill.

“It is income that was generated from public money,” Ingraham said.

But McDevitt said the origin of the money isn’t relevant. It started out as public money, but was given to a private organization to carry out its mission.

“Where it goes to, it loses its identity as public funds,” McDevitt said.

The upshot

Smoky Mountain Center wants a new governing structure for the foundation. The proposal calls for the current foundation board to be dissolved. A new foundation would then be created under a new set of bylaws — stipulating that Smoky Mountain Center gets to appoint the board and hold a majority of the seats.

While the board of Smoky Mountain Center is a public body — meaning their meetings, financial records and actions are open to the public — the foundation meets in private and has no obligation to share its financial information other than its annual nonprofit tax filing.

The aim is to restore public oversight, Beale said.

The 30-member board of the Smoky Mountain Center voted unanimously for the proposal earlier this month.

To back-up the proposal, county commissioners from the seven western counties have been asked to pass similar resolutions over the next two weeks. Macon County commissioners were the first to do so this week.

Macon County’s resolution says if diplomatic efforts fail, legal routes may be necessary.

John Bouknight of Highlands, the president of the Evergreen Foundation board, would not comment in detail until after meeting with the Smoky Mountain Center board.

He said Evergreen’s mission goes far beyond just supporting the needs identified by Smoky Mountain Center.

“They aren’t everything,” Bouknight said. “I think we are following our mission statement. These are all very dedicated people.”

The foundation board only meets four times a year. Beale said he trusts that their primary interest is serving mental health and substance abuse needs, but he isn’t sure how informed they are.

“The only thing they know is what their director tells them,” Beale said. “I do have a lot of respect for some members on that board, and I think their heart is in the right place and will do the right thing.”

In the meantime, Smoky Mountain Center has alerted the state attorney general’s office of the unusual situation.

“We are talking about state funds that now exist within an organization that has no affiliation within Smoky Mountain Center and chooses to do whatever they want with it,” Ingraham said.

It’s not often that soccer players go head-to-head with softball and baseball athletes.

But whenever Haywood County decides to build a new recreation park, they may do just that.

A competitive spirit creeps from the field into public meetings, as athletes from the same sport band together to make the case for a facility that will best meet their needs.

In recent years, the debate has fostered a rivalry between soccer lovers and those passionate about baseball and softball. Now that the county has begun design work on a new park in Jonathan Creek, the same dialogue has resurfaced.

Of course, the county recreation board would love to satisfy athletes from all sports with pristine new fields, but lack of available funding demands tough choices.

So far, Haywood’s recreation board has collected ample citizen input to assist them in the decision-making process. The board has put out two online surveys and held two public meetings. An impressive crowd of almost 60 people piled in to have their say at both meetings.

For this round, the baseball/softball folks have earned a clear upper hand, despite soccer players’ success in skewing the online survey results toward developing a soccer field.

The county recreation board has opted for a mix of uses at the Jonathan Creek park with a heavy emphasis on baseball and softball. The three potential design concepts presented at the last public meeting each include four baseball fields and one “multipurpose” field.

Two sets of plans for the park have emerged as frontrunners. One plan entails four softball fields and a large multipurpose artificial turf field that could be adapted as a full-size soccer field. The other also has four softball fields clustered centrally as a single complex, but leaves less space for the multi-use field, which is smaller.

The board’s decision was heavily guided by a recreation master plan developed by the county in 2007. The plan demonstrates a clear need for more facilities for all three sports, but a greater deficit of softball and baseball fields than for soccer.

“The master plan is just clear cut, right there,” said Claire Carleton, Haywood County recreation director. “Since we don’t have any baseball/softball fields, that’s where the most urgent needs lies.”

According to the study, the county needs seven more baseball fields and seven softball fields by 2027. In comparison, there will be a deficit of only two soccer fields and two multipurpose fields that same year.

On the other hand, soccer fields are cheaper to develop than baseball and softball fields. Building a soccer field with a goal on each end is a less complicated proposition than developing baseball and softball fields with dugouts, fencing and score boxes.

On Tuesday, April 6, the recreation board will consider which of the three plans to adopt. Each side continues to make their case, and one thing is clear: the debate is far from over in Haywood County.

Developing a moneymaker

Money is not trailing far behind sports in the minds of citizens enthused by the new park.

Residents overwhelmingly favor developing a sports park that produces revenue by ushering traveling teams to the region’s hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

Investing in a high-quality sports complex does have potential to bring serious cash flow into the county, according to Steve Fritts, landscape architect with Barge, Waggoner, Sumner and Cannon.

His firm, which is designing the Jonathan Creek Park, recently completed a tournament-size softball complex in Chattanooga. On its opening weekend, 250 teams descended on the town to utilize the $11 million, eight-field complex.

Meanwhile, the vision for a park in Jonathan Creek is currently limited to 22 acres of space. Fritts has recommended expanding the park to at least 40 acres in the future.

A dearth of funding is the major obstacle in creating a larger park, however. Haywood County commissioners have already dropped $1 million to purchase the park property, while the Town of Maggie Valley also chipped in $115,000 toward the property purchase.

In addition, the recreation board has found it difficult to commit the entire park to just one sport. It turned down the firm’s proposal for developing five baseball fields — even though that would likely prove more lucrative in attracting tournaments.

Recreation Director Claire Carleton said the board shied away from narrowing the scope of the park to ensure that the community facility offers something for everyone.

The three concepts the board chose included not only baseball/softball fields and a multipurpose field, but also a playground, an accessible fishing pier, a greenway trail, a water play area, a loop trail with fitness stations, and picnic shelters.

While a larger park would improve prospects of hosting tournaments, Carleton is pleased with the progress on the park as is.

“This is an excellent start for the county,” said Carleton.

Despite a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 6, the board may not vote on adopting a specific plan just yet. County Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick, who sits on the recreation board, pointed out that the reality of a new recreation facility is still a long way away.

“The fact of the matter is this is a plan to utilize that property but not necessarily the exact plan that will be used at the time of construction,” Kirkpatrick said.

The Jackson County planning board is no longer contemplating revisions to the county’s ban on ridge top construction.

The ridge law posed logistical challenges for county staff tasked with enforcing the ordinance. But discussion over how to tweak the ridge law resulted in backlash from the public, who feared the regulation was being weakened.

It turns out the planning board doesn’t have time to review the language of the ridge law anyway, according to Planning Director Linda Cable.

The planning board was asked by county commissioners this week to begin writing an ordinance that would regulate adult entertainment establishments. Commissioners also asked the planning board to tackle a false alarm ordinance that would incur penalties for homeowners if their security systems have an excessive number of false alarms, which take up valuable time for the sheriff’s office.

“Those are more important than reviewing the mountain and hillside development ordinance, which was administrative in nature,” Cable said.

Cable said the decision to table the review of the ridge law has nothing to do with the controversy it generated. Cable said there was never an intent to weaken the ridge law. The discussion was merely an attempt to clarify what qualifies as a protected ridge.

However, in an email memo to planning board members, Cable said said tabling the ridge law review, while intended only as an administrative change, made sense “particularly since it seemed to be controversial” and in light of “concerns from the public.”

New federal standards for ozone will be issued by year’s end, and the verdict will determine whether Western North Carolina is out of compliance with air quality.

Western North Carolina likely can’t fix its air quality problem alone. Charlotte, Knoxville and Atlanta are all out of compliance under current ozone limits, let alone the more rigorous ones that are pending. Smog is carried from these metropolitan areas into the mountains.

In addition, antiquated, dirty coal plants operated by Tennessee Valley Authority from Ohio to Tennessee to Alabama send pollution this way.

“Is there enough we could do in North Carolina to achieve the standards?” asked Paul Muller, regional supervisor for the N.C. Division of Air Quality in Asheville.

Probably not, he said. But since WNC won’t be alone in its violation of ozone standards, a multi-state approach will be inevitable.

“Knoxville has a problem. Atlanta has a problem. So they are going to have to be making reductions as well,” Muller said.

Ozone levels have declined over the past decade, proving that tailpipe regulations and new emissions standards gradually being imposed on coal plants can work, according to Muller.

“How do we keep getting cleaner so we can meet the tighter standards?” Muller said. “In a lot of ways we depend on the federal government to put in reduction programs that will affect a larger area.”

But attempts to impose tougher pollution limits on coal plants have met resistance in court. The benefits that would otherwise be realized by new regulations are taking longer, Muller said.

While it is easy to point fingers at dirty coal plants or wafting smog from urban centers, it will ultimately take everyone working together to improve air quality — including steps by everyone living in the region.

“Air quality is impacting our health our environment and our economy,” said Bill Eaker, environmental specialist with Land of the Sky Regional Council. “We are going to have to take action to reduce energy consumption and reduce fuel use for our cars and vehicles.”

Ozone, which is the main ingredient in smog, is worse in the summer. The Land of the Sky Regional Council hosted an ozone season press conference last week, as it does every year at the outset of the ozone season. Speakers at the event educate the press on the latest air pollution rules, tout success stories and share various initiatives underway throughout the region to improve air quality.

Limit in flux

An ozone standard is set by the Environmental Protection Agency every five years. New limits came out in 2008, but have been in flux ever since, due both to lawsuits and a shift in policy from the Bush to Obama administration.

When reviewing the ozone standard, the EPA relies on a panel of scientists to recommend a safe limit both for human health and the environment. But in 2008, the EPA bucked the scientists and instead settled on a slightly laxer number.

“This was a big deal because EPA usually takes the advice of its science committee,” according to Vicki Sandiford, an air quality specialist with the EPA in Raleigh. “The law requires EPA to explain in a rational way why it chose not to follow the recommendation of its science advisers.”

Apparently, the explanation was lacking, since lawsuits by environmental groups promptly followed. The scientists on the panel even weighed in expressing anger that their advice was not followed.

When Obama took office, he appointed a new EPA director, and a policy shift followed suit.

“It is the goal of this administration to have science in the forefront of the regulations it considers,” Sandiford said.

So it was back to the drawing board. The new ozone standards will be announced by August (see box).

There are 1,200 ozone monitors in the United States, mostly in urban areas. The EPA wants to see 270 new monitors installed throughout the country.

With many areas in violation of the old ozone limits, it is unclear how quickly even tougher limits will be complied with. Charlotte has been in violation of federal ozone standards since 1997. Why such a long leash to meet the standards?

“Partly because of the difficulty for many areas in meeting the standard,” Sandiford said. “They want to give area time to put programs in place and see the results it keeps it from being so burdensome.”

Ozone forecast

To get your ozone forecast, go to ncair.org. Click on “air quality forecast.”

Republicans hope 2010 will be their year to reclaim the congressional seat representing Western North Carolina — a seat they had long held but was wrested away in 2006 by political newcomer and football star Heath Shuler.

Whoever wins the Republican primary for the 11th Congressional District, however, will have their work cut out for them.

“This is not going to be a cake walk for anybody,” said Jake Howard, a candidate from Franklin.

While Democrats are vulnerable on the national stage, Shuler isn’t exactly a raging liberal, much to the chagrin of die-hard Democrats in the district. He’s good looking, a family man, and a devout Christian. People line up for his autograph when he makes public appearances — due more to his football fame than status as congressman

Money will be a major factor in the race against Shuler. Shuler has lots of it, and none of the Republican candidates in the running have a hope of matching it. The big question is how much money the national Republican Party will funnel to Shuler’s opponent.

“I think no matter who our primary voters elect we are going to see the national Republican Party here,” said Robert Danos, the chairman of the Henderson County Republican Party and a Shuler critic.

But Republicans have their eye on taking back many seats in 2010, so competition for national financial backing will be stiff.

“I think the Republican Party will focus first on open seats,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.

Shuler’s seat would likely be a close second in line, however.

“Shuler is a vulnerable Democrat in a district that has shown it will vote for Republicans, so after putting money into open seats, this will be one of the races they look to — especially if the nominee is a candidate the national party thinks will do well,” Cooper said.

The Republican challengers are downplaying the importance of funding in this year’s election.

“It will be incumbent on whoever wins to raise a lot of money, but money alone is not going to do it this year,” said Greg Newman, a candidate from Hendersonville. “The message this year is going to be more important than ever before.”

Fellow candidate Jeff Miller agrees to a point.

“It doesn’t mean you can go in there with $100,0000 and beat Heath Shuler. He is going to dominate airwaves and he is going to dominate mailings,” Miller said.

Only two candidates have paid campaign staffs at this point. Miller and Dan Eichenbaum, who each have three paid staff.

Shuler is not only a multi-millionaire, but has also already amassed a formidable war chest. He had $1.27 million in the hopper as of January before his main fundraising push has even started.

In 2008, Shuler raised $1.67 million but spent less than $800,000 against a comparatively weak opponent in Carl Mumpower.

Coattails effect

Republicans are holding out hope that a national tide will carry them to victory against Shuler.

“I think he is going to be very vulnerable precisely because this election, just like congressional elections across the country, is going to be much more about the national issues than just ‘Do you like the guy,’” said Danos.

But whether the country is headed for a Republican landslide this year that will hurt Shuler is unpredictable for now.

“I think this is definitely going to be a better year for Republicans than it is for Democrats,” Cooper said. “That said, I think where we are really going to see that is with the open seats. Shuler is an incumbent, and for incumbents to lose they pretty much have to shoot themselves in the foot during the election.”

Not just any candidate can ride a Republican tide to defeat Shuler, Miller said.

“I think you are going to have to have the right person,” Miller said.

All candidates agreed on that point, although opinions obviously vary on who that “right” candidate is.

“This race is all about who can beat Shuler,” said Jake Howard, a candidate from Franklin. “If the Republican voters send a neophyte up against Heath Shuler he will eat their lunch.”

The most electable candidate in a general election doesn’t always emerge as the top vote-getter in a primary.

“Only a fraction of the voters are going to get to the polls,” Howard said. “So it is so easy to select the wrong candidate.”

Both years Shuler won — in 2006 and 2008 — were generally good years for Democrats.

“Many people, including a number of Republicans, were angry about things the Bush Administration did a poor job of managing,” Danos said. “But now they see turning the keys over to Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama is much further to the left than many people who voted for Obama expected.”

Painting Shuler into the same corner as Pelosi and Obama is clearly part of the Republican strategy, but it might not be that easy. Shuler voted against the Wall Street bailout, against the auto bailout, against the stimulus bill and against the health care bill.

But Danos said as long as Shuler votes for Pelosi each year to serve as Speaker of the House, he is handing the agenda over to liberal Democrats.

“Shuler talks a good game at home of being a conservative,” Danos said. But in reality, he isn’t as conservative as he makes out to be, Danos said.

Nonetheless, many Democrats are angry with Shuler for being part of the Blue Dog caucus — a band of conservative Democrats who often vote as their own block.

But Cooper doubts that liberal Democrats will be angry enough to vote against Shuler.

“He will still be a better Democrat than a Republican will be,” Cooper said.

It would be too risky for Democrats to oust Shuler and sacrifice the seat to a Republican in the short term in hopes of getting a “real” Democrat to take the seat back two years from now, Cooper said.

“I think people aren’t willing to roll the dice that much,” Cooper said. “I think at the end of the day people vote for the candidate that holds the package of beliefs that are closest to them.”

Most electable?

Six months is a long time in American politics, and no one can predict if the Republican fury will fade or sustain itself. But Dan Eichenbaum, a primary candidate from Murphy, said the movement isn’t going away.

“The direction our country is going is so abhorrent to so many people,” Eichenbaum said.

Eichenbaum is a self-described Tea Party activist.

“I have been rolling up shirtsleeves and getting out my check book since last spring,” Eichenbaum said.

Candidates that cater to purist Republican ideals like Eichenbaum may resonate well in a primary. But the right-leaning base that dominates the polls in the primary may select a candidate that is less electable come the general election.

“In the primary you have to talk to the right, then in the general election move to the center,” said Ed Krause, a candidate from Marion.

But Eichenbaum said he refuses to compromise on his principles to win votes based on his audience.

“That’s what got us in this mess in the first place,” said Eichenbaum, who was at one time a registered Libertarian.

Eichenbaum is one of the leading contenders in the primary. But so is Jeff Miller, who is far more moderate.

Miller doesn’t engage in the level of Democrat bashing that has endeared Eichenbaum to his base.

“We all have a piece of this together,” Miller said of the national crisis.

Miller said his platform will make him a more viable opponent against Shuler come November.

“You have to decide what is going to play the best. The unaffiliated voter is huge in this district,” Miller said.

Especially if winning the general election could require wooing Democrats to break ranks.

“You can’t ignore this Tea Party movement. But I think in the end the established Republican is going to get the nomination and will get the most support from the national party and the voters of the 11th district,” Cooper said.

Unknown faces

Until now, the candidates are largely unknown except within their own counties. No one had true regional name recognition going into the race.

In a territory that spans 15 counties, candidates find themselves criss-crossing Western North Carolina several times a week in the final throws of primary season.

“It is very challenging,” Krause said. “My dogs don’t know who I am.”

Kenny West, who lives in Hayesville, has a long haul to get just about anywhere. He has been averaging 1,700 miles a week campaigning lately.

Newman said candidate forums and debates have been well attended.

“As opposed to a lot of primary election cycles people are very engaged about this particular election,” Newman said. “I believe it is symptomatic of how people feel about the country right now.”

District Court judge candidates who made it past the primary hope the race will become more digestible to voters now that the field has been narrowed down.

Three judge seats are up for election in what is considered a watershed year for the bench. Two seats are being vacated by long-time judges, leaving the races wide open. The third seat has been occupied for less than a year, so the sitting judge doesn’t have an entrenched toehold or incumbent’s advantage, making that seat competitive as well.

But the choices were overwhelming: 10 candidates running for three seats. All the names on the ballot were likely brand-new to those outside the legal arena.

Roy Wijewickrama and Steve Ellis were the top vote-getters in one primary while David Sutton and Kris Earwood got the most votes in the other primary. Incumbent Danya Vanhook will face Donna Forga in the third race.

Based on the numbers, many who passed through the polling booths didn’t vote in the judge race.

“From talking to voters, I hear many of them leave the ballots blank when it comes to judicial races,” said Roy Wijewickrama, one of the winning judge candidates.

“It is the last race people think about and last thing people decide about before they vote,” said Steve Ellis, one of the candidates advancing past the primary.

But it wasn’t from a lack of trying on the candidates’ part.

“We all worked hard for the past two and a half months,” Wijewickrama said.

Kris Earwood, another candidate who will advance, said it would be easier for the candidates to convey their message to voters now that the field has narrowed.

“There were a lot of candidates in this race from a lot of backgrounds and a lot of counties. It will be less stressful to focus on one opponent as opposed to four,” Earwood said.

Earwood said all the candidates worked hard during the primary, and they all got to know each other quite well from constantly running into each other at the same functions and forums, sometimes several times a week. Earwood said the race stayed cordial and pleasant.

“Yesterday everyone said good luck and good race and really meant it. It was a really good experience,” Earwood said.

David Sutton said he was humbled by the support.

“With so many variables at play with five different candidates, I wasn’t sure I would do this well,” Sutton said.

The candidates agree they will now have to redouble efforts through to reach the masses between now and November.

“The people we talked to were very receptive to us, but you can only reach directly a small number of people,” Ellis said. “It will be about letting people know the role of the District Court and what the judges do and then distinguishing ourselves.”

Ellis said the judge’s spent so much time at the same functions and forums, their spouses got to know each other quite well.

District Court Judge

Seat one – top two advance

David Sutton: 6,969

Kristina Earwood: 6,268

Greg Boyer: 3,617

Justin Greene: 3,386

J. Caleb Rogers: 3,222

Seat two – top two advance

Roy Wijewickrama: 8,587

Stephen Ellis: 7,428

Russell McLean: 7,215

*The fall election wil determine just one winner for each seat. A third judge’s seat is also up for election this year, but there were only two candidates running, Donna Forga and Danya Vanhook, both of whom will advance past the primary to square off in November.

A grassroots effort to halt a mine expansion in west Waynesville jumped its first hurdle last week.

Citizens have convinced a state environmental agency that there’s enough community interest over the rock quarry expansion to hold a formal public hearing on the matter.

In April, Harrison Construction Company applied for a state permit from the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources to add about 13 acres to its 302-acre quarry on Allens Creek Road.

The company claims it must expand its gravel mining operations to help repair a slide caused by a wall failure inside its existing pit.

The slide sent a 600-foot slab of rock crashing down at the Waynesville rock quarry, which dislodged 480,000 tons of earth and buried a drilling rig.

“It can’t be left the way it is,” said Don Mason, environmental compliance officer for Harrison. “It has to be repaired ... This expansion is a safety act, not a mining act.”

Harrison says it needs to “back up far enough” to replace the quarry’s sheer face with a terraced-system to prevent future slides. While disturbing nearly 12 out of the 13 acres, Harrison plans to leave a hundred-foot-buffer around the perimeter.

Mason said mining more gravel is essential to repairing the slide.

“Are we going there specifically to mine that section? No,” said Mason. “We’re going there to repair the slide.”

But, residents say bringing the quarry that much closer to their doorstep will heighten health hazards by exposing them to more dust, which can cause extreme respiratory problems and even death. They claim blasting at the quarry already rattles their windows and cracks house foundations and walls.

Noise pollution, environmental damage including possible water pollution, and harm to property values are other objections to the expansion.

Mason retorted that the mine complies with strict state and federal regulations, and has never received complaints about structural problems. In reality, DENR records show there has been at least one complaint regarding cracks in a nearby house’s foundation and driveway retaining wall, which may have been caused by blasting.

Resident Nancy McGurdy said she built a cabin only 10 years ago near the quarry, and she’s already discovered a crack in her basement floor.

A petition that is being circulated states that the quarry creates undesirable living conditions for both humans and animals and destroys the natural beauty of the mountains, which is extremely important to residents, tourists, and the local economy.

“You can grow another tree, but you cannot grow another mountain,” said resident John Willis.

Public uproar

According to Judy Wehner, assistant state mining specialist with DENR, the fate of most mining permit applications are decided without a public hearing.

In this case, residents have gathered nearly 200 signatures protesting the mine expansion and demanding a public hearing. It held two community meetings, and solicited support from county commissioners, U.S. Congressman Heath Shuler, Governor Bev Purdue, and at least three state legislators.

More than 30 nearby residents appeared at a recent county board meeting, convincing commissioners to send a letter to DENR requesting a public hearing.

Many at the meeting complained that DENR sent out only six letters informing residents about the permit application, though the state agency was following policy, which states that only those who live 1,000 feet from the affected area must be notified.

“That’s spelled out in the law,” said Wehner.

Public interest turned out to exceed six families, however.

Michael Rogers has lived near the mine for more than 50 years, but this is the first and only time he’s ever been notified by DENR about a potential expansion. Rogers said the state agency would hardly receive the “significant public input” that’s required to hold a public hearing from the six families that were notified.

So he and his neighbors spearheaded an effort to stop Harrison Construction Company in its tracks.

“I know Harrison Construction has an interest in mining gravel, but I think they’ve disturbed enough of the mountain,” said Rogers.

Health concerns are especially significant for Rogers. His neighbor’s three grandchildren all have serious cases of asthma and must regularly go on antibiotics to cure their earaches.

Rogers recalled driving home one day and thinking the mountain was on fire when it was actually dust from rock near the quarry. “It matters which way the wind is blowing,” said Rogers. “It pushes it all right over us.”

Another concern for Rogers is seeing the quarry come as close as four feet to the springhead he shares with two other families.

“If we lose our wells and springs, how are we going to get back drinking water for our property?” asked Rogers.

According to Rogers, three residents have already signed up to file class action suits against Harrison Construction Company, due to mica from dust allegedly killing a family member.

He said he and his neighbors, too, are unafraid to take legal recourse if necessary.

Rogers has little sympathy for Harrison’s claim that it must repair a slide on its property.

“If they’ve had a failure, it ain’t anybody’s fault but their own,” said Rogers. “I think it’s just poor mining practices.”

According to Mason, the slide was caused by a fault in the foundation, which caused a section of the high-wall to fail.

Mason said he has the support of geologists from the state and federal governments when it comes to expanding the mine. He said he invited the neighborhood to attend a question and answer session last week but only four neighbors showed up.

“The information on all this is readily available,” said Mason, adding that few have taken up the company on its offer.

But Rogers said he and his neighbors have contacted Harrison Construction in the past and voiced concerns about the quarry and previous expansions, but they received little attention from the company. This time, they changed strategy and decided to go straight to DENR instead.

The neighborhood group said it would hand out flyers on Election Day to educate the community. It plans to meet again at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 13, at the Grandview Lodge in Waynesville.

After three straight match-ups with the same Republican challenger, Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, will face a new opponent on the Republican side of the ticket this year.

Ralph Hise, the mayor of Spruce Pine, narrowly beat out two other challengers in the Republican primary for state senate and will take on Queen in the fall. The sprawling mountain district spans six counties, stretching from Haywood up to Mitchell and back down to McDowell, forming a horseshoe.

Queen has served in the state Senate since 2002, taking a two-year break after losing the seat in 2004, but reclaiming it again in 2006. For years, Queen faced off against the same opponent, Keith Presnell of Yancey County, over and over — in 2004, 2006 and 2008. The only year Queen lost in 2004 was marked by Republican sentiment in favor of Bush, a presidential coattails effect that spilled its influence onto state races as well. Years Queen won were all good years for Democrats.

Given the fickle nature of the seat, if a Republican tide manifests this November it could help Hise and hurt Queen.

A 33-year-old native of Mitchell County, Hise would be the youngest member serving in the state Senate. He is already serving his second term as Spruce Pine mayor.

Mitchell County leans heavily Republican, a territory where Queen picked up few votes anyway.

The second runner up, Andy Webb, who trailed by just a slim margin of votes, was from McDowell County, which could have proved more formidable for Queen.

McDowell is the quintessential battleground county. It leans neither Republican nor Democrat, and neither Queen nor his opponents have ever had a home advantage there.

McDowell has been the only “swing” county in the race in past years, but had a candidate from McDowell been on the ballot, it could have proved challenging for Queen.

The toss-up nature of the district required a large and expensive campaign on Queen’s part, spending around $800,000 the past two elections. In his home county of Haywood, Queen took 64 percent of the votes in 2008, and won the district by 54 percent. He took four of the six counties that comprise the district — a marked improvement compared to past victories narrowly eked out.

The six counties comprising the district have markedly different leanings. In Avery and Mitchell, Republicans out number registered Democrats by 8 to 1. It means Queen has to win big in Haywood, his home county, to make up for the known losses to the north.

Queen supporters believe he can pull off a win.

“All his races are tough,” said Chuck Dixon, a Waynesville Democrat and Queen supporter, citing the nature of the district. “He has to work hard for all his votes.”

Dixon said the district is oddly drawn. The state legislature will redraw election district boundaries this term, however, so the party that wins usually gets to draw district lines to its own advantage.

N.C. Senate, 47th district

Republican – one advances

Ralph Hise: 4,965

Andy Webb: 4,610

Tamera Frank: 4,328

*Winner faces off against Democratic Sen. Joe Sam Queen in the fall.  

N.C. Senate, 50th district

Republican – one advances

Jim Davis: 5,467

Jimmy Goodman: 3,542

*Winner faces Democratic Sen. John Snow in the fall.

Republicans faced a major decision in the primary election: who is the best man to go head to head with Congressman Heath Shuler come fall?

The two front-runners going into election day came from opposite sides of the conservative spectrum: Dan Eichenbaum, a Tea Party activist at one end, and Jeff Miller, a more moderate small businessman at the other.

Ultimately, Republicans chose Miller — the more moderate of the two — as their man.

Miller, 55, is the owner of a dry-cleaning business in Hendersonville with 24 employees. He is well known for founding Honor Air, a program that charters airplanes to bring groups of WWII veterans to Washington, D.C., at no cost to see the WWII monument before they die. Hundreds of veterans from WNC have flown to D.C. with Honor Air. Rotary Clubs across the region have partnered with Miller as sponsors of the program to fund the charter jets and provide chaperone escorts for the elderly veterans during the trip.

With 40.15 percent of the vote, Miller barely eked out enough to avoid a primary runoff. If no candidate garners more than 40 percent of the vote, the top two voter-getters face off in a second election.

Eichenbaum, 67, an ophthalmologist in Murphy, had a strong grassroots army, drawing from the ranks of Tea Party members. At debates, he always won straw polls among audience members.

“He is a strong advocate of the Constitution,” said Bill Sterrett, who was volunteering at the polls for Eichenbaum in Waynesville Tuesday. “That’s important. There’s been too much concentration over the years with political parties. We need to get back to being Americans and solving problems.”

Heather Koonts, a Republican from Cullowhee and mother of two, voted for Eichenbaum. Eichenbaum’s strong conservative values and philosophy of limited government appealed to her, she said it an exit poll interview.

While Eichenbaum polled well among the disaffected ranks of conservatives, some voters may have questioned his electability come fall.

Eichenbaum was formerly registered Libertarian and could quote chapter and verse of the Federalist Papers. While he was the darling of the Tea Party movement, he may have been unable to court moderate voters needed to win in a general election against Shuler.

Republicans hope 2010 will be their year to reclaim the congressional seat representing Western North Carolina — a seat they had long held but was wrested away in 2006 by political newcomer and football star Congressman Heath Shuler.

Republicans are holding out hope that a national tide will carry them to victory against Shuler. But six months is a long time in American politics and no one can predict if the Republican fury will fade or sustain itself — or whether it could touch Shuler. Both years Shuler won — in 2006 and 2008 — were generally good years for Democrats.

Another major story in the congressional race is how poorly Shuler did among Democrats, many of whom punished Shuler at the polls for his conservative leanings. Aixa Wilson, a relatively unknown candidate from Asheville, pulled down nearly 40 percent of the primary vote. Wilson actually won in Buncombe County, the most liberal county in the region.

Democratic voters interviewed at the polls chastised Shuler for voting against Democratic initiatives.

“He stood against his party on important issues,” Mark Lancaster, a 32-year-old Waynesville Democrat, said in an exit poll interview.

Vangie Stephens, a Democrat with Sylva, is a self-described liberal was particularly upset by Shuler’s vote against health care reform. Stephens said there are a lot of poor people in the region who need help.

Gloria Nicholson, Republican voter from Waynesville, said she liked Shuler as much as any of the Republican candidates.

“We just wish Shuler was running on the Republican side,” Nicholson said.

U.S. Congress

Republican – one advances

Jeff Miller: 14,386

Dan Eichenbaum: 12,183

Gregory Newman: 4,180

Kenny West: 2,809

Ed Krause: 1,455

James Howard: 820

Democrat – one advances

Heath Shuler: 26,809

Aixa Wilson: 16,729

Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park in Maggie Valley will emerge from bankruptcy under a new corporate structure.

One of the current owners has agreed to put up $7 million to buy the park. It’s not nearly enough to cover the $13.5 million in debt the park has. The rest of the park’s debt will be wiped clean, allowing the new corporate entity to start over with a fresh slate free and clear of old debt.

The deal was approved by the federal bankruptcy court on Tuesday (May 5), saving the park from certain foreclosure.

The deal turns over ownership of the park to a new corporate entity called American Heritage Family Parks, which was formed less than a month ago by Al Harper, who incidentally is one of Ghost Town’s current owners and primary investors. Harper is also the principal owner of the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad in Bryson City, and another excursion railroad in Durango, Colo.

Harper is one of three partners that chipped in to buy Ghost Town in 2006, but is the only one emerging with an ownership stake under the new entity. CEO Steve Shiver, who will remain at the helm as day-to-day operations manager, hopes the park will open for the season by July 1.

Shiver called a meeting of Maggie Valley business owners on Monday to share details of the plan and answer questions. He acknowledged that the outcome isn’t ideal but is the best option on the table.

“There are some of us in the room that if the plan is allowed to move forward would lose a substantial amount of money, but it would allow Ghost Town to open,” Shiver said. The deal was indeed approved the next day by the bankruptcy court.

The alternative was foreclosure, which was scheduled for the end of the month if Harper’s deal didn’t go through. Ghost Town would have been auctioned off to the highest bidder. Whether there were interested buyers waiting in the wings — particularly one willing to pay more than $7 million — will remain a mystery. But Ghost Town’s supporters feared no one else would be willing to keep operating it as an amusement park.

“I don’t see anybody else stepping forward,” said Randy Bryan, a Ghost Town employee and supporter.

Ghost Town faced a perfect storm that knocked it off its feet in 2008. The nation was beset by a recession, gas prices soared, and vacation travel plummeted.

Shiver estimates that the park needs 150,000 visitors a year to be profitable. But the park only had 129,000 visitors in 2008 and 71,000 in 2009, he said. The park lost money both years.

After a 40-year run, the park had been shut down for five years until new owners came along in 2006 to resurrect it.

But they discovered the infrastructure of the 1960s-era theme park was decrepit, requiring an unexpected and substantial burn of capital to make repairs and upgrades.

“We have done our damn best,” Shiver said of the park’s struggles. “It has been a challenge to say the least.”

Who loses

Those left holding the bag under the new deal are numerous, from local business owners owed money to mudslide victims — even town and federal taxpayers will cough up money due to Ghost Town’s failings.

First come the more than 200 businesses collectively owed more than $2.5 million who will never see their money. The list includes local plumbers, electricians, contractors, building suppliers, and vendors of everything from fuel oil to advertising.

“It is very difficult for me personally to look someone in the eye I owe money to,” Shiver said. “But we have to more forward and open the park. That is our vindication.”

Shiver said the businesses aren’t the only ones not getting paid.

“Nor do any of the investors, nor do any of the bondholders. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles in the bankruptcy world,” Shiver said.

Shiver said he’s one of the losers in that sense. While he will keep his job as CEO of the park, he will no longer have an ownership stake to show for the investment he’s made, Shiver said.

“I am wiped out like everybody else,” Shiver said. “I lose a substantial amount of money. I make no bones about it. Millions.”

While some of the businesses left out in the cold by the deal may harbor ill will, locals who invested their money in Ghost Town say they aren’t angry.

“You have never heard me say a word about losing the money,” Brenda O’Keefe told Shiver at the meeting. “I want the park open. I want the park open for Maggie Valley. The poor guy who gave his 401K, now that’s a different story.”

That guy, however — Ghost Town employee Randy Bryan — said he isn’t mad either. He cashed in his 401K of more than $200,000 to invest in the park — money that he will now lose. But Bryan said his satisfaction is to see the park keep going.

“If I was ever going to give up on something, this would have been it. But I refuse to quit. I refuse to lose,” Bryan said. “I believe too much in it.”

Alaska Pressley, another Maggie Valley resident who invested a substantial sum, said she has no ill will either. Her only desire is to see Maggie Valley prosper, and the way to prosperity is through Ghost Town’s survival, she said. Pressley said she was happy to contribute to that.

“Any price is worth it to help our area,” Pressley said.

Federal taxpayers could be left holding the bag on $2.5 million of Ghost Town’s bad debt still owed to BB&T but backed by a federal loan guarantee. Ghost Town owes BB&T $9.5 million on a mortgage dating back to 2006. But only $7 million will be paid off under the current deal with Harper. The U.S. Rural Development agency had backed a portion of the loan back in 2006. The loan guarantee was intended to convince BB&T to underwrite the purchase of Ghost Town, which was otherwise considered a risky loan to make.

The U.S. Rural Development staff that made the loan guarantee wouldn’t reveal the terms — namely how much federal taxpayers may have to cough up. Richard Tucker of the commercial credit department with BB&T would not say either, citing “financial privacy,” and adding that the loan guarantee was between BB&T and the Rural Devleopment office, despite the fact that the public would be the one paying up.

And then there’s the mudslide.

Taxpayers with the town of Maggie Valley will foot at least $25,000 of the bill for the clean up and stabilization, and possibly more if costs exceed initial estimates.

Homeowners downhill of the mudslide may also be without recourse for damage to their property. (see article above).

Who wins?

Business owners in Maggie Valley seem to be pleased with just about any scenario that means Ghost Town will remain an amusement park and hopefully open sometime this summer.

“It’s a great day for Maggie,” Mayor Roger McElroy said. “The only thing I feel sorry about is anybody who is going to lose any money in the deal.”

Ghost Town today is nothing like its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when more than 250,000 people a year funneled through Maggie Valley. But it is still a tour de force when it comes to filling motel rooms in the valley, according to Larry Debuke, owner of Tanglewood Motel for 14 years.

The county and town of Maggie Valley will also finally get their taxes. Ghost Town owes $65,000 in town and county property taxes from 2008, which will be paid when the deal goes through, and another $75,000 in property taxes from 2009, which is supposed to get paid as well.

Ghost Town in the Sky failed to make timely payments on its liability insurance policy, and as a result it lapsed just days before a massive mudslide originating from the theme park wreaked havoc on the mountainside below.

Now, property owners downhill of the mudslide whose homes were damaged may have no recourse to pay for repairs to their homes.

It is unwelcome news, although not surprising, to Kurt Biedler, a homeowner in the path of the slide whose home is now unlivable.

“We are victims of shabby business,” Biedler said. “Ghost Town is the Sky has effectively turned my life upside down and it is a very difficult thing for anyone to put with. It is not an easy thing knowing that a company, whether it is bankrupt or not, has been allowed to pull the shenanigans they have.”

Biedler and his wife have a mortgage on a house that has been destroyed. They say they are innocent victims with no clear or obvious path for recourse. But that isn’t going to stop Biedler from trying.

“We are still exploring our options of what we are going to do. There are always options,” Biedler said.

Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver and others knew almost a year before the mudslide that the mountain was unstable. Ghost Town hired an engineer to examine the slumping portion of the mountainside in early 2009. The report calls into question the structural integrity of a massive series of retaining walls holding back a section of the mountainside that had proved troublesome on and off for 30 years.

“The MSE wall is not functioning as intended at this time and structural failure of the wall is possible if not replaced,” the report by Haywood County engineer Pat Burgin states.

The report was made in March 2009. However, Ghost Town owners failed to alert anyone of the potential danger — not the town, county, emergency agencies or homeowners living below.

Insurance saga

Ghost Town was three months behind in liability insurance payments when a cancelation was issued on Jan. 28.

The mudslide happened on Feb. 5. Five days later, on Feb. 10, Ghost Town wired $27,400 to cover the past due bill. Insurance was reinstated, but it was too late to cover damages stemming from the mudslide, the insurance company contends.

The insurance company, First Mercury Insurance, has been contacted by three homeowners suffering damage in the mudslide, according to the company. But First Mercury says it will not cover the claims, citing a lapse of Ghost Town’s liability insurance policy at the time of the slide.

“Some homes were in the direct path of the landslide and certain homeowners appear to be pursuing claims against Ghost Town for damages,” an attorney for First Mercury wrote in a federal bankruptcy court filing. “First Mercury contends that it has no duty to defend or indemnify any claims that may arise from the landslide because the policy was cancelled prior to the landslide, and therefore does not afford any coverage.”

Homeowners could redirect their claims and lodge them against Ghost Town directly instead of the insurance company, but First Mercury admits in the court filing that route could be futile, stating there is “little to no likelihood of recovering anything from (Ghost Town) itself.”

Ghost Town has been in federal bankruptcy court for more than a year. This week, Ghost Town brokered a deal to sell the amusement park to one of its current owners, but under a new corporate entity — walking away from several million in debt in the process and starting over with a clean slate.

The former corporate entity of Ghost Town may cease to exist once the new corporate structure takes over. The new entity, while comprised of the same major player, may not be responsible for claims against the old corporate entity.

It’s the same principle that allows the amusement park to leave behind millions in unpaid debt while the primary owner remains at the helm.

First Mercury Insurance points out in its court filings that Ghost Town may not be liable for damage claims anyway. Lawsuits would have to hash out whether Ghost Town is at fault for the slide before the insurance company would have forked over damages under the policy, even if it was valid.

When The Smoky Mountain News first reported on Ghost Town’s insurance lapse two months ago, Ghost Town partners insisted their coverage had never lapsed. Failure to keep insurance current is a violation of bankruptcy rules.

Ghost Town has not filed a response to the court filing of First Mercury outlining issues with the insurance coverage.

As Al Harper watched the national recession undermine ticket sales at Ghost Town amusement park over the past two years, he faced a tough choice: pump more money into the faltering theme park or throw in the towel?

Walking away would mean losing the millions he already invested. But investing more could mean throwing good money after bad, with no hope of recouping any of it at the end of the day.

Harper ultimately drew his inspiration from a favorite historical visionary.

“It is kind of fun to do the impossible,” Harper said, quoting the words of Walt Disney, which are inscribed on a plaque he keeps on his desk.

Harper, the 65-year-old owner of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad and scenic rail lines in Colorado and Texas, wants to revive the bankrupt and beleaguered Maggie Valley theme park.

Harper has been a major backer of Ghost Town since 2006, but he shared ownership with other partners and investors. Under Harper’s rescue plan, he will pay off $7 million of the park’s $13 million in debt — and emerge as the sole owner of the park in exchange.

The host of other investors will be cut out and their equity in the park simply evaporate.

“I have lost a lot of money. You have no idea,” said Steve Nichols, an investor from Orlando. “It totally ruined my life.”

Harper will also walk away from more than $5 million in back debt — including hundreds of thousands owed to local businesses, from electricians and plumbers to gas companies and media outlets — which will be wiped away by the bankruptcy court.

Despite the financial carnage in its wake, Ghost Town would avoid the uncertain fate of foreclosure and emerge from bankruptcy with a leader at the helm determined to resurrect the Old West theme park.

“I believe if there is anybody that can pull it off and can keep it as a theme park it is me,” Harper said.

To fund the deal, Harper has lined up a loan with an offshore lender. He said he is “90 percent positive” the loan will come through, hopefully by early June. The Greek financial crisis has come at a bad time, however, and Harper hopes it doesn’t make the lenders nervous.

Harper is putting up the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad as collateral, pledging 100 percent of the railroad’s ownership in exchange for a $15 million loan.

“I am gambling my railroad,” Harper said.

Half the money would be used to buy the park out of bankruptcy, and the other half would sustain operations and bankroll improvements to the park until it begins turning a profit. Harper has built in losses for the first three years, though he hopes to turn it around quicker.

The plan has been approved by the bankruptcy court. All the deal waits on now is the loan to close.

When Ghost Town was put up for sale several years ago, Harper was courted by tourism leaders in the region. Harper originally hoped to be a silent partner with a limited investment.

But the other two partners were unable to raise the cash they promised, and Harper was being pressured to put up more money, he said.

“Right at the beginning they were $2 million short. They said ‘Would you co-sign with us?’” Harper said.

The pattern continued over the next two years as the park struggled to get off the ground and stay afloat.

“I didn’t want to lose the $2 million, so I put in more,” Harper said.

Similar cash calls went out to all the shareholders and investors, but Harper’s deeper pockets left him as the last man standing when the need arose to pitch in more, he said.

Harper ultimately found himself in for more than $4.5 million in loan guarantees — which he is now on the hook for if the park goes under. It’s partly what motivated his plan to buy the park out of bankruptcy.

“Here are my choices. I can forget Ghost Town and write a check for $4.5 million and never look back. Or I can go in and try in this crazy economy to buy Ghost Town,” Harper said. “The easy way out is to walk.

“But this is a lot deeper than that,” said Harper. “My name got attached to it.”

A lot to lose

Several Maggie business leaders are among the ranks of those who will lose shares in the park, but those interviewed for an article last week don’t see their investments as being for naught. As long as Ghost Town continues to operate and bring in tourists, they believe their contribution helped the greater community, even if they personally have nothing to show for it.

A handful of investors from out of state who put up capital for the park’s purchase in 2006 are not feeling so rosy by what they see as an end-run by Harper. But they are helpless to do anything about it.

“I don’t think there is anything I can do other than write it off as a bad investment,” said Court Huish, an investor from California. “That’s just business.”

Jeff Anderson, an investor from Florida, will lose a substantial six-figure investment.

“I am not happy with what has transpired, but it is what it is. The bankruptcy court is the bankruptcy court,” Anderson said.

Nichols not only stands to lose his six-figure investment as a shareholder, but he is also on the hook for a portion of the park’s mortgage, a portion of which he personally guaranteed.

Ghost Town took out a loan of $9.5 million with BB&T in 2006. Harper’s deal will only pay off $7 million — leaving BB&T short by $2.5 million. Naturally, BB&T is coming after Nichols to make good on the portion he signed a personal guarantee for. Nichols wouldn’t say for just how much.

“The nail is in the coffin. They may as well throw the dirt on,” Nichols said.

Nichols said the owners kept returning to investors asking them to put up more to keep the park afloat, but he didn’t have any more.

“It’s not that we don’t care,” Nichols said. “I think Ghost Town is a wonderful place, but if you haven’t got the money you haven’t got the money.”

Besides, the shareholders weren’t given a say in park operations, like the large amount of the money spent on upgrades the first two years after reopening. The 1960s-era amusement park was plagued by crumbling infrastructure, from a jury-rigged electrical system to malfunctioning rides. Putting the park in order required a “big capital burn” and dug a hole it couldn’t emerge from, Nichols said.

“I think they tried to fix too many things too fast instead of little by little,” Nichols said.

Anderson agreed, to a point.

“To suggest the sole reason for the failure of the park to perform was because of the capital over-expenditure is ridiculous. As with everything that fails, there is not one reason, there is multiple,” Anderson said.

Nichols said the park has the potential to make money, but luring visitors was ultimately the main challenge.

“If you don’t have enough people coming, what are you going to do? It’s Business 101,” Nichols said.

Particularly in the days of Six Flags, Busch Gardens and Carowinds.

“That stuff wasn’t there back in the 1970s,” Nichols said.

Harper estimates it will take 150,000 visitors a year to make the park profitable. It brought in just 71,000 last year while suffering from the negative publicity of bankruptcy and spending no money on advertising.

As a sole owner, Harper said he will have the control he needs to make the park work — control he didn’t have under the old entity. Harper points to his success with the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, even during the recession.

“My worst year ever I put 150,000 people on a train,” Harper said. Harper plans to cross-market with the railroad to send visitors Ghost Town’s way. He will also combine functions like payroll, accounting and ticket sales, saving hundreds of thousands, he said.

Huish, Nichols and Anderson say they were not properly kept apprised of unfolding events, like Harper’s bid to buy the park.

All three were all brought to the table as investors by Hank Woodburn, one of the lead buyers in 2006. Woodburn comes from the amusement industry, operating a network of 10 fun parks with water parks, mini golf, laser tag, go-carts and the like under the company Adventure Landing. Woodburn also recruited Harper to the deal.

Woodburn, who will lose substantially in the deal, did not return messages.

Moving on

Harper doesn’t see his deal as ruthless. The alternative was foreclosure, and under that scenario, the investors would likewise lose all their money and the small businesses still would go unpaid. Under Harper’s plan, at least Ghost Town has a shot at staying an amusement park.

Harper could theoretically use part of the $15 million loan he is taking out to pay back those left holding the bag. But divesting the park of its old debt is key to Harper’s business plan.

“I can’t pay for all the mistakes that happened in the past,” Harper said. “It is a tragedy that it ended up like it ended up.”

Harper said he is not exactly a winner in whole deal. He’s taking on a major new venture at the age of 65 — a defensive but risky strategy to protect the investment he already sunk into the park. In addition to the $7 million Harper will pay for the BB&T bank mortgage, he is on the hook for $2 million on an outside loan to fund improvements at the park that he co-signed for — which must be paid separately.

“I could take the approach I was a victim. But the world is full of victims,” Harper said. “I made mistakes, so I am going to correct them. I am going to make this thing work. We have got to move forward and get this past behind us.”

Getting the park open

A deal to bail Ghost Town out of bankruptcy court is contingent on a loan from an offshore lender.

If it goes through, the park could be open by the beginning of July, according to Ghost Town’s CEO Steve Shiver. Shiver told a group of business owners last week that there is a lot to do to get the park open for the season. Once the loan comes through, work can begin.

Workers must be hired and trained to run the park, but the biggest challenge will be getting the grounds, rides and facilities ready. Shiver laid out a long list of needed repairs, including replacing water pipes that froze and broke over the winter and two broken water pumps that move water around the mountaintop. Winter even took its toll on the rides, some of which need retrofitting now, Shiver said. The major rollercoaster, which opened only for a short time last season, has inspection hurdles to pass once more.

One issue to contend with will be nearly $400,000 in debt from 2009. The long list includes paying off at least $30,000 in utility bills from 2009 to get water and power restored.

It is also unclear whether the park could reopen until the mountainside below, which was destabilized by a mudslide, is shored up.

Stonewall Packaging, a cardboard plant in Sylva, laid off 43 workers last week and shut down operations after coming on line just a few months earlier.

Stonewall Packaging was a venture of Jackson Paper, also a cardboard plant in Sylva, which employs 120 people. Jobs at Jackson Paper are safe, according to the company.

The closing of Stonewall has less to do with the economy and more to do with a stroke of bad luck. When Jackson Paper launched Stonewall, it secured commitments from box companies pledging to buy its cardboard. One of those that pledged to buy a large volume fell through, however. Stonewall was unable to find a new buyer for the corrugated cardboard sheets being churned out.

The cardboard industry is consolidating, with a smaller number of larger companies dominating sales — making it harder for ventures like Stonewall to find a seat at the table.

The Stonewall plant was built last year at a cost of $17 million. The closure is “very disappointing,” according to company officials.

“This is not the outcome that we had hoped for with our investment in Stonewall, and we did everything within our power to prevent it,” Jackson Paper President Tim Campbell said.

The fate of the new facility — whether it will be sold or kept in hopes of one day ramping up again — is unknown at this time, according to company officials.

Stonewall Packaging had been offered both state and county incentives in exchange for job creation and the capital expansion. The state agreed to give the plant $200,000, but had yet to award the money. Jackson County offered Stonewall Packaging a property tax break of up to $1.3 million during the next several years, but it was contingent on the creation of jobs.

What was Stonewall?

Jackson Paper’s official role in Stonewall is that of an investor, although the two plants had a symbiotic relationship. Stonewall was an attempt at vertical integration by Jackson Paper, which makes the wavy middle layer found in corrugated cardboard.

Making a cardboard box is a four-step process. Each step is carried out by a different plant: one to make the wavy middle layer, one to make the outer layers, one to sandwich them together, and one to cut and fold the sheets into finished boxes.

With the cardboard box industry consolidating into the hands of larger plants, Campbell feared the chain his niche product relied on would prove too fragile. Jackson Paper would find an increasingly limited number of buyers for its wavy middle layer of cardboard.

Enter Stonewall.

Stonewall would buy the wavy middle layer produced by Jackson Paper, buy the outer layer from other plants, and sandwich them together to make sheets of corrugated cardboard on site. The venture would secure a stable buyer for Jackson Paper’s product.

Unfortunately, that model collapsed when a box company lined up to buy the cardboard did not uphold its commitment.

Jackson Paper has found buyers to pick up the slack now that it can’t sell its product to Stonewall.

“Operations at Jackson Paper are strong and expected to remain so,” Campbell said. “Jackson Paper has been able to replace those orders lost in the Stonewall shutdown with orders from other customers.”

But that doesn’t blunt the disappointment both managers and employees have over the fate of Stonewall, Campbell said.

“This is a terrible situation for the dedicated and hardworking employees of Stonewall Packaging. Our thoughts and prayers are with them during this difficult time, and we will do everything possible to support those affected,” Campbell said.

Angel Medical Center in Franklin may soon come under the wing of Mission Hospital in Asheville.

Smaller, rural hospitals are increasingly forging partnerships with larger hospitals as it becomes tougher financially to go it alone. Angel’s 15-member hospital board unanimously voted to explore an affiliation with Mission for both financial reasons and in hopes of improving health care in the community.

“There is no question there are some financial advantages,” said Angel CEO Tim Hubbs. Particularly when it comes to economies of scale when ordering supplies and negotiating purchase contracts.

“They have more negotiating power than us. We are one-twentieth of their size,” Hubbs said.

Mission brings in more than $1 billion in net patient revenue a year and has 800 doctors that practice there. Angel has 41 physicians and averages about 15 patients staying each night in the hospital

Medical care for people in Macon County could also benefit, Hubbs said. Doctors would have the benefit of consulting with specialists over cases and diagnosis. Ideally, doctors from Mission in more specialized fields would be willing to hold office hours in Franklin certain days of the month, helping patients who now have to travel out of the county. Hubbs said Mission won’t try to compete with established practices in Franklin, and would only make forays into specialties that Macon County doesn’t have the patient base to support.

Last year, Haywood Regional Medical Center joined forces with WestCare hospitals in Sylva and Bryson City. The trio then entered a management contract with Carolinas HealthCare System, a massive conglomerate based in Charlotte with 32 hospitals under its umbrella.

Two years ago, that number was just 22 — showing just how rapidly rural hospitals are affiliating with bigger institutions.

Mission, meanwhile, has partnerships with the hospitals in Spruce Pine and McDowell County. The hospital in Brevard is exploring an affiliation with Mission as well.

Hubbs said the Angel hospital board feels Mission is a better fit than jumping on board with WestCare and Haywood. Hubbs said Angel has a long-standing relationship with Mission already, and Mission has continually broached the subject of an affiliation with Angel over the years.

Mission vied for an affiliation with WestCare and Haywood but was beat out by Carolinas. That makes Angel all the more important strategically for Mission as it aims to transition from its reputation as the go-to regional hospital for advanced procedures to a flagship institution at the head of a regional network.

“I know they would love to see other hospitals in the region join them as well,” Hubbs said. “I think they have to figure out what they can bring to the table.”

Mission was too close for comfort for many Haywood physicians, who felt the proximity makes Mission more of a competitor than potential partner. Franklin physicians could feel the same way toward WestCare. Several medical practices in Sylva have satellite offices in Franklin, capturing patients who are then seen at Harris instead of Angel.

Hubbs said the presence of Sylva-base physicians in Franklin has been mutually beneficial in ways, however.

“WestCare over the years has provided office space over here to give their physicians fuller practices, and we also had some weak spots in terms of physicians in our own community,” Hubbs said.

An affiliation with Mission could take many forms, from an outright sale of the hospital at one end of the spectrum to a management contract on the other. Hubbs envisions something in the middle, with some level of shared ownership yet a measure of local autonomy.

“We wouldn’t want Mission to be able to control all things,” Hubbs said.

Hubbs said Angel Medical Center has lost money the past two years, though he would not share hard numbers. The hospital’s financial statements are private.

The loss is largely due to upfront costs of new equipment and recruiting new doctors, both of which will reap benefits down the road.

“We have been making heavy investments in the future,” Hubbs said.

The cause of a fish kill on an isolated stretch of Jonathan Creek in Maggie Valley last Saturday is eluding environmental agencies and will likely remain a mystery.

A number of trout, from fingerlings to foot-long fish, turned up dead on Jonathan Creek near the confluence with Evans Cove branch in the middle of Maggie Valley.

The exact number has not been confirmed.

“I have estimates that are all over the place,” said Roger Edwards, regional supervisor of the surface water quality branch of the state Division of Water Quality.

The dead fish floating in the water were so visible it even triggered 911 calls.

Jonathan Creek is a source of drinking water for customers of the Maggie Valley Sanitary District. But whatever caused the fish kill did not jeopardize the public water source, according to Neil Carpenter, director of the Maggie water agency. Both water intakes are safely a mile and half upstream from the site of the dead fish.

“As a precaution, we sent our crews to both areas and walked the stream looking. We went a half mile above each intake and walked the stream banks and saw nothing,” Carpenter said.

While Division of Water Quality was alerted when dead fish started turning up Saturday afternoon, no one with the agency made an appearance until Monday. The nearly 48-hour lag time means anything in the water that may have contributed to the fish kill was long gone downstream. But for good measure, field teams took water samples to test things like pH and oxygen levels anyway. They did not do any biological sampling to see what kind of aquatic critters were present.

The tissue of the dead fish is not likely to unlock any secrets. For toxins to show up in tissue, fish would have to be exposed to it over a prolonged period, Edwards said.

In this case, Edwards believes there was an “isolated incident” that caused the fish kill, since the dead fish showed up during a finite window of time and a fairly short stretch of the creek.

Fish kills during summer, and especially during a summer drought, can occur when low creek levels combine with high temperatures to deplete oxygen in the water. But Edwards has ruled out that cause in this case. He doesn’t think it was sediment plume either, as that would have been visible and easy to trace to its source by eyewitnesses.

With more unaffiliated candidates running for office this year, political party leaders are torn over whether to open their doors to those who won’t declare party affiliation as either  Democrat or Republican.

In Jackson County, three unaffiliated candidates will be on the ballot this fall: one for sheriff, one for county commissioner chairman and one for District Court judge. The Jackson County Democratic Party has barred them from attending candidate meet-and-greets hosted by the party.

“It is not right for the Democratic Party to support a Republican or unaffiliated candidate when there is a Democratic candidate on the ballot,” said Kirk Stephens, chair of the Jackson County Democratic Party. “The role of the party organization is to support and elect Democratic candidates, so why would we stray from that?”

Kris Earwood, a candidate running for District Court judge, said she was disappointed to be barred from the meet-and-greet. Judge races are nonpartisan — meaning that even though candidates might subscribe to one party or the other when it comes to their voter registration, party affiliation isn’t listed on the ballot as it is with most races.

Stephens said some of the other candidates running for judge have been active in the party, and that it would be unfair to give those with no affiliation or involvement in the party equal access to the Democratic voter base.

Stephens said opening the doors to other candidates would actually violate the party’s national bylaws, which stipulate that party leaders can be removed for supporting a candidate of another political party.

But that hasn’t stopped party leaders in other counties. Earwood has attended both Democratic and Republican party events in other places.

“Most of them have looked at independents not as an opposing party,” Earwood said. “I have been allowed to come to things for the simple reason that both parties are realizing they are going to have to deal with the independents.”

Earwood’s opponent for the seat, David Sutton, is a registered Democrat but he has been allowed to attend meet-and-greets hosted by Republican Party in Haywood, Jackson and Macon counties — since the race is technically nonpartisan. He was barred from attending the annual convention of the Republican Party in Swain and Macon, however.

As a Democrat, Sutton has actively tapped the organized party structure to connect with voters.

“It is important to the extent that it makes networking easier,” Sutton said. “It has definitely been helpful.”

Earwood said that she was warned by politicos that her lack of party affiliation would hurt her in the race, especially when it came to campaigning.

“I was told that an independent could not win in Western North Carolina,” Earwood said. “Across the board, people told me I needed to change my party affiliation, and I felt like that was disingenuous.”

Earwood said she doesn’t think the average voter cares. In fact, the number of voters registered as unaffiliated is growing by leaps and bounds, so it may even be an asset.

“It has upset me at times when I’ve been treated ungraciously because of my independent status. But for a judicial race it should be based on the person and their career rather than what their party affiliation is,” Earwood said.

Earwood said party affiliation doesn’t factor into the job of District Court judge — witnessed by the state designating judge races as nonpartisan.

“We don’t do any policy,” Earwood said.

But Stephens said it does matter.

“Being a Democrat is not a check box on paper. It is a lifestyle. It is a philosophical way of approaching and viewing your surroundings and your community,” Stephens said. “It is important for us as a party that we have judges that represent our values.”

While party affiliation likely doesn’t affect a judge’s outlook on a speeding ticket, District Court judges also decide critical family issues such as child custody and parental rights where philosophy matters, he said.

Sutton agrees with Earwood that your party isn’t important as a District Court judge. But that doesn’t mean voters don’t care.

“People definitely want to know,” Sutton said.

Without a party label, voters are left guessing, Stephens said.

“It doesn’t make it impossible to know what that person believes, but it does make it more difficult,” Stephens said. “Democrats like to say we have a big tent and we try to be inclusive. There are a lot of different kinds of people involved in the Democrat Party but the thing we have in common is we are all Democrats. There has to be a boundary somewhere.”

The hospitals in Haywood, Jackson and Swain Counties can boost their bottom line by $15 million a year under their new joint venture, according to a major analysis of hospital operations conducted over the past six months.

Saving money was one of the original goals when Haywood Regional Medical Center and WestCare joined forces at the beginning of the year to create a new entity called MedWest. Both were hovering dangerously close to the tipping point between losing money and barely breaking even each year — a common plight for small hospitals in the country today.

Typically, when two companies merge, workers performing duplicate roles lose their jobs when departments are consolidated.

So far, that hasn’t happened with MedWest, and CEO Mike Poore says it isn’t on the horizon.

“We don’t predict there will be any staff layoffs,” Poore said.

Instead, $15 million can be saved by implementing a long list of changes in operations — from overhauling how patients are billed to harder-nosed negotiating when buying supplies.

The recommendations are coming from Carolinas HealthCare System, a network of 32 hospitals based in Charlotte that now includes MedWest. MedWest entered a long-term management contract with Carolinas HealthCare System at the beginning of the year, coinciding with the joint venture.

Carolinas’ first step in its management role over MedWest has been to assess the hospitals from top to bottom.

“There were more than 60 of these people from Carolinas that came in and reviewed almost all aspects of our organization,” Poore said. “It is great to have this kind of depth and breadth of experience.”

For example, the analysis found MedWest charges less for some services compared to other hospitals, so those fees will be raised. The frustrating nature of medical billing — the dozens of insurance plans, the myriad charges racked up during a single hospital visit, the complicated codes that determine reimbursement — approaches an art form.

“It is very difficult as a standalone hospital to have all the expertise to do it correctly,” Poore said.

It’s one of the areas where MedWest benefits by being under the umbrella of Carolinas HealthCare System.

MedWest can also realize economies of scale when purchasing. It spends approximately $180 million a year on products and supplies, compared to $6.2 billion spent by Carolinas.

“That helps when you are negotiating for products,” Poore said. “You get the exact same products you were before but are buying from a larger pool.”

Poore said the full analysis and recommendations by Carolinas will not be made public, citing competitive interests.

“Pisgah doesn’t share its playbook with Tuscola,” he said, using a high school football analogy.

Poore held a one-hour phone press conference with reporters last week to explain the plan. Poore said he wanted to dispel any rumors that the plan amounts to a “slash and burn.”

“There is none of that in this plan,” Poore said. “It is bringing all the expertise of a very large system to our local hospitals, and we are going to be able to gain in every area.”

While Poore is the CEO of MedWest, he is technically an employee of Carolinas HealthCare System. He answers to both the corporate structure of the 32-hospital network and to the local MedWest board of directors.

The hospital’s fiscal year starts in October. Poore is ready to ready to roll out operational changes that will save $7 million for the coming fiscal year. When fully implemented two years from now, the savings will reach $15 million, he said.

The closest any of the recommendations come to layoffs involve consolidating management contracts for 12 departments where certain positions are already being outsourced. For example, the manager and assistant manager over housekeeping at Haywood Regional are contract employees that work for a management company, yet the rank-and-file housekeepers are in-house staff. In food services, the head chef and dietary manager are likewise contract employees that work for an outside company, yet all the kitchen staff are in-house.

These management positions will now be bundled into a single contract, saving $1.1 million a year, Poore said. Savings will largely come by cutting out the overhead of dealing with 12 different middlemen and instead dealing with just one.

The outright consolidation of departments between the hospitals and cutting redundant positions in the process, isn’t possible since most services have to be provided on the campus of each hospital, not necessarily from a central location, Poore said.

It isn’t even possible to consolidate billing since Haywood Regional and WestCare use two different computer systems.

“To consolidate those systems would cost us somewhere north of $8 million and move to electronic health records. Without that consolidation, there is very little you can do to streamline work processes,” Poore said. “That will be an evolution not a revolution.”

That said, the hospitals are always looking to increase productivity.

Changing patient habits

Not all the recommendations from Carolinas will be easy to implement.

One weak spot is the number of patients who go to Mission Hospital in Asheville for care they could just as easily get at home, Poore said.

The out-migration of patients is two-fold, Poore said. In a few cases, doctors in highly specialized fields don’t practice locally. But in most cases, the patients falsely think they can get better care in Asheville, according to Poore.

A strategic plan on how to capture this lost business surveyed patients about why they had gone to Asheville.

“There is a lot of misconception on the capabilities that our hospitals have,” Poore said. The same goes for the perception of doctors.

“The thinking is ‘If you live here in our small community, you can’t be that good.’ But they are that good,” Poore said. “They moved here for the same reason everybody else did. They just like living here. We have to do a much better job educating the public about the quality of our physicians.”

MedWest will also recruit physicians in specialties that are prone to out-migration.

Convincing patients they don’t need to go to Asheville and recruiting more doctors are long-term goals the medical community can’t easily control, and therefore aren’t part of the $15 million in savings Poore says MedWest can realize by putting the action plan in place.

Home Depot is still trying to unload a 12-acre tract in Waynesville after sidelining plans for its first store west of Asheville a year and a half ago due to the economy.

Home Depot had been asking $4 million for the site in Waynesville Commons, a new mega-shopping complex anchored by Super Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

“They have been trying to market it, but the overall economy is still slow,” said Mark Clasby, Haywood County’s economic development director. “It has been a challenging market to say the least.”

In the meantime, however, Home Depot has purchased the very tract it hopes to sell rather than continue to lease it from the developer of Waynesville Commons.

Home Depot signed a 20-year lease on the tract with Cedarwood Development in November 2007 with an option to buy. Home Depot killed its plans for the Haywood County store a year later and began its effort to sell the site and get out of its lease.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on the option to buy. If it expired, Home Depot would still be stuck in the lease and lose what it had already paid toward the site. Under the purchase option, lease payments counted toward the eventual purchase price.

To buy the tract, Home Depot forked over another $1.87 million. How much more Home Depot had already invested through two-and-a-half years of lease payments is not known since but the terms of the lease are not part of the public record available through the Register of Deeds office.

While Home Depot continues the hunt for a buyer, a local developer is plugging away on plans for a collection of retail stores on a six-acre tract in Waynesville Commons fronting South Main Street.

Brian Noland, a Waynesville developer and Realtor, has finalized plans for a retail complex sporting six storefronts. Noland said he has already lined up tenants, mostly national franchises, interested in the spots. But he has had trouble with financing.

Before issuing a construction loan, banks want evidence that a developer has a sure stream of revenue to pay it back.

Noland has letters of intent from retail chains wanting to lease the space, which typically satisfies banks.

But “not nowadays,” Noland said. Banks’ unwillingness to lend has been blamed nationally for prolonging the recession, and Noland would agree.

“It has blocked the recovery in a lot of ways,” Noland said.

He paid $600,000 for the two-acre tract fronting South Main in late 2009. He has finished blueprints that pass muster with the town’s appearance and design standards and has his building permit in hand.

“I have a ton of money in it so far, so I am not going to stop now. It is just a lot slower pace,” Noland said. “It has been a lot of extra hoops to jump through.”

Meanwhile, the Waynesville ABC store plans to build a new retail location on another available site in the Waynesville Commons shopping complex.

But the massive size of Home Depot’s site makes it far more challenging to market.

Water pollution stemming from a Waynesville rock quarry is 100 times higher than that allowed under state standards, according to recent creek sampling by a state water quality specialist.

Silt running off the Harrison Construction rock quarry into nearby Allens Creek during rainstorms is evident to the naked eye.

“It looks like buttermilk after a good hard rain,” said Charles Miller, who lives along Allens Creek downstream of the quarry.

Miller says it is nothing new. But until last week, state water quality inspectors had not visited the quarry since 2006 — despite renewing the quarry’s five-year water quality permit earlier this year.

Water samples taken immediately upstream and downstream of the rock quarry during a recent rainstorm show a huge spike in turbidity levels that far exceed the state’s standard (see chart).

Neighbors of the quarry have complained loudly about the volume of mud pouring into Allens Creek as part of a larger fight against expansion of the quarry, prompting the action from environmental agencies.

Downstream neighbors of the quarry deserve credit for shedding light on water quality problems, said Eric Romaniszyn, director of the non-profit Haywood Waterways Association.

“It takes a small group, mostly people who live in an area, to speak up,” Romaniszyn said.

Michael Rogers, who lives in the shadow of the quarry, photographed Allens Creek upstream and downstream of the quarry following rainstorms and submitted the visible evidence of excessive erosion to the state mining bureau in Raleigh, which controls the quarry’s permit.

That alone did not spur a site visit by inspectors, however. Instead, residents convinced a water quality specialist coordinating an ecological restoration of Richland Creek — a major stream that courses through Waynesville — to capture the water samples. Since pollution in Allens Creek eventually ends up in Richland Creek, Ed Williams told residents near the quarry to call him the next time it rained.

Williams is not technically an inspector, but works under the N.C. Division of Water Quality regional office in Asheville. He promptly shared his results with rest of his office, and that in turn triggered an official inspection the following week.

“When we saw those results, we wanted to find out what is happening,” said Roger Edwards, the regional supervisor for the Division of Water Quality out of Asheville. “There may be issues out there.”

The official inspection report will not be available for another week.

Edwards does not believe the erosion from the quarry could sideline the expansion permit. The quarry can shore up its erosion safeguards — indeed it will be required to if violations are noted, Edwards said — negating any long-term impacts.

Doing their best

Edwards said it can be a challenge to manage erosion at quarries.

“The more vegetation you remove, the more you increase your stormwater runoff, and the more impacts it is going to have,” Edwards said.

And quarries, by nature, have little vegetation. The Allens Creek quarry is permited to disturb up to 137 acres. Roughly half that acreage is the mining pit itself, while the other half is stockpiles, the crushing yard, roads and the like.

Ditches are supposed to funnel mud-laden rainwater running off the quarry’s bare slopes into retention ponds. When working correctly, the silt settles to the bottom of the ponds and clean water continues on through a storm drain to the creek.

But inspectors can’t always tell just by looking whether the erosion safeguards are doing their job.

“You have to be out there during a rainfall event, and you have to sample, and realistically, you have to get more than one sample,” Edwards said.

But the Division of Water Quality doesn’t have the staff to inspect every site under its purview in the course of a calendar year — let alone when it is raining. Edwards said his staff of 12 is in charge of 800 permits spanning 19 counties.

Edwards said inspectors aim to visit every site once during the span of the permit — in the case of the quarry, that’s once every five years. Even then, it may be on a sunny day and typically does not entail water sampling.

“It is a staffing issue and workload management issue,” Edwards said.

Edwards said the frequency of inspections at a site is based in part on its history. But when inspections are few and far between, violations can go unnoticed. The site stays off the offender list, reinforcing the less-frequent inspection schedule.

Quarries are supposed to conduct their own creek sampling twice a year and keep a log of erosion control efforts. Quarry managers are supposed to notify water quality inspectors anytime sediment is visibly seen running off the site into a creek, according to the terms of their water quality permit.

Haywood Waterways Association collects samples from Allens Creek monthly as part of its countywide water quality observations. Turbidity has been well within state standards, although the samples are taken a couple of miles downstream from the quarry and on days when it hasn’t necessarily been raining.

While data shows the creek looks good under normal conditions, even a temporary spike in turbidity on a short section of stream qualifies as a violation.

Dual oversight

The quarry has three state permits with three separate state agencies: water quality, air quality and land quality. All three fall under the larger umbrella of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

“There is overlap from agency to agency,” Rogers said.

However, inspectors with the land quality division — who monitor compliance with the quarry’s main mining permit and erosion control plan — went 3.5 years without doing an inspection, from 2005 to 2008.

Their counterparts in the water quality division went four years without visiting the site, from 2006 until last week.

Inspectors with land quality told the quarry it needed to take “corrective action” with certain erosion safeguards three times from 2008 and 2009, according to inspection reports. However, there were no specific follow-up visits to see that corrections were made.

Complaints from neighbors fighting the quarry expansion prompted three inspections by the land quality division in the past three months alone. The inspector, Shawna Riddle, was called out specifically due to complaints of sediment in the stream, but she ruled the quarry was in compliance with its sediment and erosion control plan and found no violations.

“Site was in compliance. All discharge points inspected and no violations noted,” Riddle wrote in an inspection report dated June 7.

But nine days later, water samples taken from Allens Creek portrayed a different reality.

Edwards, who works in the same office as Riddle but on the water quality side, could not explain the incongruous reports: one by land quality showing no violations, and another by water quality nine days later documenting excessive turbidity.

At a public hearing on the rock quarry expansion two weeks ago, quarry workers accused opponents of trying to shut operations down.

“They just think it is unsightly, and they want to get rid of it,” said Michael Mathis. “It was here before they were here, and it will be here when they are gone unless they make it too tough. If it does close, it doesn’t bother them — they will all be happy, slapping each other on the back up there.”

Neighbors say that’s not their motive.

“I don’t want to shut them down. I just want them to go by the law,” Miller said.

A packed public hearing last week over a Waynesville rock quarry pitted neighbors opposing an expansion of the mine against its workers.

The Allens Creek quarry mines granite, which is used in road building and is the primary raw material in asphalt and concrete. The quarry plays a vital role in the local economy — both as a supplier for the construction industry and provider of jobs, said Todd Quigg, president of Harrison Construction, which operates the quarry.

Quarry supporters wearing crisp, clean ball caps boasting their affiliation with Harrison Construction comprised a large block of the audience.

“Harrison puts food on a lot of people’s tables. We need to do everything we can to support them,” said Walter Moody, a truck driver who hauls rock from the quarry.

Opponents to the quarry expansion outnumbered those speaking in its favor, however. One after another came forward to testify that incessant mica dust is causing respiratory problems in children and old people living nearby.

“It’s not like we want to stop Harrison Construction completely, but we just want to make our lives better so we can breathe,” said Christi Thompson, whose seen a correlation in increased quarry activity and her son’s use of an inhaler and nebulizer.

Polly Leatherwood, who likes to drink coffee on her porch in the morning, held up a bag of dust and submitted it as evidence to the hearing officer.

“This is what I have to clean up every morning before I can sit down,” said Leatherwood. “This dust comes down from above. One day it looked like a snowstorm, only it was brown.”

Sherri Inman, the wife of a quarry worker who grew up nearby and still lives there today, had a different story, however.

“I can say with all certainty me nor my family has ever had any health issues due to living one-half mile from the rock quarry,” Inman said. Her dishes have never rattled from the blasting, she isn’t plagued by dust, and her children play outside without breathing problems.

Opponents had been preparing for the hearing for weeks. Their talks were riddled with chapter and verse references to the state statutes that govern quarry permits. A few speakers set up easels to display large photographs documenting dust plumes, silted waterways and even a map showing high incidents of cancer. They directed the audience’s attention to “exhibit A, B or C” as they spoke.

Kenneth Taylor, the head of the N.C. Geological Survey who conducted the hearing, said speakers at public hearings everywhere have grown increasingly savvy in their presentations over the past five years, and the Waynesville crowd was no exception.

“They were ready. They had their game on,” Taylor said.

A Waynesville rock quarry where a major slide occurred last year was operating without rules governing the stability or safety of its massive walls, which tower hundreds of feet in the air.

There are no state or federal engineering standards that apply to quarries, nor do state or federal agencies oversee the excavation plans. Quarry operators are free to blast and excavate the mountainside, unburdened by slope rules — unlike average developers who are regulated by local ordinances and engineering standards for building on steep slopes.

“We don’t have slope stability analysis on (quarry) high walls as a general rule,” said Judy Wehner, assistant state mining specialist with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

There are no rules limiting how steep or tall quarry walls can be. A quarry could go years without a geotechnical expert or engineer even laying eyes on the rock face, as far as state and federal standards are concerned.

If such rules were in place, however, the massive and potentially fatal slide last year could have been prevented — as could future slides — according to state and federal inspectors who visited the Waynesville quarry following the accident.

In March 2009, a massive section of rock broke off the quarry wall and buried a drilling rig 300 feet below. Luckily, the slide happened at 5 p.m., and the workers operating the drill had knocked off for the day just 10 minutes earlier or they would have been killed.

The slab of rock was more than 500 feet long and 200 feet high — weighing an estimated 350,000 tons and rivaling the size of the massive slide that occurred in October 2009 on Interstate 40. Blasting on the quarry wall had taken place five hours earlier.

The slide got the attention of federal mine inspectors with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which cited the quarry for “moderate” negligence.

“The mine operator failed to have a mining method in place to maintain the stability of the wall, bank, slope where people work or travel in performing their assigned tasks,” the federal citation stated.

Quarry managers balked at the citation, according to federal inspection reports.

“Mine operator thought that the citation was bullshit, and said that MSHA was only there to write citations and not to help the operator,” inspectors wrote in a report summarizing a meeting held with quarry managers following the slide.

The quarry, operated by Harrison Construction, has recently come under fire from the surrounding community for expansion plans. The proposed expansion is a direct result of the slide. A large portion of the mining pit is off-limits until the slide can be stabilized and repaired, and the quarry is eager to resume work in that section.

The towering, sheer-vertical walls where the slide occurred must be recontoured with a more gentle incline and a series of benches or terraced steps. To do so, the quarry says it must shave off the top of the mountain to achieve the proper slope.

Neighbors fighting the expansion are mad that the whole community will suffer due to the quarry’s mistake.

“No doubt they have problems over there, but they brought it on themselves,” said Michael Rogers, who lives in the shadow of the ridge the quarry hopes to level off.

The quarry walls rises more than 800 feet from the floor of the mine at their highest point.

“My question is why didn’t they bench it to start with?” asked Ronnie Deweese, another neighbor opposed to the expansion.

However, there were no regulations requiring the quarry to do so. When excavating a mountainside, benches — a series of flat steps or terraces — are often used to break up the vertical rise. The quarry indeed had benches, but not enough, according to post-accident assessments.

The interval or width of benches it isn’t something the state mandates.

“We don’t like to see anything over 50 feet without a bench, but that is just a rule of thumb. There is no rule. We don’t have any rules,” Wehner said.

Quarries must provide drawings and maps when applying for a permit, denoting the slope of the walls and location of benches. But the schematics show what the pit will look like when the mining is complete — not the incremental steps of blasting and excavating to reach that point over the course of many years.

Residential contractors building on steep slopes in Haywood and Jackson counties must hire a certified engineer to design slope stability plans. The local ordinances also spell out criteria for building on steep slopes.

The state does neither when it comes to quarries. That said, state mining officials may choose to insert engineering requirements into a quarry’s permit.

“If we feel like a slope stability analysis needs to be done, then we ask for it,” Wehner said. “We can condition the permit anyway we feel we need to. It depends.”

Wehner could not say how often the state actually does so, however. There were no engineering mandates pertaining to the quarry walls in the 2008 permit the Waynesville quarry was operating under at the time of the slide.

What went wrong

Drillers at the quarry were interviewed by federal inspectors following the slide, and all of them said the wall had shown no signs of trouble. One of the drillers working below the wall minutes before the collapse stated: “the wall looked very good and saw nothing to indicate that there was a problem.” The drillers’ names were redacted from the accident report when it was released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

However, geologists or geotechnical engineers — as opposed to rank-and-file quarry workers — may have been able to detect the disaster before it was too late.

“I think the key is having the right people looking at it that are trained to notice those thing as the quarry develops,” said Rick Wooten, senior geologist with the N.C. Geological Survey. “It makes sense to have someone on hand that knows how to recognize or evaluate those things.”

Blasting and excavations by the quarry had exposed a plane of weakness in the mountain, said Wooten, who investigated the slide shortly after it happened. Often, the planes of weakness are visible simply by looking at the rock face.

“A lot of times you don’t have to see all of it to know it is there,” Wooten said.

In this case, no one knows whether signs of problem were indeed noticeable or not.

Another option is to drill a core sample into the mountainside, revealing hazards the naked eye can’t see.

“You can get a pretty good idea where those planes of weakness are and what to expect,” Wooten said.

The state doesn’t require quarries to take core samples, however. The federal inspector investigating the massive slide at the Waynesville quarry noted the lack of core samples with dismay.

“The operator had not done any core drilling to determine the make up of the strata of the wall,” the federal inspection report states.

Not my job

While the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources has a mining division that signs off on quarry permits, there is little oversight by the agency to ensure the stability of quarry walls.

The N.C. Department of Labor has a mining bureau, but slope stability and engineering don’t come under its purview either. It inspects mines for worker safety — making sure miners wear their hard hats and safety railings are installed around the edge of the mining pit.

The giant quarry walls and rock faces that workers toil below — and whether they are at risk of collapsing — aren’t part of the inspection.

“We are not geologists so to speak,” said William Gerringer, chief of the N.C. Department of Labor’s Mining?Bureau.

The state does have a team of geologists in the N.C. Geological Survey, but they aren’t tasked with inspecting quarries or signing off on mining plans as a matter of course.

On occasion, Dr. Kenneth Taylor, the head of the N.C. Geological Survey, has been asked to walk a proposed quarry site when the state mining agency was short-staffed. And it’s a good thing, since he noticed red flags that his mining counterparts didn’t see.

Taylor uncovered signs of recent and recurring landslide activity at a proposed quarry site in Jackson County that had gone unnoticed by the mining officials. And at a proposed quarry down East, Taylor merely had to glance at the site to recognize subtle depressions in the ground as evidence of sink holes. He stopped the mining official who was with him from going any further given the risk of being swallowed.

“There are areas where my specialty of geological hazards can make us realize, ‘OK, that’s not a smart thing to do there,’” Taylor said.

State officials suggested engineering oversight might fall under the purview of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. But the feds pointed the finger back at the state.

“The state regulates the permitting,” said Don Ratliff, the regional supervisor of the MSHA out of Knoxville. “Our agency does not require them to submit a written plan.”

That changes after an accident, however, like the one at the Waynesville quarry.

“Once they have a slide develop, if we come in and find they weren’t maintaining the stability of the wall, they have to tell us how they are going to fix it,” Ratliff said.

The federal agency won’t offer an independent assessment of the plan that got submited, however.

“As far as us critiquing it or telling them how they have to do it, we are not allowed to do that,” Ratliff said. “We are not allowed to tell the mine operator how to conduct business.”

The MSHA inspect quarries, including the Waynesville quarry, twice a year. They check the electrical systems, drilling and blasting equipment, company logs, fire prevention and the like. The Mine Safety Act has a section that specifically refers to the stability of quarry walls.

“Mining methods shall be used that will maintain wall, bank and slope stability in places where persons work or travel in performing their assigned tasks,” the act states. But apparently, neither federal nor state regulators monitor exactly how this is being achieved.

Taking notice

Following the March 2009 slide, state and federal agencies perked up. An investigation of the slide was conducted by Dr. Dai Choi, a geotechnical expert with the federal MSHA based in West Virginia, resulting in a citation.

On the state side, mining officials required a certified geotechnical engineer to develop a plan for fixing the slide.

In his investigation, Choi noticed signs that would have clued a geologist into a potential hazard.

He noted a slip displacement of the mountainside above the quarry wall. Choi could also see joints indicating a plane of weakness lurked behind the rock face. Choi also noticed evidence of smaller slides that occurred around the quarry.

“Smaller slope failures were either not noticed or the company could not tell us when they occurred, even though such failures could lead to a larger slide,” Choi said.

Choi also found the quarry failed to divert rainwater running off the mountain from spilling over the quarry wall into joints in the rock, cracking the rock as it froze and thawed.

“Drainage was not provided and [rain] was allowed to run freely down the slope and over the edge of the highwall,” Choi wrote in his report. “Surface run-off ditches were draining into the joint where the slide occurred.”

Choi said it was a primary contributing factor in the slide.

The quarry’s poor rainwater management had contributed to another slide, albeit much smaller, in 2005, according to state reports.

A large stockpile of unwanted material — primarily the top layer of dirt and debris stripped off the mountainside before reaching granite bedrock — partially collapsed in 2005. The stockpile is essentially a big heap, and prior to 2005 it was not being properly compacted, according to a report by outside engineers called in after the slide. Quarry workers would add to the pile from the top down, dumping loads off a hillside onto the pile below. The pile had grown more than 100 feet high.

The slopes of the giant stockpile did not have adequate drainage for rainwater and were not being properly compacted, triggering a partial collapse of the pile, according to the report of an outside engineer hired to assess the slide.

The engineers said the quarry’s method of dumping loads onto the crest of the pile was “not an acceptable method.” Instead, the base of the pile needed to be made wider. The pile should then grow from the bottom up, using a series of benches to access the growing pile. The pile should be compacted as it grows, according to the report by Foundation Systems Engineering based in Knoxville.

One of the grounds for denying a quarry permit is past performance. The criteria specifically cites landslides, and whether past performance “indicates a substantial possibility” of a slide occurring.

State environmental regulators in Asheville were unaware that the Waynesville quarry had been cited following the 2009 slide, even though they are tasked with making regular inspections to ensure the quarry is complying with its permit.

“There were no violations cited after the March 2009 slide,” Janet Boyer, regional land quality supervisor with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said after checking the quarry’s file.

Judy Wehner, assistant mining specialist in Raleigh, said the state last week received its first copy of the citation issued more than a year ago. Wehner said she had known about it, however, even though it was not part of the quarry’s record on file with the state.

Jackie Shuler has lived in the shadow of the Waynesville rock quarry most of her life. But as blasts have grown stronger and the size of the quarry bigger, so has the list of Shuler’s complaints.

“If you were home when they pulled a load, you would think, ‘Good God, are we having an earthquake?’” Shuler said.

Shuler blames the blasting at the quarry for fouling her mother’s well water. Shuler and her mother, who lives next door, are the quarry’s closest neighbors — so close the quarry pays Shuler the courtesy of a warning call before a blast.

Her mother’s well water suddenly became discolored shortly after some earth-jarring blasts from the quarry that Shuler described as the strongest she’s ever felt. Shuler now changes her mother’s filter every 60 days, but the water still leaves rust stains on her mother’s laundry.

Neighbors of the quarry complain of cracked house foundations, incessant dust, breathing problems, erosion and even fear for the stability of the mountainside being carved away by the quarry.

“Everybody has had a problem over the past few years, and everybody is kindly tired of it,” said Ronnie Deweese, 61.

Neighbors who were once resigned to living in the shadow of quarry operations have rallied in recent weeks to fight a proposed expansion. Harrison Construction wants to increase the quarry’s boundary by 13 acres, but not necessarily to mine rock.

A major rockslide occurred at the quarry last year, halting excavation in a main sector of the mining pit until the mountainside is stabilized.

The only way to fix it, according to engineers hired by the quarry, is to lop off the top of ridge above the quarry and recontour the sheer vertical walls where the slide occurred.

Residents liken the plan to a miniature version of mountaintop removal.

“I don’t want them to tear the mountain off. They have done enough damage,” said Deweese. “Look at what our generations of young’uns is going to look at years down the road.”

The quarry’s permit requires visual screening with trees, but the barren, exposed wall of the mining pit reaches hundreds of feet up the mountainside, dwarfing a row of trees planted along the road for aesthetics.

“You cannot replace something that God made,” said Suzanne Hendrix, 62, a neighbor to the quarry.

Meanwhile, Shuler doesn’t fancy the idea of the quarry moving in even closer as it crests the ridge that separates her from the mining pit. The quarry has made a generous offer to buy up her 20 acres, and she’ll likely take it.

“I’m sure if any of the other neighbors were offered what they are offering, they would take it and run, too,” said Shuler, the owner of Bypass.

The quarry has bought or leased several additional parcels of land to make the proposed expansion possible.

Now Michael Rogers is worried about what could happen to his spring as the blasting gets closer. Rogers’ spring, a pure source of water that feeds a 1,000-gallon reservoir used by three families for their drinking water, will be just four feet from the quarry’s new property line if the expansion goes through.

“They could fracture that aquifer and contaminate it,” said Rogers, 57, an electrician.

Groundwater aquifers in the mountains are “complex by nature,” said Ted Campbell, a hydrogeologist with the N.C. Division of Water Quality in Asheville.

Underground veins in the rock splinter and fracture like crooked tree roots. It’s almost impossible to tell if a vein tapped by a well is connected to the blasting zone a quarter mile away, Campbell said.

If the quarry expands, it could negatively impact views from some of the six-figure home sites in Highland Forest, an upscale development at the head of Lickstone — especially over the next 10 years when excavations are actively underway and before the backside of the mountain is revegetated, said Steve Rosenfelt, the director of Highland Forest. But Rosenfelt said his concerns pale in comparison to those of the more immediate neighbors.

“When you see all those folks, some of them with tears in their eyes, it definitely inspires you to become involved,” Rosenfelt said.

Muddy water

State inspectors with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources are tasked with oversight of quarry operations. They are supposed to make surprise routine inspections to check compliance with numerous environmental regulations.

“I think typically it is annual,” said Janet Boyer, regional land quality supervisor based in Asheville.

However, a review of inspection reports dating back to 2005 show that the quarry went three and half years without a single inspection — from April 2005 to August 2008.

Boyer attributed the large gap in inspections to being short-staffed.

“We went through a very low staffing period,” Boyer said.

Some residents are surprised by the lack of oversight, but others say it’s par for the course.

“A big corporation like that, they can absolutely do what they want to,” Shuler said.

Residents claim whenever it rains hard, Allens Creek flowing past the mine turns chocolate brown with mud running off the quarry.

State inspectors routinely instruct the quarry to shore up erosion control efforts nearly every time they visit the site, according to inspection reports. However, inspectors fail to make a follow-up inspection to see whether the proper steps were taken.

Boyer said that isn’t unusual, however, given stretched staffing of her division.

“They usually list minor things on every inspection they do,” Boyer said, and they don’t always warrant a follow up.

By contrast, follow-up visits are customary for local inspectors with the Haywood County erosion control program. The quarry is exempt by the state from Haywood County’s erosion regulations, however. The upshot: a residential contractor building a house faces tougher oversight than a major quarry operation blasting away part of a mountain.

Furthermore, state inspectors have failed to visit the quarry during an actual rainstorm. State inspectors take stock of the quarry’s erosion control practices in theory, but haven’t actually witnessed what happens when it rains.

So residents have taken it upon themselves to document the erosion, photographing Allens Creek upstream and downstream of the quarry to show the stark difference in water quality.

Blasting

Blasting is one of the biggest complaints by neighbors of the quarry.

“It will rattle the dishes in their cupboard. We’ve had picture frames fall off and everything else,” said Michael Rogers.

But Judy Wehner, assistant state mining specialist, said that alone doesn’t mean anything.

“They might have a picture falling off their wall if a truck goes by or a clap of thunder hits,” Wehner said. “Houses rattle.”

A few neighbors claim their foundations or basement walls have cracked due to the blasting, but again Wehner isn’t so sure.

“I can count on one hand any damages directly attributed to blasting,” Wehner said.

Blast strength is regulated by the state, which defers to federal limits designed for mountaintop removal coal mining. Wehner said those limits are stringent enough to guard against property damage.

The quarry is required to keep seismographic records of all its blasts. If a blast exceeds the allowable limit, quarry operators are supposed to report it to the state. But otherwise, the seismographic readings and blasting records are never seen by regulators unless they get a complaint.

For years, residents have complained directly to the quarry about the strength of the blasts, unaware there was a mining agency in Raleigh they should have been directing their grievances to.

As a result, the state went years without laying eyes on the blasting records for the Allens Creek quarry.

Now, in response to properly directed complaints, Wehner asked the quarry for two months of records. Neighbors would like to see far more than that reviewed, as they don’t trust the quarry to voluntarily report a blasting violation if they have one.

But Wehner said her office doesn’t have the manpower to go review more than that, given the number of quarries it oversees.

Wehner says the Waynesville quarry is in compliance based on the two months of blasting data she’s seen — and the fact the quarry has never self-reported a violation. Wehner said the quarry would never cover up a violation as the penalty for doing so is too great a risk. Furthermore, the quarry has been far, far below the allowed blast strength based on the readings she’s seen. The quarry won’t use more dynamite than it needs to since it costs more money to do so.

“As a good neighbor, we are well, well, well below the level for allowed blasts,” said Don Mason, who’s in charge of environmental compliance for the Harrison quarry.

Due to repeated complaints from one neighbor, the quarry hired a contractor recently to install a second seismograph on her property.

Since seismograph readings are only reviewed by the state when there’s a complaint, neighbors now complain every time there is a blast. Quarry neighbor Michael Rogers said mining regulators in Raleigh aren’t too happy about his wife’s repeated calls.

“They said ‘You people do not need to call down here every time they blast,’” Rogers recounted.

Rogers’ wife countered that she would continue to call as often as she wanted and they may as well get on a first-name basis.

Since Wehner can expect a complaint with every blast these days, she gave the quarry a standing order to send her every seismograph reading to save her the trouble of calling and asking for it each time.

The state could set a tougher limit for blasting rather than deferring to the federal threshold for mountaintop removal coal mining. Individual quarries, such as those in closer proximity to neighbors, could be held to more rigorous standards if stipulated in the state’s permit.

“In the instance where people have had problems, we have put limits in their permit,” Wehner said.

Dust plumes

Blasting also spews giant dust plumes into the air, which then drift and settle on neighbors’ homes. Even when the quarry isn’t blasting, there is a pervasive dust that settles over everything, according to Hendrix.

“We leave our doors and windows shut almost 24-7,” Hendricks said. “You can dig in the dirt in our yard and it is full of mica dust.”

Some quarry neighbors claim the dust is causing pulmonary problems.

State air quality regulators inspect the quarry unannounced annually and have never witnessed a violation, according to Angela Hopper, an environmental specialist with the state Division of Air Quality in Asheville.

Inspectors mostly look for dust being kicked up by equipment on the roads and by rock crushers. A water spray is continuously trained on the crushing site to keep dust down, and a water truck is supposed to spray the roads.

When it comes to blasting, however, there are no state regulations to control the dust that’s emitted.

“We do not have any rules in air quality that specifically talk about controlling dust from blasting,” said Paul Muller, regional supervisor for the Division of Air Quality.

While there is a federal standard for fine particles in the air, it is measured over a 24-hour period.

“Rarely would one plume of dust be able to cause a problem with a 24-hour standard,” Muller said. “I’m not saying short term couldn’t have implications, but we don’t have any standards.”

It is possible that fine particle dust could blow off the high, towering exposed walls of rock at the quarry — known as “fugitive dust.” Fugitive dust from quarries is supposedly regulated, but air quality inspectors say they have never noticed it.

Fine particle matter isn’t necessarily visible to the naked eye, however and can only be measured with air quality monitors. Muller doesn’t have a portable air quality monitor that could be set up at the site.

Air pollution is one of the six criteria that the state could use to deny the quarry’s permit. But lacking an objective way to measure fine particles in the air around the quarry, neighbors are left making unsubstantiated and anecdotal claims.

There is one case study Muller can point to, however. In Spruce Pine, where several quarries are concentrated, a woman complained incessantly about dust from the operations. Muller set up air monitoring equipment in her yard for several years, but it never measured a violation.

Mason, the quarry’s own environmental compliance employee, said dust mostly stays on site when blasting and any drift is minimal.

Impressive showing

Opponents are ready for a showdown at a public hearing over the quarry’s expansion slated for Wednesday night. They have been meeting weekly for two months to organize and plot strategy. Meetings have consistently numbered 60 people or more.

“When you have somebody that works all day long, they come home tired, but if they are willing to come out to a meeting, they are concerned,” Hendrix said.

While organizing has grown immensely easier in the age of email, many of those neighboring the quarry in the Allens Creek and Lickstone communities don’t use it, forcing residents to mount their opposition the old-fashioned way.

“It was word of mouth from one concerned person to another. Every time I talk to someone I say bring a friend or neighbor so they become aware,” Hendrix said.

Residents have gotten a few pointers from pros along the way. A regional environmental group called Western North Carolina Alliance has rallied to the cause. The issue is right up its alley.

“We empower people to work on environmental issues that are happening in their own backyards,” said Ryan Griffith, community outreach manager with WNC Alliance.

Griffith said the residents were surprisingly motivated and organized already, but navigating the bureaucracy behind environmental permits can be tricky, even for advocates who do it for a living.

“When you have several different layers of regulations, it is hard to figure out what you are supposed to do,” Griffith said.

WNC Alliance had a few minor tips, like organizing into committees to carry out assignments between meetings.

Griffith’s top priority is to keep the residents on message and shape years of pent-up anger toward the quarry into an effective argument.

The state won’t deny the permit because blasts rattle windows or the scarred mountainside looks ugly. To halt the quarry in its tracks, opponents must hone in on one of six criteria that are grounds for denying the permit, Griffith said.

Air quality, water quality, health problems, public safety, physical damage to homes — these are the areas where residents have learned to target their arguments.

“We knew when we got to that hearing, we had to stay focused,” Hendrix said.

Residents even planned a rehearsal to go over their comments on the eve of the public hearing.

“I wasn’t cut out to be a public speaker, but I am getting pretty used it,” said Rogers, who’s become one of the de facto spokespeople for the neighborhood.

Residents may be at a disadvantage when it comes to proving their case, however. They have no air quality data to trot out. Inspectors have never witnessed the erosion or taken well water samples. They can’t prove the cracks in their basements are a result of the blasting.

Their complaints are mostly circumstantial, and it is unclear what steps, if any, the state environmental regulators will take to verify the neighbors’ anecdotal claims.

“It is always somebody’s word against somebody else’s word,” Wehner said.

The burden, it appears, will fall on the neighbors to prove their case — a process that may end up at the appeal level.

The state has only 30 days from the public hearing to issue some kind of decision. The state can approve or deny the permit, or ask the quarry for more information.

If either side disagrees with the decision, they can appeal it to the state Office of Administrative Hearings. Successful appeals usually have a lawyer and are put on much like a court trial.

The quarry can get to work right away if the permit is approved unless opponents go to the court and ask for work to be halted while an appeal is settled. But in doing so, opponents may be asked to put up a bond to cover losses the quarry suffers while the appeal plays out, to be paid only in the event the quarry prevails.

Why now?

Mason and Wehner have questioned the sudden rash of complaints given the long life of the mine dating back to the 1960s.

“I don’t want to say that anybody’s concerns are not legitimate,” Mason said. At the same time, he doesn’t understand why “now all of a sudden it is a problem.”

Wehner said the neighbors never complained about the operations until the quarry applied for its latest permit, even though the permit two years ago was for a much larger expansion.

But opponents beg to differ. They have been complaining — just to the wrong people.

“We always just called down to Harrison quarry,” said Rogers. “We didn’t know we were supposed to be calling DENR all this time. Then there would be a record for it.”

Deweese often called the quarry directly, but it took a while before he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere.

“When we would call over there and complain whoever we talked to just kindly dusted us off,” Deweese said. “We didn’t know where to call.”

The failure by residents to protest until now shouldn’t be used against them, said Griffith.

“This was sort of the straw that broke the camels’ back,” Griffith said. “It is sad because the neighbors have been such good neighbors to the quarry for so long, but they haven’t really reciprocated that.”

Deweese said the quarry has gotten worse compared to 20 years ago.

“You might hear a boom now and then, but as far as shaking the house, it never did do it,” Deweese said. “Then the bigger they got, they would shake our houses and then problems starting happening. Everybody is kindly fed up with it.”

Deweese hopes they have the state’s attention now.

“I hope a lot of people take notice of this and step in,” Deweese said. “I want DENR and other people to watch them more closely on air quality, water pollution, the sediment runoff.”

Deweese said he thinks the community will stick with the fight.

“It is a big outfit, and they got a lot of money, and it’s hard to fight money,” Deweese said. But, “I don’t think we are going to get tired and give out. Not if they are going to keep tearing our mountains down. The way I look at it, God ain’t makin’ us no more mountains.”

Coming next week

Check out next week’s edition to learn more about slope issues at the quarry, including a large rockslide last year and the controversy surrounding plans to stabilize it. Plus, read coverage of the public hearing.

Want to weigh in?

A public hearing on the expansion of the Allens Creek rock quarry in Waynesville will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, in the historic courthouse on Main Street in Waynesville. Comments will be accepted in writing through June 25. Email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or write to Dr. Kenneth Taylor; 1612 Mail Service Center; Raleigh, NC 27699–1612.

Lake Junaluska, a century-old retreat for Methodist clergy and their families, will remain the favored venue for a major annual conference of the United Methodist Church.

The Western North Carolina Conference — a formal gathering of Methodist churches from the western half of the state — brings thousands of people to Lake Junaluska and Haywood County for an extended weekend every June. But space limitations had prompted the conference to consider a change in location to a Sheraton Hotel conference center in Greensboro.

Losing the conference would be a major economic blow not only to the Lake but to hotels and restaurants throughout Waynesville and Maggie Valley. Between half and two-thirds of conference attendees who stay overnight find lodging off Lake grounds.

Whether to change venues was put to a vote during the annual conference this past weekend. Lake Junaluska won out overwhelming with 1,007 votes, compared to 526 for moving it.

“Logistically, it would be better for us to have a bigger building, but as a far as the overall atmosphere of the conference, they prefer here,” said Roy Miller, a delegate from Mount Airy, N.C., and pastor of Mt. Moriah Methodist Church.

Jimmy Carr, executive director of Lake Junaluska Assembly, had no idea what to expect before the vote.

“The margin was so high. That was really affirming to us,” Carr said.

The conference was attended by 2,660 delegates representing Methodist churches across half the state — a territory reaching as far as Greensboro and Charlotte — to discuss church policies and finances and ordain clergy. Delegates often have their families and church lay people in tow, with the total number of people in town for the conference pegged at about 7,000.

Debbi Snipes has accompanied her husband, a minister from Charlotte, to the annual conference at the Lake for 17 years, along with her two daughters. It would be a “big mistake” to move the venue, she said.

“This is a family friendly place. This is a special place, and you can’t get that just anywhere,” said Snipes, who enjoys seeing the same families year after year. If the conference was moved to a Sheraton Hotel in Greensboro, “we wouldn’t go,” Snipes said.

The annual conference is only one small slice of the Lake’s conference business, which plays host to 100,000 people each year for dozens of conventions of both a spiritual and secular nature.

But this conference is by far its largest. The potential loss lit a fire under those in the tourism industry. Some nearby restaurants changed the lettering on their signboards to boast messages of support for keeping the conference at the Lake.

The annual conference brings in $200,000 of direct revenue to the Lake Junaluska Assembly and another $300,000 for local motels, restaurants and the like. The multiplier effect across WNC communities could be up to $1 million, Carr estimated.

The conference venue was the most hotly discussed topic of the weekend, said Miller.

“They mention waking up in the morning and seeing the cross, the mountains and the lake,” Miller said.

The majority felt the impersonal setting of a Sheraton Hotel would not nurture the fellowship found at the Lake, he said. Small prayer groups and impromptu religious discussions come naturally in intimate and inspirational settings found on Junaluska’s grounds, from the numerous gardens to lakeside benches. It would not be easy to duplicate that atmosphere in a hotel lobby.

“It is hard to imagine leaving the Lake because of the setting and significance of this place,” said Eddie Ingram, pastor at First Methodist Church in Charlotte.

Carr said the discussion leading up to the vote was heartfelt and emotional. One woman spoke about the personal transformation she feels when attending the conference at the Lake.

“They realized the specialness of Lake Junaulska,” Carr said. “They realized they are about doing church work and what better place to do it than Lake Junaluska, which has a common mission.”

The Lake made a couple of promises to keep the conference. A logistical challenge is posed by Stuart Auditorium, which seats 2,000 people and can’t accommodate all the delegates who attend. Other meeting halls and auditoriums on the Lake’s grounds will be rigged with live video streaming to allow people who can’t fit inside Stuart Auditorium to still participate in the proceedings.

The other promise is to work with the local tourism community to roll out the red carpet for conference attendees.

Of the 2,600 delegates who attended, only 800 rented hotel rooms or homes at the Lake itself, leaving a huge number to find lodging elsewhere. The conference wants the Lake to compile lodging information and negotiate discounts with local hotels during the conference weekend. In addition, the conference wants assurance that the local hotels and restaurants off the Lake grounds are prepped and ready to step up their hospitality the weekend of the conference.

“It is truly going to take the entire county working together to keep this event here in the long term. Lake Junaluska will need a strong partnership with the local community to accomplish that,” said Ken Howle, Lake Junaluska marketing director.

Downtown Waynesville merchants hope a plan to remodel the old Strand theater as an entertainment venue, restaurant and microbrewery will return the former icon to a Main Street magnet once again.

“We are excited about it. We think it is certainly needed here in Waynesville,” said Tom Massie, owner of Massie Furniture. “I think it will bring a lot of people downtown at night who will be exposed to Main Street and see things to come back and buy.”

Those who grew up during the heyday of Friday night features and Saturday matinees remember the line at the former Strand movie theater stretching a block and a half down Main Street. In the days before television, many people went religiously every time a new picture came to town, recalled Bette Sprecher, who grew up during the era.

During the post-World War II years, there were even dueling downtown movie theaters stationed across the street from each other. The Strand remained in operation until the early 1980s when attendance eventually withered too low to remain operational.

“TV kind of ruined the theater business,” said Massie.

Ed Kelley, owner of Ridge Runner Naturals gallery on Main Street, can’t wait until the new venue at the former Strand opens its doors.

“I have been saying this for ages, that the Strand needs to be turned into a brew pub kind of place,” Kelley said. “I think it will enhance what we already have to draw people here.”

Kelley is a musician and appreciates craft beers, so he will likely be a regular. But as a business owner directly across the street, he’s already plotting how to tap into the presumed bump in downtown nightlife.

“I think I will get trickle down from it,” Kelley said. He hopes the evening foot traffic will inspire merchants to stay open later.

“Waynesville pretty much rolls up the sidewalk at 5 or 6,” Kelley said. “I think it will give people some options of things to do in the evenings, which is something we seem to lack.”

It may also motivate more redevelopment.

“If people see things happening, that is good PR, and that can actually enhance somebody’s perception of what Waynesville is or is going to be,” Kelley said.

That’s exactly the outcome Buffy Messer, the director of Downtown Waynesville Association, was hoping for when chasing a grant to make the Strand venture a reality.

“The project will spur more interest and growth not only in our downtown, but also in our community,” Messer said. “An economically vibrant and growing downtown is not just good in itself — it is vital for a prosperous region.”

Besides, merchants could use some rosy news, she said, not only due to a two-year recession but a winter hammered by snowstorms that kept shoppers holed up at home.

“It was just a really rough winter. The snow came every Friday. It killed their weekends,” Messer said of the merchants. There are certainly signs 2010 will mark a turn-around based on downtown development in recent months. In addition to half a dozen retail shops and a couple new professional businesses, two large anchor buildings have been filled. Main Street Artist’s Co-op moved into the space vacated by Furniture Village and Davis Clothing opened in the former Towne Square space, which had been vacant two years.

There have been two new restaurants to open as well, Nico’s Café and soon Café 50, both of which remodeled downtown spaces in recent months.

While Waynesville’s downtown has been a shining model for Main Street revitalization and the envy of small towns across the state, the once-beloved Strand has remained shuttered. Then a dose of good fortune arrived in February. The state announced a pool of grant money through the new Main Street Solutions Fund, designed to drive economic development by assisting small business owners in downtowns.

“It was the first opportunity we had been given in years for small business,” Messer said. “I couldn’t look back and say I didn’t try.”

Messer and the owner of the Strand, Richard Miller, toiled day and night to complete the application. The grant required an exhaustive business plan and putting it together by the 30-day deadline was be tricky. Luckily, key pieces were already in place. Joey Massie, the Strand’s owner before Miller, had a similar plan to transform the space into an entertainment venue, restaurant and bar. He even had architectural drawings for the interior remodeling work and a business plan. Massie never got the project off the ground, however, because the renovations were cost-prohibitive.

Massie’s architectural drawings and business plan provided a foundation for the application. Meanwhile, a local beer brewer, Kevin Sandefur, happened to have a comprehensive business plan in his pocket for the brewery angle. Sandefur created a business plan the previous year in order to enter the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce Business Start-Up competition.

“We wouldn’t have made it if there hadn’t already been some paperwork in place,” Messer said.

Competition was stiff. There were 29 applications requesting $7 million — but only eight were awarded and $1.95 million given out.

The Strand venture will obviously compete with other downtown restaurants and bars. Jennifer Ewart, owner of Nick and Nate’s, a popular Main Street pizza restaurant known for its outstanding selection of microbrews, wonders whether there will be enough business to go around, particularly during winter months. Nick and Nate’s generally has a wait list going by 6 p.m. during the height of summer tourist season, but the winter months are “very slow,” Ewart said, citing that as the true test facing the Strand venture.

Lorin Shaw was barely 16 when he landed a job with a crew building the Blue Ridge Parkway in the late-1930s.

“We were lucky to get the work because there was no work back then,” said Shaw, who was born in 1923 in Burnsville.

When Shaw was hauling a load of hot tar one day, the lid came loose on the vat. As he put on the breaks coming down hill into the work site, hot tar oozed over the rim and spilled into the cab of the truck and down his back.

“When I stepped off the truck they cut my shirt and stuff off of me — just as soon as I stepped off. If it had stayed on there, it would have left scars,” Shaw said. “Any time you are messin’ with trucks and equipment in the mountains, you’ve got to watch it. You could get hurt.”

Shaw made $12 a week and did whatever he was told.

“Up on the, Parkway you didn’t say you couldn’t do it cause about 10 more of ‘em were waiting to take your job,” Shaw said. “There wasn’t no jobs.”

The Parkway’s construction employed hundreds of local men during the Depression when work was scarce everywhere — but especially in the mountains. Most involved in the early construction have now passed away, but stories like Shaw’s were captured in oral history interviews by the National Park Service.

Ben Caudill, born in Sparta in 1925, had to lie about his age to land a job on the Parkway. Caudill was part of a Civilian Conservation Corps landscaping crew that felled trees by hand with cross-cut saws and axes to make way for the road builders. After construction, the crew went back to replant the denuded roadsides.

In an oral history, Caudill recounted bluntly the fate of a family member employed in a far more dangerous line of work on the Parkway.

“My first cousin got blowed up at Ice Rock,” Caudill said.

The Parkway often came up against sheer, rock cliffs, like the infamous Ice Rock. Blasting was the only way to chisel out a toehold for the road.

“They’d tie you to a rope and tie the dynamite to you and let down the rope, drill your hole and fill it full and bring you back out and then shoot it,” Caudill said.

Dynamite crews made more than any other workers, 65 cents an hour from what Raleigh Hollefield remembers.

“Blastin’ and drillin’ is what I done,” said Hollefield, who was born in 1923 in Little Switzerland. “It was pretty dangerous and a rough job.”

Buren Ballard, born in 1909 in Weaverville, made 45 cents an hour drilling holes for the dynamite — less than the blasters but more than the average laborers.

“We’d go way up above on one of them big cliffs and tie a rope to a tree, and then put on a safety belt, and then go down on that cliff. And they’d swing the jackhammer down to us. I would stay on them cliffs for three and four hours,” Ballard said in an oral history interview on file in Parkway archives.

When building tunnels, Ballard would stand on scaffolding across its face, drilling away with his 60-pound jackhammer.

A man on his crew was killed when he drilled into a hole that was already filled with dynamite that not yet been set off. Another man was loading dynamite into a hole when lightning struck it and blasted apart the rock, breaking the man’s hip.

Ballard worked on the morning shift, which started at 5 a.m. It was too dark to see yet, so he laid a flashlight across the rock when starting a hole. He got up at 2 a.m. and walked out to the main road by his house, where another worker picked him up. If it was too muddy or icy, they both walked through the woods and over mountains for two hours to get to work.

His wife packed him a lunch of biscuits, eggs, ham and jelly — and a thermos of coffee. On the job site, he would cut a limb off a bush and hang his lunch box from the stub.

It was cold work given the Parkway’s high elevation. When Ballard was first hired, his job was to walk up and down an air compressor line that fed the jack hammers, lighting small fires along its one-mile run to keep it from freezing.

Until the Parkway came along, there were no prospects for work.

“Couldn’t find a job nowhere,” Ballard said. “If it hadn’t been for Roosevelt, I guess I’d have starved to death.”

The Parkway was launched under the New Deal, but only a fraction of the labor came from the Civilian Conservation Corps or Works Progress Administration. The bulk was contracted out to construction companies, which in turn hired local men.

Unlike other massive public works during the era, like the building of the Hoover Dam or Golden Gate Bridge, relatively few were injured or killed during Parkway construction, however.

“It was minimal considering the work,” said Harley Jolly, a Parkway historian and author in Mars Hill. “When you look at moving mountains the way they had to move mountains, that was a major challenge. When you blast way the whole side of a mountain it is dangerous.”

The Parkway was known then as “The Scenic,” and is still called that by old-timers who were part of the construction.

“They were proud to be able to have a job,” Jolly said. “The income gave them a better life than they would have had without the Parkway.”

But the work wasn’t for everyone. Homer Reeves, born in 1910 in Sparta, walked off the job after a close encounter with a poisonous snake, a four-foot-long copperhead on the rock where he was working.

“That was the end of my work with the Parkway. I said, ‘I wasn’t gonna mess with any more of that.’ Never did go up any more after that on the Parkway,” Reeves said in an oral history interview in the mid-1990s.

The work was hard, Reeves recounted. The snow was a foot deep his first day of work. When it rained, mud came up to their knees. It would take half a dozen men to free trucks when they got stuck.

“Tires didn’t last no time. You’d hit a rock and bust one. There was just something all the time as far as that goes,” Reeves said. “But it give people a lot of work that’s one thing. The Parkway helped a lot of people.” 

An election watchdog in Swain County is protesting the tallying of early votes before the close of polls on Election Day, claiming it could have given some candidates an unfair advantage if those results be leaked.

The results from early voting are often an indication of who’s winning and losing. In the 2008 general election, some mountain counties saw nearly 50 percent of those who cast ballots do so during the two-week early voting period.

While state law allows election officials to get a jumpstart by tabulating the results from early voting during the afternoon of Election Day, Mike Clampitt of Swain County thinks it leaves too much room for corruption.

The results from early voting can’t be announced until after the polls close. But it is technically OK for those on the board of elections to call a few friends, party officials or even select candidates and share the results that afternoon.

“I would prefer they not talk about it outside the board office, but that is not publicizing or publishing the results,” said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the N.C. Board of Elections in Raleigh.

Sharing the results indiscriminately with the public, such as releasing them to the media or posting them on the wall in the elections office, would be illegal. But a single phone call to a particular candidate to tell them how they fared is not illegal, McLean said. Besides, McLean doesn’t see what a candidate could do with that knowledge in just a few short hours.

“About the only thing they could do would be contact their supporters and ensure that they have gone to vote,” Mclean said.

Precisely, Clampitt countered.

Clampitt said there are still three to four hours left to drum up voters for your candidate once early votes have been tabulated. In a small county, where elections can easily be decided by less than 100 votes, that knowledge could make a difference.

Clampitt has filed a formal complaint over the tallying of early votes in Swain County, although the process is similar to that used in other counties and conforms with state law.

The counting of ballots, including early voting ballots, is a public process and can’t be done behind closed doors. Per state election law, any member of the public is allowed to witness the process. Technically, those present could overhear election officials talking about the results as they are printed out, or even catch a glimpse.

In Haywood County, Election Director Robert Inman said he would be disappointed if election officials tabulating results shared them outside the office. They don’t give verbal cues that would reveal results to those present as observers. In fact, they make a point of not even studying the tallies as they are printed out, according to Inman.

“We do all we can to not see them,” said Inman. “We do our utmost not to know.”

It is difficult to do, however.

“There is no way you can count without knowing the totals,” said Lisa Lovedahl, director of the Jackson County Board of Elections. “The board members are human.”

The human factor also makes it impossible to guarantee that the results stay within the four walls of the election office.

Clampitt witnessed the counting of early votes in Swain County and says election officials mulled over the results, as would most people in the same position.

“If a person has access to something, don’t you think they are going to do it? That is just human nature,” Clampitt said.

Alternative energy has emerged as a sticking point in the debate over a proposed $10 million creative arts building at Haywood Community College.

The project is in limbo as it awaits approval from county commissioners, who have expressed reservations for the past several months over the building’s price tag. Critics believe college leaders are being overzealous in their pursuit of eco-friendly building features, and the cost is being driven up as a result. They fear HCC is pushing the envelope with cutting-edge solar technology, making it a guinea pig in the alternative-energy field.

But supporters say the alternative energy features are smart. They will save the college money over the long run for no additional upfront cost, allowing the college to “go green” risk free and even benefit financially.

The Haywood Community College Board of Trustees voted 6 to 5 last month to include a solar technology in the building design. The final decisions now rests in the hands of county commissioners.

At a public hearing on the project last week, county commissioners pressed the project’s lead architect and an alternative energy firm engaged to install the solar technology to explain how it would work. The Smoky Mountain News conducted follow-up interviews with the firms, as well as experts at the N.C. Solar Center housed at N.C. State University, to get answers on all the solar aspects of the project — and then some.

What kind of alternative energy are we talking about?

The design calls for three technologies: solar thermal for hot water and heat, solar thermal for air conditioning and solar panels for electricity.

Solar panels are nothing new. Mounted on the roof, the panels convert the sun’s rays to electricity.

Solar thermal uses the sun to heat water flowing through coils on the roof, which in turn provides hot water for the building. Hot- water pipes also run beneath the floor to provide radiant heating in the winter, similar to a radiator.

For the air conditioning, solar thermal heat will be used to power an absorption chiller.

How much does all this cost upfront?

Nothing. Sounds too good to be true, but HCC pays nothing. A private alternative energy firm, FLS Energy, will pay for the solar thermal system and solar panels.

“We finance the project, we design it, develop it and install it,” said Michael Shore, CEO of FLS Energy.

Why would FLS do that?

FLS will make money by selling energy to HCC and to Progress Energy over the power grid.

“We are like a little tiny utility on their roof,” Shore said.

FLS will get a bank loan for the up-front costs of the equipment and pay off the loan by selling the power. In about 10 years, FLS will have recouped its costs.

“It is a good business investment for us. Over the long term we pay off the debt and make a profit,” Shore said. “The financial arrangement we have done many times with very successful results.”

Where do tax credits come in?

State and federal tax incentives for solar energy are a critical piece of the puzzle for FLS. The venture wouldn’t be profitable without them.

But FLS doesn’t have enough tax liability of its own to fully monetize the tax credits. So a third-party investor is brought in to the venture to make use of the tax credits.

What does FLS sell to Progress Energy?

Unfortunately, FLS can’t sell electricity generated from the solar panels directly to HCC. Utilities have monopolies in their territory.

“In North Carolina the only entities you can buy electricity from are the utilities,” Shore said.

So the solar electricity will be sold to Progress. A new state energy bill requires Progress to generate a portion of its electricity from renewable sources. That means Progress is not only willing to buy the solar power from FLS, but will pay a premium for it — another critical element in the business model for FLS.

Meanwhile, FLS will pay HCC for the privilege of housing the solar panels on its roof. While HCC will have to buy its electricity the regular way, its power costs will be offset by the regular payments from FLS.

What does FLS sell to HCC?

FLS can, however, sell energy generated by the solar thermal system directly to HCC. Solar thermal energy is measured in heat units known as BTUs — so it is technically more like natural gas than electricity. FLS will charge HCC for the BTUs it uses.

What will the college pay FLS for the BTUs?

Whatever the rate is, it will be lower than what HCC would pay for comparable power on the open market, and it is locked in through a contract and not subject to rising energy costs.

“It does save them a significant amount in energy cost during the contract period,” said Dale Freudenberger, president of FLS. “It will absolutely be saving them money.”

If it is such a sure-fire business model, why aren’t more people doing it?

It sounds too good to be true. There’s no upfront costs or risk for HCC. The college even reaps savings on its power bills and gets kickbacks from FLS — thus making money while “going green.”

“It turns out to be a pretty good deal,” said Tim Lupo with the N.C. Solar Center.

A progressive state energy policy has only recently set the stage for arrangements like this one. Big utilities in North Carolina must now get a portion of their power from renewable sources.

The financial arrangement like the one between FLS and the college is increasingly common, according to Lupo. But the tax credits and alternative energy mandates are new, and firms like FLS are just now starting to figure it out.

What happens when FLS has recouped its costs?

In 10 years, HCC will have the option of buying the entire solar power system. It will have another 20 years of life left at that point before the efficiency begins to degrade.

If HCC buys all the equipment, it can make its own energy, divesting itself of monthly power bills and making money by selling surplus power to Progress.

If HCC decides to let FLS keep operating the system, it becomes highly profitable for FLS since the firm will have paid off its capital investment. So HCC gets to renegotiate for lower rates on the solar thermal energy and a higher kickback off the solar energy sold to Progress.

What will it cost if HCC wants to take over the system 10 years from now?

No one knows right now. It’s impossible to say what the market value of a solar system like this will be 10 years from now. But FLS won’t be able to ask for whatever it wants. Language in the contract says the equipment will be offered to HCC at fair market value, which presumably would trigger a third-party independent appraisal of the equipment to determine what that is.

Why is HCC exceeding the state energy mandate?

HCC has to meet tough new state energy standards that apply to public buildings, thus requiring a certain level of alternative energy. However, HCC is going above and beyond what it has to in order to meet the state mandate.

But since it isn’t costing HCC anything to do so, why not? asked Michael Nicklas, the lead architect.

“We could improve the efficiency at no additional cost,” Nicklas said.

The building will qualify for a platinum LEED designation, the highest of all green building rankings, which has drawn fire from critics. Nicklas said a platinum rating was not their motive, however, but merely a side effect of designing a good building.

“It is not driven by the platinum rating,” Nicklas said. “If it ends up platinum, it’s because we were able to get a good deal on this solar.”

What is solar thermal?

Fluid, usually a combination of water and antifreeze, flows through coils on the roof of the building. The coils sit on a black surface under a clear glass lid. The black surface absorbs the sun’s heat and traps it under the glass. The heat builds and builds, like the greenhouse effect, and the fluid flowing through the coils heats up as a result.

“It could easily get to boiling temperatures, but more commonly 150 or 160 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Tommy Cleveland, a solar thermal expert at the N.C. Solar Center.

How hot depends on the strength of the sun’s rays and the air temperature.

How does that make hot water?

The coils carrying the hot fluid pass through a hot water tank, transferring the heat to the water.

How does it make heat for the building?

The coils flow under the floor, creating radiant heating similar to a radiator.

How does it make air conditioning?

The heat given off by the fluid in the coils will be captured to power an absorption chiller, a type of air conditioning system that is normally fueled by natural gas.

The fluid flowing through the solar thermal coils needs to be 154 degrees to power an absorption chiller, Freudenberger said. He claims it’s no problem achieving that temperature.

Using the BTUs created by solar thermal energy indeed works in theory.

“It can work and has been done other places but it is not very common,” Cleveland said, citing numerous projects in Germany. “It has been done and it has been made to work. Technically I think it definitely will work. The big question is economically and how well does it work.”

Absorption chillers take more energy and are less efficient than conventional electric air conditioning systems.

Is it a sure thing to make air conditioning using solar thermal?

Absorption chillers powered by natural gas are proven technology. Creating heat in the form of BTUs from solar thermal is also proven. This simply combines the two principles, Shore said.

“Energy is energy. Once you have energy in one form it can be converted,” Shore said.

What if it doesn’t work?

A traditional air conditioning system, as well as traditional hot water and heating systems, are part of the building design as a backup in case the solar thermal system doesn’t work, or for cloudy days and at night.

“No matter what, you have to do a back-up system that can handle the full load of the building,” said Freudenberger.

If it doesn’t work, FLS will be the one in trouble.

“They get paid based on the energy that’s there. If it doesn’t work, they don’t get paid,” said Nicklas. “You aren’t out anything. They are. It is not a matter of you taking any risk on this.”

Are there any costs to HCC?

There will be traditional back-up energy systems in the building, but those are part of the construction costs the college would have to pay for anyway — regardless of what solar components are sitting on the roof.

FLS will pay for the absorption chiller, as well as all the solar equipment, and even the additional wiring for the solar systems.

“Literally right to the junction point of the building,” Freudenberger said.

Does the building itself have to be designed in a special way, causing general construction costs to be higher?

Michael Nicklas, lead architect on the project and president of Innovative Designs out of Raleigh, said all the green features of the building, including things like the rain water collection system that aren’t part of the alternative energy component, added 4 percent to the building cost.

“It’s not as much as you would think,” he said.

Are there any pitfalls?

Cleveland said it’s not clear how efficient solar thermal energy is at powering absorption chillers. If it takes a lot of BTUs, it’s possible the solar thermal won’t be able to keep up and the back-up system will have to make up the difference.

There are two possible back-up systems: one is using natural gas to power the same absorption chiller, and the other is a traditional electrical air conditioning system. It costs more to power an absorption chiller with natural gas than it would to use a conventional air conditioning system.

“If Haywood is responsible for the natural gas costs the risk could fall on them,” Cleveland said.

But for now, the back-up system included in the plans is a conventional electric air conditioning system so that shouldn’t be an issue.

Cleveland has done economic modeling on absorption chillers versus conventional air conditioning to figure out the economic tipping point.

“There are several variables going on,” Cleveland said. “It depends on how much everything cost you up front.”

In HCC’s case, since they aren’t paying the upfront costs of the absorption chiller or the solar thermal system, then they should go for it, Cleveland said.

“It makes it fairly attractive to the community college,” Cleveland said.

What happens if FLS doesn’t make its loan payments?

County Commissioner Kevin Ensley was concerned if FLS didn’t make its payments, the bank may seize the solar equipment or take over the contract, leaving HCC in a bind.

But Shore said thanks to a forbearance agreement, the solar equipment itself is not the collateral for the loan. The equipment would actually revert to HCC if FLS went bankrupt — not to the bank that made the loan.

What are the intangible benefits?

Students will get to learn the ins-and-outs of alternative energy from a real-life example. HCC President Rose Johnson has made sustainability a focus of the college in recent years across every curriculum and in-campus operations.

“What better way to train the needed workers in the solar energy arena than at a community college,” Shore said.

Ghost Town in the Sky is staring down the barrel of foreclosure.

BB&T has filed for foreclosure against the amusement park, which owes BB&T $9.5 million dating back to 2007. Of that amount, $6.5 million was to purchase of the 288-acre mountaintop property in Maggie Valley and the rest was for improvements.

A foreclosure hearing is scheduled for Sept. 20, which will set the wheels in motion for Ghost Town to be auctioned off to the highest bidder on the courthouse steps. If Ghost Town is unable to stall it, and if BB&T really goes through with it, Ghost Town could be auctioned off before the end of October. Once the ball is rolling, however, BB&T can set a later date or delay it at will.

Ghost Town has been running from BB&T for almost two years. It filed for bankruptcy in early 2009 primarily to shelter itself from BB&T’s demands to pay up. Bankruptcy was the only way to keep BB&T at bay, according to court testimony early in the bankruptcy process.

Ghost Town also owes $2.5 million to more than 200 small businesses left hanging after providing services or products to Ghost Town, from local electricians and plumbing supply stores to advertising firms and souvenir vendors. These are last in line, however, and it is unlikely the property would bring in enough for them to see any of the money they are owed.

Companies cannot hide from their debts in bankruptcy court forever and must eventually emerge from bankruptcy with a plan to pay off what they owe or face liquidation. After 18 months in bankruptcy, Ghost Town has not produced a viable reorganization plan, according to the bankruptcy administrator.

BB&T got permission from the bankruptcy judge in May to begin foreclosure proceedings. But BB&T was dissuaded from pulling the trigger by the promise of a payoff by one of the park’s primary owners, Al Harper, who also owns the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.

Harper staved off the foreclosure for four months with an offer to buy the park out of bankruptcy for $7 million. It was less than what BB&T was owed, but the bank was willing to take it.

Harper said upfront the deal was contingent on financing, and so far that hasn’t come through. The looming foreclosure now brings additional pressure to bear on Harper to produce the money to consummate the deal or lose the amusement park.

BB&T has other outlets to recoup the full cost of what it loaned Ghost Town. Several early investors put up personal guarantees to back the BB&T loan. The loan was also partially backed by a federal rural development loan, placing taxpayers on the hook for a potion of it. BB&T could go after either if a sale of the amusement park on the courthouse steps or to Harper directly failed to bring in the full amount it’s owed.

A Jackson County grading company was left holding the bag on more than $200,000 in site work after the developer who hired it went bankrupt.

The grading company has filed a lawsuit targeting the current property owner in hopes of collecting. But the current property owner says he has no obligation to make good on work performed under a past owner. The case is slated for a trial in September unless a settlement is arrived at in the meantime.

Buchanan and Sons was hired in 2007 by a Georgia developer to grade a 20-acre mountainside tract across the road from Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

But he “never paid a nickel,” said Mark Kurdys, an attorney for Buchanan and Sons. He also never made a single payment toward the purchase of the property.

The Georgia developer bought the property from James Vanderwoude, a developer and businessman based in Franklin.

After not getting paid, Buchanan and Sons quit the job and filed a lien against the property when Vanderwoude appealed to them to stay on board. Vanderwoude promised that they would be paid down the road, according to Chris Buchanan, vice president of the family grading company.

Specifically, Vanderwoude asked Buchanan and Sons to keep up with necessary erosion maintenance.

“Vanderwoude said ‘You have to maintain this property. You can’t just walk away from it. Otherwise it is just going to wash down the road,’” Kurdys recounted during a court hearing earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Vanderwoude foreclosed against the Georgia developer. Vanderwoude regained title to the property less than a year after selling it.

“In that intervening year, $214,000 worth of improvements had been made to the property,” Kurdys said.

Prior to the foreclosure, Buchanan and Sons had filed a lien against the property. The company also planned to bid on the property at foreclosure.

“I couldn’t afford to let $214,00 just go away,” said Buchanan. The company was out the cost of the labor and equipment to do the job and was never reimbursed for it.

If Buchanan and Sons got the property, the company would flip it to a new buyer and hope to recoup its costs on the selling price.

If someone outbid the company at foreclosure, it would at least drive up the price of the property. Whatever was left over after paying off Vanderwoude’s loan would have gone to satisfy Buchanan and Sons’ lien for the grading work.

“We would have been second in line and gotten our money,” said Buchanan.

Verbal promise means little

But before that could happen, Vanderwoude came to Buchanan and instead suggested the idea of a joint venture to develop the property together, Buchanan claims.

“He enticed my client into believing there would be a way for everyone to be made whole,” Kurdys said. “He convinced my client to forgo opportunities to protect himself.”

Once Vanderwoude foreclosed and got the property back, he backed away from the idea of a joint venture. He also hired another grading company to take over the work at the site.

Vanderwoude’s attorney disputed the notion that his client had an obligation to Buchanan and Sons. He said talk of a joint venture was just that — talk.

“There is nothing in writing where my client agreed to pay that debt,” attorney Bill Coward said in a court hearing earlier this year. “Those are just proposals.”

Vanderwoude did write Buchanan and Sons a letter confirming that verbal discussions for a joint venture had taken place. The letter talks about various options for joint ownership and shares under a newly formed LLC. But it falls far short of a legally binding contract.

Coward argued in court filings that Buchanan and Sons was owed money by the Georgia developer, not Vanderwoude, and that Vanderwoude has no contractual obligation to pay Buchanan and Sons anything. Coward further suggests Buchanan and Sons “overbilled” for the grading work they performed.

Kurdys argued that even after selling the property to the Georgia developer, Vanderwoude remained involved in the property’s development.

Vanderwoude advised the Georgia developer on how to develop and market the property, called Villages of Sylva. They were “agents of and for each other,” Kurdys claims.

“The value of that property has been increased by virtue of my clients’ labor and material, and there is evidence that all along [Vanderwoude] had an interest in the property,” Kurdys said.

However, Vanderwoude asserts that is not at all the case.

“There is no evidence of that at all,” Coward said. “There was absolutely no connection between Mr. Vanderwoude and the former propery owner.”

So far, the only thing built on the 20-acre site is a Nick and Nate’s restaurant. At one time, Nantahala Bank had expressed interested in building a branch on the site. Both had contracts to purchase lots in the commercial development for $350,000.

Buchanan said he should have been more savvy and less trusting when performing the original work. Buchanan said contractors and graders have to be far more careful today than they did a few years ago when hired by developers given the economy.

“People are coming up with any reason they can not to pay you,” Buchanan said.

A crowd of 50 Haywood Community College supporters turned out Monday at a two-and-a-half hour public hearing to urge county commissioners to back a $10.3 million project to build a new Creative Arts building.

Artists, gallery owners, craft instructors and students voiced support for their industry and a flagship building they say will put Haywood County and the college at the center of a prosperous economic sector.

“They come to us to learn a technical skill. They go out in to the community, they start businesses, they create jobs and put money back into the economy,” said Laura Leatherwood, director of Community and Economic Development at HCC.

The craft industry has a $206 million annual economic impact in WNC, according to a 2007 study by Handmade in America, a regional nonprofit that supports mountain arts and crafts.

Only a few spoke against the project, all of them regulars at county commissioner meetings who routinely oppose county projects due to their cost.

Bruce Gardener, a fiscal conservative who has been a vocal critic of county spending, said moving forward with new construction of this caliber is unwise given the economic crisis in the country.

He also questioned whether craftspeople can make a decent wage on which to raise a family. Gardener said training in medical and computer fields would give students more lucrative future than the craft industry.

David Nestler, a woodworking student at HCC, countered the claim.

“I do make enough money to support a family, and I plan on doing that with this career,” Nestler said.

Trades housed in the new building include woodworking, jewelry making and stained glass, pottery, film production and fiber arts like weaving and dying.

The building will serve an estimated 1,110 students.

Ted Carr, another critic of the project’s price tag, said few of the craft students will graduate to become wage-earners in their field. Most who use the facility will be community members taking a craft course here and there as a hobby rather than full-time students.

Suzanne Gerdandt, the owner of Textures Gallery on Main Street in Waynesville, said that the impact of the craft industry should not be downplayed. She said 20 percent of the sales in her gallery are pieces by HCC students and instructors.

“The professional crafts program is an absolute gem,” Gerdandt said.

The craft program at HCC has a national reputation, but eventually the ramshackle nature of the existing creative arts facility will hurt the college’s ability to attract top-notch faculty and students, according to Margaret Studenc, an instructor at HCC.

A state-of-the-art building, on the other hand would “paint a big bulls eye of desirability on Haywood County.”

“Let’s build something of which we can be proud,” Studenc said.

Susan Roberts, another HCC instructor, said it is more than just an expensive building.

“It is a building that will inspire and facilitate learning,” Roberts said.

“It will be source of pride for the people of Haywood County,” added Terry Gess, chair of the creative arts program.

Back to the drawing board?

Monroe Miller, another critic of the cost, said college leaders have misled the public and commissioners about the project, particularly the eco-features, which many accuse of driving up the building’s cost.

“Send this project back to the drawing board,” Miller told commissioners.

Kirkwood Callahan agreed.

“I think this facility is too big. We need to go back to the drawing board. We need to spend fewer dollars to achieve our objective here,” Callahan said.

But Mark Bumgarner, chairman of the HCC board of trustees, said the board has cut costs where it can already.

“We have taken this effort very, very seriously,” Bumgarner said. “We feel like we have done our due diligence. We have studied cost estimates. We have tried to trim those. We have worked diligently to accomplish a price that would be minimal.”

The square foot construction costs are higher than other buildings undertaken in the county in recent years — higher than the new jail, the new courthouse and new schools.

But the architect, Michael Nicklas with Innovative Design in Raleigh, said critics have misrepresented the construction costs.

The total project cost of $10.3 million includes demolition of the dilapidated craft building on the site today and paving a new parking lot and road, which Nicklas said shouldn’t be factored into construction costs. Meanwhile, critics use a smaller building size of only 36,000 square feet rather than the more accurate number of 41,000 square feet, leaving out instructional space that houses kilns and certain woodworking components simply because it is not heated space, Nicklas said.

Using an inflated project cost on one hand and deflated square footage on the other hand results in a higher square foot construction cost.

As a result, critics claim the building has square foot construction costs of $290, compared to supporters who claim it is closer to $220 a square foot.

Regardless, Nicklas said it is unfair to compare the construction costs for this building to that of a typical building.

“This building is unique. It has a lot of heavy equipment and lot of heavy loads and lot of ventilation issues,” Nicklas said. “You don’t have these things in a regular school building. And yeah, it adds cost to it, but there is no way around it.”

For example, woodworking areas need ventilation due to dust and odors from stains. Jewelry making likewise uses potent chemicals that require ventilation. And high-heat kilns require industrial-grade firewalls.

Bids now in

Both sides were holding out hope that construction bids would come low and render the debate over the building’s price tag moot.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The lowest bid was $9.3 million, which is actually $100,000 over what architects had estimated, and well above the figure that would have brought an end to the dispute.

“I am very disappointed by that because construction costs are really low right now,” said Commissioner Kevin Ensley.

“I’m disappointed, too,” Nicklas said.

Nicklas said he plans to pore over the blueprints with the lowest bidding contractor in hopes of find at least half a million in savings.

County commissioners must ultimately agree to the building’s price tag. Money to pay for the new building will come from a special quarter-cent sales tax approved by county voters two years ago for the sole purpose of funding improvements on the HCC campus. County commissioners have questioned the wisdom of devoting nearly all the sales tax revenue for the next 15 years on one project when there are other construction and renovation needs on campus.

County commissioners did not indicate at the public hearing when they plan to vote on the project. The college hopes to award the bid and break ground this fall.