WataugaWatch

Democratic NC House member Gruce Goforth (Buncombe Co.), who is also a land developer who's never exhibited any love for steep-slope building regs., has suddenly reversed himself and says now that he will actually introduce a bill this year that would require mountain counties to comply with minimum steep-slope development rules within two years.

Can you spell "wow"?

This is an election year conversion that might actually mean something for advancing the cause of regulating steep-slope development, since the mountain delegations in the General Assembly have been mainly among the staunchest opposers of any sort of land-use planning.

Why the conversion? Might have something to do with the most recent landslide in Maggie Valley. Might have something to do with the Democratic primary Goforth is facing with Patsy Keever, who does support steep-slope regs and has made that a campaign issue in Buncombe County.

Labels: Bruce Goforth, Patsy Keever, steep slope hazards

In western North Carolina since 1990, six people have died, five have been injured, and 40 homes and buildings have been destroyed in 534 landslides and debris flows on our mountain slopes.

In Watauga County alone, almost 1,000 homes and 300 undeveloped lots are in the path of potential landslides mapped by the North Carolina Geological Survey. Bulldozing new roads on steep slopes is one of the leading causes of slope failure.

Those maps of Watauga County landslide hazards are technically "available" for review, but no county government action has been taken on disclosure of known hazardous slopes to new buyers, for example, or requirements for additional engineering for new construction on slopes deemed unstable or likely to fail. (The Town of Boone did pass new steep slope regs, along with Asheville and the counties of Jackson, Haywood, and Buncombe.)

A bill to regulate steep slope construction in the state's General Assembly was squelched by big developer and real estate lobbies. Some additional mountain counties (like Macon) are moving in the direction of regulating steep-slope construction, and at least one primary campaign in the Democratic Party is making it a political issue in 2010.

Insurgent Patsy Keever, a former Buncombe Co. commissioner, is running a Democratic primary against incumbent Democratic NC House member Bruce Goforth (representing the 115th House district). Goforth is a general contractor.

Keever is well known and well respected in Buncombe. Goforth is a 4-term incumbent, well entrenched. We'll be watching this race on May 4.

Labels: Bruce Goforth, Patsy Keever, steep slope hazards

Following Jackson County's lead, no less.

Labels: Buncombe County, Jackson County, steep slope hazards

It happened back on May 25, but the judge didn't sign his order to make it official until today.

The Jeff Templeton lawsuit against the Town of Boone, challenging the constitutionality of the town's steep-slope development regs, was thrown out by Superior Court Judge Joseph N. Crosswhite (who's a Republican, incidentally) for failing to set out "facts or legal claims which showed any potentially valid basis under state law or the constitution."

This was the second lawsuit filed by Boone attorney Charlie Clement on behalf of Templeton to try to strike down the ordinances. The first attempt was voluntarily withdrawn by Clement in December 2006 just before it was to be heard in court, a move sometimes regarded as an admission of "I have no case."

Labels: Boone, Charles E. Clement, Jeff Templeton, steep slope hazards

Because the real estate industry and its allies don't want anything interfering with their God-given rights to sell steep land to people without mentioning that road-building and construction on it may cause it to slide into the nearest valley.

And because the N.C. General Assembly won't mandate disclosure and mitigation laws, neither will individual N.C. counties, even where there is hazardous slope mapping, complete and specific down to individual parcels. Like in Watauga County.

The Asheville Citizen-Times has details on this most recent demise of common sense.

It'll take another round of hurricanes (remember 2005, when part of the White Laurel development came down that hill in Boone and several people died in Macon County?), and maybe not even then, not when there's bunches of money to be made by ignoring the obvious.

Labels: steep slope hazards

The survey of Watauga County voters about land development issues reported on in yesterday's Watauga Democrat might, in the best of all possible worlds, lead to some new public policy.

Nearly all of the 402 people surveyed -- 95 percent of them -- believe property buyers should be forewarned about landslide hazards.

Duh.

And in this county particularly, there are now very thorough landslide hazard maps available ... though no ordinance requiring the information in them to be shared or acted on. The real estate industry is dead set against it.

Labels: polls and polling, steep slope hazards, Watauga County

Watauga County gets prominent mention in a lengthy Asheville Citizen-Times report titled "Homes in Harm's Way on Many WNC Slopes." In that currently rarest activity in some of the newspapery world, Citizen-Times reporters actually did some investigation. They "examined hundreds of erosion inspection reports, reviewed a state database of known landslides, examined maps of landslide hazard areas and interviewed environmentalists, builders, real estate brokers, state legislators and government scientists." And found, among other things, that almost 1,000 homes and 300 undeveloped lots are in the path of potential landslides in Watauga County.

Since 1990 six people have died, five have been injured, and 40 homes and buildings have been destroyed in 534 landslides and debris flows across western North Carolina.

The state Geological Survey completed the mapping of hazardous slopes in Watauga, but so far "officials there have made no changes to land development laws in response to the state's mapping" ... no required disclosure to buyers of property that landslide hazards are known to exist and no required engineering to require new building on known hazardous slopes to compensate for the risk.

And nothing's likely to change until Mother Nature once again shows her power. If history is any guide, it'll take another back-to-back hurricane event, like Frances and Ivan of 2004, and some property owners will be given great cause to rue that nothing was done to prevent loss of life and property when something could have and should have been done.

Labels: steep slope hazards, Watauga County

The state program to map landslide hazard areas in the NC mountains is zeroed out in the proposed NC state Senate budget.

Not soon enough, however, to prevent homeowners in two counties -- Franklin and Watauga -- from knowing whether their new McMansions are planted in previous debris flows or on slopes that have been geologically judged as wanting, that is, highly susceptible to sudden and catastrophic land movement.

The maps of landslide hazards in Franklin and Watauga counties, completed under a state program that the Raleigh Senate now wants to kill dead dead DEAD, was greeted locally with the kind of cheer one might associate with being told you've got an untreatable boil on your gluteus maximus. No one, apparently, wants the information. No one wants to be told that he can't trust the ground on which he wants to pile expensive new infrastructure.

It was, of course, the Democratic grandees of the Senate that xed out the money.

The NC House budget maintains the funds for that mapping program. We'll see how the negotiations between House and Senate budget-writers go.

The unwillingness of NC Senators to ruffle the feathers of real estate and building interests by actually scientifically predicting where people and property could likely come to ruin on our steep mountain slopes is very akin to those now pounding the table for oil drilling off our coasts and in the Arctic Wilderness. "We want candy! We want candy now! No one can tell us that CANDY NOW is not good!"

The next hurricane event in these mountains -- and there will be one -- that buries homes and people's lives will lead to recriminations against government. Elected officials will be called to account for (a) refusing to identify the danger or (b) refusing to act on the information once the danger was mapped.

Our NC senatorial budget dictators obviously plan to out-live the catastrophe, just as the oil-suckers plan to out-live the consequences of their addiction.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

Labels: North Carolina Senate, steep slope hazards