FAYETTEVILLE -- A crowd of about 50 people responded with cheers and a standing ovation Thursday night when Washington County planners rejected plans for a red dirt mine on property off Arkansas 16, west of Fayetteville.
"I think the board did its job," Marty Matlock, a neighboring property owner, said after the meeting. "They evaluated the criteria and enforced the law. This is democracy at work."
Planning board appeals
Washington County’s planning and zoning regulations allow for decisions by the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Adjustment to be appealed to the Quorum Court. Nathan Crouch, county planning director, said the county allows 30 days for an appeal to be filed with the County Clerk’s Office.
Source: Staff report
Matlock, who also spoke during the meeting, repeated some of his comments afterward. He said the neighbors don't harbor ill will toward property owner and developer Bobby Morris himself, but they do oppose his business plans for their area.
"This is a corporation proposing to do this work," Matlock said. "Corporations are supposed to make money. I'm not against that. I just don't like corporations making money at the expense of everybody else."
Mac Childs, another neighbor who spoke against the project, was more emotional in his assessment of the outcome. Childs said the community has come together to fight the dirt pit and will be ready to continue their effort if needed.
"I'm all for growth," Childs said. "But unregulated growth is cancer. We came here tonight to fight against cancer. We would like to make an example of this type of bad behavior."
The county's Planning Board/Zoning Board of Approval voted 4-0, with one member recusing, to deny the request for a conditional use permit for the Heritage Farms project on about 211 acres of land.
About 50 people attended the meeting to express their opposition to the proposed development. The board took about two hours to hear a staff report on the project and to hear from Morris and Mel Milholland, the engineer on the project, and from the neighbors.
After the decision, Morris had no comment. Milholland said he had requested the county provide him with the forms needed to appeal the decision to the Quorum Court but he had not yet spoken with Morris about an appeal. Nathan Crouch, the county's planning director, said Morris has 30 days to appeal to board's decision.
Milholland said during the meeting the land in question is not now compatible with the surrounding agricultural and residential use, being very steep and hilly.
"It's so steep you can't drive a tractor up it,"Milholland said. "So it's not compatible now."
Milholland said the land, after being reclaimed when the mining is done, will be more compatible.
"The material will be dug out, it will be hauled out and the land will be recovered," Milholland said. "There will be grass growing. It will be more compatible."
According to information from the developers, the mining would be done in stages on 20 acres of land with no more than 6 acres being in use at any one time. The project could be in operation for as long as 10 years. The developers told the county the operation could see up to 75 large trucks going to and from the site daily.
The conditional use permit request had been tabled earlier to give the developer time to respond to questions raised by the planning board and to respond to neighbors' concerns. More than 50 nearby residents attended the December meeting at which the project had been scheduled to be heard.
The neighbors pointed to problems with large truck traffic to and from the site, noise from the site, possible contamination of groundwater in the area, negative impact on property values and other concerns.
Also Thursday, the Planning Board approved a conditional use permit for the Elevate Elite Training Academy on 25 acres of land on Bethel Blacktop Road near Farmington. That project had also been tabled last month when board members raised concerns over parking.
The developers added about .25 acres to the size of the parcel and obtained an agreement with a nearby business to use its parking lot for overflow parking as needed.
A number of residents of the area spoke in against the project, mostly pointing to concerns about traffic and the placing of a business in a residential area.
NW News on 02/15/2019