Small communities, rural states are learning about housing development through a program that targets vacant lots

Empty lots like the one above present an opportunity 

to bring affordable housing to areas

 in need. (The Quiet Atlas, Unsplash.com)

Vacant lots across America have been left to grow out of control, collect trash thrown from cars driving by, to be used by neighborhood kids for pickup baseball, or just sit empty with the occasional for sale sign as decoration. But Andrew McKeever reports in The Daily Yonder about an initiative that seeks to use vacant lots toward solving the housing shortage in rural communities.

Housing officials in several states are studying a tool known as “Gentle Infill.” It helps develop partnerships between local non-profits, construction companies and regulators to build small, affordable housing that fits into the character of a neighborhood and avoids the common “Nimby” — not in my backyard — response.

The largely rural state of Vermont, McKeever reports, and other states, are taking a cue from the city of South Bend, IN, which has adopted the approach for several years. Tim Corcoran, director of planning and community resources in South Bend, said the effort has experienced more than just a little success. He said the city worked with small-scale builders and developers, guiding them through zoning and other problems, and even helping create a set of architectural designs.

“If you’re really genuine about helping address the housing crisis in your town,” Corcoran told McKeever,  “then you really need to look at the approval process very closely.” He said bringing together regulators and breaking down silos is key.

Vermont has a goal of building 30,000 homes by 2030. While there are obstacles, The Yonder reports, there is “near-universal agreement that more affordable workforce-missing middle housing is needed.” The statewide approach mirrors the one in South Bend. Teams have been scouring the state for three years looking for available lots, and they have adopted a plan called “Homes for All.” It streamlines approval processes for small-scale builders and developers and intends to offer pre-permitted designs in a variety of forms.

Developers of data centers target rural America but face widespread opposition, pushback among local residents

Massive high-impact data centers are threatening to invade rural America and 

developers are facing growing opposition from residents. (Geoffrey Moffett, Unsplash)

BURGIN, Ky. — Residents of this small Mercer County town are up in arms over their city council’s refusal to accept public comments against a proposed data center. Two Lexington television stations and social media posts from those in attendance report that the council ignored a raucous overflow crowd at the local school and approved the first reading of an ordinance annexing enough land to double the size of the city to accommodate the center. A second reading was scheduled to push through the annexation. Burgin has no planning and zoning laws, and the council can respond to annexation requests from property owners.

The Burgin controversy is among the most recent in rural America’s battles over the construction of data centers, the workhorses of the expanding digital age. Brookings reports that increased demand for the energy to operate artificial intelligence (AI) has rural communities “weighing promised economic gains against short-and long-term costs related to land-use change, water demand, electrical grids, and public services.”

In the Kansas Reflector, columnist Max McCoy shared the story of a late June public hearing in Emporia that also was heavily attended by opponents of a proposed center there. Activists petitioned the city to “adopt an ordinance banning high-impact data centers or to put the measure to a public vote.” The headline to his column urges politicians to “take heed” of a growing national coalition against the centers.

And in Triple Pundit Tina Casey says the issue is pitting the ultra-rich against ordinary Americans and is quickly becoming a midterm election issue. She cites a June Ipsos poll that claims only 14 percent of Americans would welcome a data center to their community.

A tale of two towns and dollar stores: One blocked Dollar General, one allowed it on 3-2 vote; local merchants worry

Leelanau County is the pinkie finger
of Michigan's mitt. (Wikipedia map)

What does a dollar store add to a small community, or perhaps take from it? That can be a loaded question.

In Leelanau County, Michigan, in 2019, residents got the zoning board to shut out Dollar General Corp.'s plans to build in the county seat of Empire  because the chain's reputation and look did not "fit" with their quaint, small-town vibe, and it's now the only Michigan county without a dollar store, reports Rose White of MLive, a Michigan newspaper chain. “Chain dollar stores tend to target food deserts like Empire . . . providing a limited selection of food to city neighborhoods or rural areas,” White writes, citing a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Sperling's Best Places map

The dollar-store drama is playing out differently in Ebony, Virginia,  where some residents did not welcome Dollar General because they worried the store would "open the door to additional development that will spoil the character of their tiny, rural community of about 230 people," reports Michael Corkery of The New York Times. But not all the residents thought the chain would harm their town. "Jerry Jones grew up in Ebony. . . . He went on to manage grocery stores and later owned a gas station in Ebon. . . . Jones owns the land where the Dollar General would be built. He said the store would provide the county’s residents a convenient and affordable place to shop while also generating sorely needed tax revenue." Jones told Corkery: “You still need to have that balance between the people with nicer things and the people who live paycheck to paycheck. To me, Dollar General fits right in with that.”

The two places have some similarities; one big difference is that Empire is a summer tourist town where "quaint feel" has a financial impact. "Ebony sits on the edge of Lake Gaston and is a haven for second homes that serve as an important tax base" in Brunswick County, which has a median household income of $49,600, about the same as Leelanau's, but well under Virginia's statewide figure of $80,600, Cockery reports. "More than half the county’s population is Black." Only one-fourth of 1 percent of Leelanau County's is.

Brunswick County supervisors, by a 3-2 vote, "approved a zoning change that would allow the store to be built," Cockery reports. "The dispute in Ebony, which has been going on for more than three years, is about planning and zoning, but it also touches on a deeper issue simmering in many parts of rural America, whether the disputes are about cellphone towers or snowmobile trails. What does 'country' mean to different people in a small community?" Cockery asks.

But Dollar General is not winning everywhere. "The number of communities that are defeating specific dollar-store proposals or are enacting ordinances that control dollar store development is shooting up rapidly,” Kennedy Smith, a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told White. Much of the opposition comes from local business owners like Mohamed Abouemara, who "moved to southern Virginia from New York to operate convenience stores and has run the Ebony General Store for nine years," Corkery reports. "He said his store, where locals can socialize and buy hot food, played an important role in a rural community. A dollar store, he said, would significantly hurt his business."

Groundwater shortage makes Arizona limit home building; it's an example of climate change reshaping the West

Voluntarily fallowed fields at the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, home of the Quechan

Tribe, in May. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images via The Washington Post)

Water shortages in the West aren't news, but a shortage of groundwater in Arizona shows its importance and provides an example of how climate change is reshaping the region, report Joshua Partlow, Brady Dennis and Isaac Stanley-Becker of The Washington Post. 

"The decision by Arizona in the past week to limit residential construction in some parts of the fast-growing Phoenix suburbs is another major warning about how climate change is disrupting lifestyles and economies in the West," the Post reports. "Throughout the region, glaciers have receded, wildfires have expanded, and rivers and lakes have shrunk. It has been a wet winter, but the deeper trends brought on by the warming atmosphere persist."

Arizona's move signals "a critical point in our history, where we're making decisions about what's most important — housing developments or farm fields," Stefanie Smallhouse, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, told the Post.

"Sometimes, you've got to give up some dreams to get to others. Arizona is in that situation with its water," Arizona State University water-law professor Rhett Larson told the Post. "We want to be the greatest semiconductor and microchip manufacturer in the world. We can do that. We have enough water, but our food prices are going to go up because we're not going to grow as much food."

And it's not mainly about surface water, the Post notes: "Jay Famiglietti moved to Arizona to study how the worst drought in a millennium was sapping groundwater beneath the American West. . . . He has documented that states along the Colorado River were losing their aquifers far faster than the more visible shriveling of the nation's largest reservoirs. Famiglietti told the Post: "I don't think that people and this is everyone, the general public, but right up to our water managers and elected officials, really understand now that groundwater is the key to our future."

The Post explains, "Groundwater can take thousands of years to replenish once it has been sucked out. . . Such shortages are likely to reshape, in coming decades, where people live and how much they pay to do so." The Southwest does have options, and some are working. The Post reports, "Over the past two decades, Nevada has reduced by 30 percent the portion of the Colorado River's water that it uses, even as the population has grown. Las Vegas lawns have been ripped out and replaced by cactus, gravel and artificial turf. . . . Addressing climate changes "also means more money and focus on costly solutions — facilities that remove salt from seawater; pipelines bringing in water from wetter parts of the country. Arizona's prior governor, Doug Ducey, created a $1 billion fund for pursuing such projects. His former natural resources adviser, Chuck Podolak, now leads that effort at the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona. Podolak told the Post: "Finding new water seems like a relatively doable task compared to holding back the oceans in Miami or trying to stop hurricanes from coming into Houston."

N.C. county that once said 'no' to Walmart and Buc-ee's rejected a Dollar General, but the proposal has come back

Dollar General Corp. wants a store in White Cross, N.C., which has become a rural bedroom community. (MapQuest)

The proposed Dollar General store would be a nondescript steel-
clad structure. (News & Observer photo via Glandon Forest Equity)

The small-town zoning fights about retail development were once about Walmart. Now they're about Dollar General Corp., which is trying to be Walmart on a small scale. "Residents of a crossroads community west of Carrboro, North Carolina, thought they had beaten Dollar General last year when the developer withdrew a rezoning application," reports Tammy Grubb of The News & Observer. "But the developer Glandon Forest Equity came back with a new proposal," which Orange County commissioners will hear Tuesday night.

"Most of the land around White Cross [the proposed site] is zoned for agricultural and residential uses. However, neighborhood commercial development serving nearby residents is allowed at the intersection with NC 54," Grubb reports. "Mom-and-pop shops have sprung up around the crossroads. . . . Project documents indicate Dollar General's developer is interested in the over 11,500 cars the state's Department of Transportation says pass the spot on NC 54 each day, but that hasn't eased fears the store would siphon existing businesses' customers. . . . Orange County and its towns have a history of rejecting projects that its residents don't like, from Walmart in the 1990s and early 2000s to Buc-ee's in 2021."

Nicknamed the "The Paris of Piedmont," some Carrboro residents think a Dollar General is not a good "fit with the community." Grubb writes, "Sally Jo Slusher started Plow Girl Farm about a half-mile east of the proposed site said the proposed Dollar General would be 'massive' and 'very, very out of place.'. . . [Slusher] urges the county to think outside the box about what White Cross could become." Slusher told Grubb, "We really value our neighbors. . . . I frequent Fiesta Grill and Bravos Market. . . . All these little businesses out here, I do business with, and I think our whole community sort of feels this way, or most of us."

Kristina Snyder, a Fiesta Grill customer who has lived between Carrboro and White Cross for about 20 years, noted how frustrating it was to see the proposal return. She told Grubb, "I recognize that 'no' is never forever, but it seems like it's totally unfair because all of the burden is now on community members to first go to a hearing and then go to the planning board, and now go to the county commissioners. . . . [and the developer] is not being held to any standards (after) they were told they had to wait at least a year to reapply."

"Unlike surrounding counties dotted with dozens of Dollar General locations, only a handful are located in strip malls in Carrboro, Hillsborough and Chapel Hill," Grubb reports. "Both county staff and residents have raised concerns about the building's appearance, especially since it sits across the highway from the historic 1930s-era White Cross School. . . . The proposed 10,640-square-foot Dollar General store and its 35-space parking lot would cover roughly an acre of the 4.83-acre site, where a two-story community store building now sits vacant. The plan is to build the Dollar General next year and hire four employees, documents said."

Snyder told Grubb, "And for four more jobs at whatever (wage) Dollar General pays a cashier, that's not building living wages in Orange County." Grubb adds, "She and residents said they would rather see the land being used to add more or expand existing mom-and-pop stores, provide park or green space, or create room for a farmer's market."

Roar of fans at cryptocurrency 'mine' makes Blue Ridge rumble; one of 12 a Calif. firm has in Southern Appalachia

The cryptocurrency "mine" is a few miles outside Murphy, N.C. (Screenshot from CNN)

The undending roar of fans cooling computer servers at a cryptocurrency "mine" in the Blue Ridge Mountains has "upended local politics" in Cherokee County, North Carolina, CNN reports, but officials there have said there is little they can do about it.

"The mine in Murphy is just one of a dozen in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina owned by a San Francisco-based company called PrimeBlock, which recently announced $300 million in equity financing and plans to scale up and go public," CNN's Bill Weir reports.

Mine neighbor Mike Lugiewicz told Weir, “There’s a racetrack three miles out right here,” pointing toward it and away from the nearby crypto mine. “You can hear the cars running. It’s cool!” Neighbor Judy Stines interjected, “But at least they stop. And you can go to bed!

Lugiewicz takes sound readings at his home. More 30 percent have exceeded 60 decibels, Weir reports: "Estimates from the National Park Service show that expected environmental sound levels in the area should be around 41 decibels. Kurt Fristrup, a former Park Service scientist who studied noise impacts on rural environments, compared the noise near Lugiewicz’s home to living close to a very busy road without normal pulses in traffic."

Residents have complained about the noise at meetings of the Cherokee County Commission, and the commission's lack of action helped lead to the defeat of some members, CNN reports, but the county "still has not found a legal 'magic wand' to make noise from unenclosed crypto mines go away," the Cherokee Scout reports. However, Commissioners in Clay County, which borders Cherokee on the east, voted in August to ban crypto mines, the Scout reports. The Cherokee County Commission did pass a resolution asking state and federal officials to ban crypto mining in the U.S., as China has. The county "has had a noise ordinance on the books since 1999, but locals say it is unevenly enforced and does not specify a decibel threshold," The Washington Post reported in August.

Nearby development puts a Virginia county's dark sky at risk

Google map, adapted by The Rural Blog; click to enlarge

As new housing and commercial developments creep closer to the Rappahannock County Park — a designated International Dark Sky Park in northern Virginia — stargazing enthusiasts wonder what will happen to the nightly natural wonder that has all but disappeared in more heavily populated areas, Christopher Connell reports for the weekly Rappahannock News. 

Fifteen miles southeast of the park, in adjoining Culpeper County, 760 homes and a new shopping center are being built, and local environmentalists are trying to convince developers "to go above and beyond what Culpeper zoning ordinances require to limit light pollution," Connell writes. Groups interested in keeping the sky dark sky virtually with the homebuilder's development manager, who seemed receptive, but the environmentalists' principal concern was with the shopping center.

As populations have grown in the towns surrounding Rappahannock County, longtime residents say the sky has already become less dark. Joyce Harman, a nearly three-decade-long resident, told Connell that from her house she "can see the lights of Culpeper, Warrenton and Front Royal. There’s tons more development."

Dark skies are important to the readership of the Rappahannock News, Connell writes. When the nonprofit Foothills Forum formed in 2015 to support the newspaper, it surveyed over 3,200 residents on what they saw as important issues and "people ranked keeping the skies dark as their sixth biggest concern." The Forum provides support for such polling, and for stories like Connell's; he is a retired reporter for The Associated Press.

A newspaper editor cries for help, in a surprisingly frank way, and gets it; his embarrassed publisher is glad he did

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Rural newspapers have become more willing to share the threats to their existence with readers, but perhaps none so frankly as the Meade County Messenger in Brandenburg, Ky., did last month.

Under a headline reading, "Will you cheer the death of an institution or come to its aid?" Editor Chad Hobbs told how the paper was suffering from social media, a boycott by some advertisers upset about an editorial stance, his personal travails in covering recent stories, and, of course, Covid-19: "The pandemic and ensuing shutdowns wrecked our advertising lifeline to the point the owner of this paper hasn’t taken a cent from the business in over two years."

Chad Hobbs and Rena Singleton in their Brandenburg, Ky., office

Whoa. That revelation about how much money a paper is making, or not making, is exceedingly rare in the newspaper business. And it surprised the publisher of the paper, Rena Singleton, who has other sources of income. "I didn't know he was going to put that editorial in," much less reveal the paper's finances, Singleton told me. "It embarrassed me." But it's working out for them. Here's the rest of story:

Hobbs and Singleton, who has owned the weekly for 40 years, said the editorial sprang from a meeting of the paper's five-member staff, in which she "put responsibility on them for the future of the paper," as she put it. "He took it to heart." In his 1,328-word editorial, Hobbs followed the financial revelation with this passage:

"The final straw has been the fallout from us doing our job as your watchdog. We hear from countless readers how much you appreciate the fact that we hold leaders accountable and fearlessly defend the citizens of this county and their tax dollars. Doing the right thing and upholding that mandate by the common men and women of this county has come at one heck of a price. After supporting everything the Meade County Chamber of Commerce has done since its inception, we sided with the people and dared to say we didn’t agree with the tax dollars they were wanting to spend on a new facility," which would have been paid for by local governments. "Several large businesses that have always supported us have pulled their advertising because the forum page does not paint images of their friends in politics while wearing rose-colored glasses."

So, a newspaper that needs more business attacked the umbrella entity for the business community. But the reaction wasn't what you might expect, Singleton and Hobbs said. Some have offered help, she said, and "That's what we needed most. . . . His editorial did have an impact." She said that if she had seen the editorial in advance, and had known the reaction would be positive, she would have left in the news that she hadn't taken an ownership distribution from the paper in two years.

Singleton said she's sure other weekly publishers are in similar situations, but "Nobody's telling it." Asked if she would recommend publishers be more forthcoming about their finances, she said yes.

Hobbs, a former reporter who moved into the editor's job in March, is a native of Meade County. Singleton said that helped his editorial have more impact than it would have if written by someone who had moved in from the outside. Hobbs reminded his audience of that in his conclusion:

"If you cut me open, I bleed Meade County green, and I can’t thank those that support me enough for allowing me to do what I do for this long. I love doing what I do, no matter how bad it hurts sometimes. As much as I hate asking for help, it appears that, if something doesn’t soon give, we very well may be traveling down a road together that is quickly becoming too narrow for the Messenger to fit. We’ve fought for you Meade County for over 100 years, and we would love to do it for another 100 years. Will you let your grand ol’ oak wither and die over a couple of articles you didn’t agree with, or will you come to our aid in this time of need, like we have so many times for you, Meade County?"

Google map, adapted by The Rural Blog; click it to enlarge

Singleton said the editorial also helped the community realize the value of the newspaper at a time when it is getting a large industry, many new residents and more development issues for the paper to cover. In the last few decades, Meade County has become mainly a bedroom community for people who work in nearby cities or Fort Knox, which lies partly in the county.

The commuters "forgot their community," Singleton said. "The people here are starting to lose the community feel, and realize the only thing that's holding us together is the community newspaper."

Bourbon boom has downsides for neighbors who don't want aging whiskey feeding unsightly fungus and posing risks

Buffalo Trace Distillery built these warehouses at Frankfort, prompting complaints from neighbors. Now it wants to build a similar group of warehouses in the nearby Elkhorn Creek valley. (Photos by Ryan C. Hermens, Lexington Herald-Leader)

Fungus on a nearby sign

The boom in bourbon has been a boon to Kentucky economically, but now rural residents in a swath of the western Bluegrass region are fighting the warehouses that turn whiskey into bourbon. They object to the fungus that is fed by the aging alcohol escaping into the air from barrels in the warehouses, worry about the storage of so much flammable material, and dislike what they call an industrial invasion of bucolic landscapes.

Residents of Henry, Franklin and Anderson counties point to the black fungus that is obvious on signs, homes and other surfaces. Distillers pooh-pooh those concerns, citing studies that show the fungus is harmless, but they acknowledge it's unsightly. And the concerns are more than cosmetic.

Wendell Berry

“What I fear is this will be a continuation of an old Kentucky story, in which outsiders come in, take as nearly as they can what they can, what they want, and give as little back as they possibly can,” farmer-author-poet-activist Wendell Berry, 88, told Janet Patton of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Near the farm where Berry grew up, Angel’s Envy has won Henry County Planning Commission approval to turn a 1,200-acre cattle farm into a "bourbon campus" with up to 25 warehouses, lodging, an amphitheater, a visitors center, a helicopter pad and more.

“We are being asked to sacrifice this land to tourism and whiskey,” Berry told the commission last month. The commission voted 6-3 for the zone change; the final decision is up to the county's legislative body, the Fiscal Court, on Sept. 20.

One the other side of the argument is "Connie Blackwell, a Lawrenceburg real estate agent who lives in Tyrone in the valley below the Wild Turkey distillery," Patton reports, quoting her about the fungus: “It is a mess; you do have to pressure-wash your house once a year. You get used to it. Everybody down here in Tyrone tolerates it. It’s just no big deal … for the taxes they bring into our county, it’s worth it, to me. . . . I don’t believe the whiskey fungus hurts us. Honest to god, for the amount of taxes . . . it really is a fair exchange.” But Patton notes that distillers are lobbying for the local tax on aging whiskey to be reduced, which would be the latest in a series of tax breaks that have helped fuel the boom.

Judge rules that West Virginia county can't block gas pipeline compressor station through local zoning laws

"A West Virginia county, whose elected leaders have vocally resisted natural gas industry operations, has again been told by a federal judge that it must allow the work to proceed," the Charleston Gazette-Mail's Ken Ward Jr. reports for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network.

Fayette County, West Virginia (Wikipedia)

U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver ruled that Fayette County commissioners can't block a proposed compressor station for the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline using the county's local zoning ordinance, since the federal Natural Gas Act trumps local zoning rules. "It’s the second time in two years that Copenhaver has overruled efforts by Fayette leaders to protect their county from what they view as negative effects of the ongoing boom in West Virginia’s natural gas industry," Ward reports.

The county has been trying to make itself into a tourism destination after the coal industry could no longer carry the local economy. Though pipeline officials said the compressor station was designed to "limit surface disturbance and minimize the overall environmental footprint," according to documents filed in court, its proposed location isn't in an industrial area, and county leaders worried it would be dirty and loud, Ward reports.

"In November 2017, the commission turned down a request for a zoning change needed because the compressor station was proposed for an area where industrial activity isn’t allowed. The pipeline developers sued, and Copenhaver agreed with their argument that natural gas pipelines are governed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, not by county ordinances," Ward reports.

Weekly blows whistle when zoning panel uses secret ballot in bid to rezone for big coal mine

McLean County, Kentucky
(Wikipedia map)

Here's a lesson about how a rural newspaper rightly stuck to its guns and insisted on transparency from a local board that wanted to shield at least one of its members from scrutiny.

The Joint Planning Commission in McLean County, Kentucky, voted 7-1 by secret ballot June 20 to rezone 270 acres to industrial for a coal mine, but the McLean County News challenged the vote, saying it had violated Kentucky's Open Meetings Act, "which requires that public agencies keep accurate records of all votes and actions," Stephanie Salmons reports for the News, owned by Paxton Media Group.

Commission Chair Nancy Wetzel denied that any action had taken place in the meeting, but County Attorney Donna Dant confirmed that the vote did take place, but that it "did not carry the weight of law, because it did not accompany a written description of the zoning change or a map outlining the change to scale." That gave Wetzel an excuse to hold a new meeting with a public vote to avoid "any appearance of impropriety."

The coal company, Hartshorne Mining Group of Australia, obligingly filed an amendment with a legal description of the property. On July 20 the commission met again and voted 7-1 to recommend the zoning change; the lone dissenter was revealed to be commission member Tom Howard; he declined to comment on why he does not support the rezoning. The McLean County Fiscal Court, the county's legislative body, which approved first reading of the zone-change ordinance 4-0. Salmons told The Rural Blog that the fiscal court approved the zone change 4-0 on Aug. 4.

Dollar General crowding out small, rural stores; company has almost as many stores as McDonald's

Distribution of the 13,601 Dollar General stores in the U.S.
nears that of McDonald's, which has 14,000. (MarketWatch)

Mom-and-pop country stores are being increasingly crowded out by Dollar General stores, reports Jeff Sturgeon of The Roanoke Times. Dollar General Corp. is a $20 billion company with stores across the U.S. that average $1.7 million in annual sales each. Discount chains such as Dollar General and its direct competitors Dollar Tree and Family Dollar are expanding rapidly, especially in rural areas.

Over the last 20 years, Dollar General has refined its rural niche by stocking popular national brands instead of the heavily discounted off-brand items often found at the typical dollar store. "Due to their small size, Dollar General locations can go where Walmart can’t but offer a similar lineup of goods," Sturgeon writes. "The company describes its forte as offering product lines and prices that appeal to people from low- and fixed-income households. Its customers depend on government assistance to such an extent that the company’s sales track changes in food-stamp programs, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."

Encroaching Dollar General stores have caused some mom-and-pop businesses to close, since they can't compete with the selection and bulk buying power of the mega-chain. "It's unfair competition," country-store owner Wayne Lamay of Copper Hill, Va., told Sturgeon. He said his customers had promised to stay loyal to his store, but he sees their cars in the Dollar General store parking lot.

Local residents, many of whom live in food deserts, say they like the store's prices, but acknowledge it can be an eyesore. But those who dislike Dollar General are generally powerless to stop it, since the store often takes advantage of lax or absent zoning laws in rural areas to build their stores, reports Sturgeon. Rural county governments usually benefit from new Dollar General stores, since they keep retail dollars in the county that might otherwise happen elsewhere, and pay the government sales and real estate taxes.

Paula and Bruce Smith's view from their home in Copper Hill, Va., has changed.
They don't like it, and worry about pollution from light and heavy delivery trucks.
(Roanoke Times photo by Heather Rousseau) 

New Jersey township must pay Muslim group $3.25 million for rejection of application to build mosque

An Islamic group is finally able to build a new mosque in New Jersey after 39 public hearings and two lawsuits that dragged out over five years, and the story is a cautionary tale for other communities.

“Municipalities around the country should pay close attention to what happened in Bernards Township,” Adeel A. Mangi, lead counsel for the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge, told My Central Jersey. “The American Muslim community has the legal resources, the allies and the determination to stand up for its constitutional rights in court and will do so.”

Worshipers at the Bernards Township Community Center (AP photo by Julio Cortez)

"On Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced the terms of a settlement between the federal government and Bernards Township, the local body that refused to let the Society begin construction on a proposed house of worship based on alleged issues with minor details of its proposal, including the size of the parking lot," Emma Green reports for The Atlantic.

In addition to allowing construction to move forward, the township must pay the group $3.25 million in damages and attorney fees, and town officials must complete diversity and inclusion training.

While religious discrimination is not unique, this case has been particularly nasty, Green writes. "Before the Society had even filed a formal application, evidence of anti-Muslim bias in the community started emerging. Its mailbox was smashed," Green writes. "A neighbor accosted Mohammad Ali Chaudry, the Society’s president, in a parking lot after a township meeting, saying, 'Eleven brothers died on 9/11 and now you want to put a mosque next to my house with the insignia of the people who did that,' according to a complaint filed against the township by the Society."

Anti-mosque lawn signs and flyers were distributed throughout the town. Negative comments were spread online. Large crowds attended hearings. One community member asked whether the facility would be used for animal sacrifices, according to the complaint.

The township officially rejected the mosque's application in December 2015. In March 2016, the Society sued the township, "arguing that its rejection of the mosque proposal reflected the 'religious and cultural animus against Muslims' on display in Basking Ridge," Green notes. "An uncommonly wide range of religious groups came to the Society’s support—from groups that lean left, like the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Sikh Coalition, to more conservative groups, including the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention," Green noted.

The Justice Department filed its own suit in November 2016, "alleging that the township had violated one of two core federal religious-freedom laws: the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which prohibits local communities from using vague ordinances and bureaucratic procedures to discriminate against religious groups," Green writes.

Rural town refuses to allow Muslim burial ground

A proposed Muslim burial ground in rural Dudley, Mass., has drawn the ire of locals, Jess Bidgood reports for The New York Times. The burial ground, planned for 50 acres of unused farmland, "was denounced at meetings and ultimately turned down by the Zoning Board of Appeals, prompting charges of bigotry and drawing scrutiny from the United States attorney for Massachusetts, who announced a civil-rights investigation on Aug. 18 into the town’s actions." Similar scenes have played out in other areas, most recently over a proposed mosque in Covington, Ga.

Officials in the town of 11,500—95 percent of residents are white—deny any wrongdoing, Bidgood writes. They say "they have been unfairly portrayed as biased against the Muslims, and say the society did not have standing to seek a permit for the cemetery because of a provision giving the town the right of first refusal for the tract, which belongs to a private landowner."

The Muslim group "says it would most likely bury 10 to 15 people a year (although an early estimate mentioned 16,000 plots) and has agreed to comply with applicable burial regulations and to accommodate some of the town’s concerns, like using only a small part of the land for the cemetery," Bidgood writes. "But at a meeting in June, the Zoning Board refused to grant the group a permit, saying that the town had a right of first refusal on the land, which had once been used for agriculture, and that proper procedure for the sale had not been followed." (Read more)

In some rural and agricultural areas, officials lack staff, time to regulate illegal businesses

Illegal businesses are allowed to stay in operation in some rural and agricultural areas because of laws that are difficult to enforce and a lack of  regulators, Lynn Thompson reports for The Seattle Times. In King County, Washington, "county code-enforcement officers mostly respond to complaints—and because of a lengthy appeals process—illegal enterprises operate in rural and agricultural areas, sometimes for years." (Times photo by Dean Rutz: this illegal tree removal business in Fall City, Wash., violates zone rules but has remained in operation)

Residents outside Fall City have complained about an illegal tree removal and landscaping business that employs 10 and is a constant source of noise, traffic and strangers, Thompson writes. "The county issued its first 'stop work order' for clearing and grading without a permit in March 2013. Since then, it has issued five other violation notices, including for converting a house into an office and running a landscaping business as a home occupation."

"King County allows home businesses in rural areas if they are limited in scale and 'subordinate to the primary use of the site as a residence,' according to the department’s rules," Thompson writes. "They must have fewer than three employees working on site and no more than three who report to the site but work primarily elsewhere. A permit is required when a structure is built or the use of the property changes. The county also allows home industries for businesses with more employees and more equipment, but those require a conditional-use permit, which is subject to public notice, public appeals and conditions set by the county."

Matt Rengo, the owner of the Fall City business, claims he is the victim of harassment and exaggerated allegations from his neighbors, but he "hasn’t reduced the size of his business or paid any county fines," Thompson writes. "On Aug. 14, two days after the county fined him a third time, he submitted an application for a permit that could allow him to continue to operate as a home industry."

"County officials say the process for handling code violations errs on the side of leniency to give the violator every opportunity to correct the problems," Thompson writes. John Starbard, director of the Department of Permitting and Environmental Review, said "the timelines for compliance are long, appeals can be appealed, violators can ask for more time and they can defer the payment of penalties." One problem is manpower, with five code-enforcement officers to cover about 1,000 square miles. Each has about 260 open cases. (Read more)

Vermont town votes to leave zoning changes up to the old-fashioned town meeting

Residents in a small town in Vermont have spoken loud and clear that they want to be classified as rural so they can retain direct control over land-use planning. The state allows towns with populations between 2,500 to 5,000 to choose whether they want to be designated as urban or rural, and residents in Shaftsbury (right) voted down an amendment from "the planning commission and select board that the town switch to an urban designation," which would leave zoning decisions up to the Board of Selectmen rather than meetings open to all town residents, in the New England tradition. Derek Carson reports for the Bennington Banner. The amendment failed 493-242.

"The issue of rural versus urban designation came up when Town Administrator Margy Becker discovered that the town had been adopting zoning bylaws incorrectly," Carson writes. "In 1987, Shaftsbury voted to switch from an urban to a rural town. At some point in the late 2000s, Shaftsbury had begun adopted bylaws by select board vote rather than by town vote." Board members argued that leaving the town's designation as rural would mean residents could be voting on issues they don't understand, but residents argued that remaining rural means the townspeople have the final say on issues concerning Shaftsbury. (Read more)

Appeals court says New York towns can ban fracking

New York towns' bans on hydraulic fracturing have been upheld by an appeals court, which ruled that Dryden and Middlefield can use zoning laws to ban gas drilling, reports Chris Dolmetsch and David McLaughlin for Bloomberg. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images photo: Anti-fracking protesters in New York City)

The court said "The state law seeks to protect the right of the general public, not just the owners of oil and gas properties, a goal which is realized when individual municipalities can determine whether drilling activities are appropriate for their respective communities," reports Bloomberg.

Fracking has been banned in more than 50 towns in New York, and dozens more are considering bans, according to Karen Edelstein, a geographic information systems consultant in Ithaca, Bloomberg reports.

About 250 localities have tried to limit drilling's reach, worrying industry and some state officials

Many local officials in rural communities are not opposed to natural-gas drilling, but they are opposed to drilling close to homes, schools or hospitals. Citizens are increasingly turning to their city and town governments to help fight encroachment of drilling rigs when they feel state regulations aren't strict enough to control the drilling close to their towns. Jim Malewitz of Stateline reports the trend is "worrying" industry representatives and state officials who want to expand the "industry's reach."

At least 246 cities or towns in 15 states have passed laws restricting drilling on local land, according to Food and Water Watch, an environmental group. Malewitz reports some of the ordinances are "merely symbolic" because those towns don't sit atop gas reserves. More than 90 cities or towns in New York have passed resolutions addressing gas drilling, 14 in Pennsylvania have passed regulations, and some in Colorado are doing the same. A Pennsylvania appellate-court panel recently struck down a new state law that barred local officials from using zoning to prohibit drilling in certain areas.

State regulators and industry advocates say local pushback is "misguided and a dangerous obstacle to economic growth," Malewitz reports. Advocates say drillers should be exempt from local zoning laws because extraction depends on where the resources are, and sometimes residential areas and towns are included. Zoning laws differ from town to town, and Malewitz explains some zoning laws in several states. (Read more)

Pa. court narrowly strikes down law limiting localities' rights to limit oil and gas drilling zones

A drilling well pond in Derry, Pa.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photo by Andrew Rush)

A appellate court panel has struck down a new law that barred local governments in Pennsylvania from using zoning to prohibit oil and gas drilling in certain areas. Marc Levy of The Associated Press reports the decision was a defeat for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and the booming natural-gas industry, which had long sought the limitations. The governor's office said an appeal to the State Supreme Court is likely.

The Commonwealth Court panel ruled 4-3 that the limitations, in a bill regulating the gas industry, were unconstitutional under state law. The majority opinion found that the provisions upended the municipal zoning rules that had previously been followed by other property owners, unfairly exposing them to harm. Seven municipalities had sued to overturn the five-month-old law. "Among the most objectionable provisions towns cited were requirements that drilling, also known as hydraulic fracking, waste pits and pipelines be allowed in all zoning districts, including residential ones, if certain buffers are observed," Levy reports.

Local officials in Pa., outmaneuvered in legislature, sue for right to zone out oil and gas wells

When the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law this year that stripped local authority over where natural-gas wells could be drilled, cities and townships decided to take matters into their own hands. Seven municipalities have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law, which charges an "impact fee" for gas wells and sends the money to localities but also overrides local governments’ zoning authority. The case was argued June 6, reports Alice Su for the Center for Public Integrity. (Associated Press photo)

At first glance, writes Su, "The impact fee of up to $50,000 per well seems to put wealth from drilling on the Marcellus Shale into citizens’ hands. But gas companies can drill wherever they like, even if local councils vote to keep the wells out of their jurisdictions. “It gives industry the right to tell us how we’re going to plan our townships rather than the other way around,” said David M. Ball, a petitioner in the lawsuit and councilman of Peters Township, Washington County. “What happens when the next industry comes down the line, like the homebuilders’ industry?” Ball asked. “Pretty soon, what does zoning even mean?” Coppola said he receives “hundreds and hundreds of letters” every day from townships and boroughs in support of the suit.

Su notes that last month, the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, which says it represents 95 percent of Pennsylvania’s land area, passed two resolutions stating opposition to “any legislation that would remove, reduce or inhibit local government authority” or “pre-empt the existing authority of townships to regulate land use.” Ball said, “I’ve personally not heard of one municipality that has said they support the zoning provisions of Act 13.” Whether the Commonwealth Court affirms Act 13 or not, White, Coppola, Milburn and Ball agree that the law will most likely be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. “Act 13 eventually is going to be undone,” Coppola said. “It strips away too many rights of individuals. People are just going to go crazy.” (Read more)