Rural Clay County in the mountains of far western North Carolina adopts a 10-year comprehensive plan
Citizens meeting over an 18-month period sketch a blueprint for work by future county commissions, and nothing is written in granite
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Hayesville, N.C., Oct. 12, 2010 – If you make a plan for how you are going to use the land, then before long that’s going to be very, very good for the water.
Clay County is 215 square miles of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the western tip of this state and it has a 2009 population estimate of 10,333, according to the U.S. Census web site. In remaining locales of its slopes and reaches of the river where quarrymen and developers haven’t done great harm, this is a pocket of rural splendor.
The Nantahala National Forest caps Clay County, protecting headwaters of some of the best trout streams in western N.C., and the Hiwassee River runs through it. The river is impounded at Chatuge Dam to form the lake of the same name. This pricey shoreline is dotted by expensive retirement and second homes of the wealthy from around the U.S.
This month’s adoption of a comprehensive plan, albeit purely rhetorical for now, demonstrates — alarmingly so for some natives — how the days could be numbered in which contractors and their timber and grading sub-contractors figure out what to do as they go, while driving brawling machines on steep slopes draining into the Hiwassee and its high quality tributaries, Fires and Tusquittee creeks.
Harry Jarrett is at a disadvantage because he is the only one of the three Clay County commissioners without a parenthetical nickname — a reassuring balm to some longtime residents who are suspicious of creeping modernity. Yet on Oct. 7, Jarrett was joined by Commission Chairman Herbert (Hub) Cheeks and Commissioner Stephen (Doc) Sellers as they unanimously adopted the 2011-2021 Clay County Comprehensive Plan.
Its purpose is “to develop a document that might be helpful to future commissioners in their work,” Jarrett said at a public hearing last month.
The plan provides demographic data and evaluates existing county conditions, such as economic development, cultural resources, community facilities, housing, land stewardship, water resources, transportation, community facilities and services, schools, and parks and recreation. It also outlines a set of goals, policies, and recommendations to help guide Clay County in the future.
It doesn’t move the first stop sign or prevent any building permits, yet for the rural county (one of two remaining in the state with only three commissioners) to just adopt it unanimously was N.C. planning history. Planned-growth advocates from a citizen committee showed up at the Sept. 23 public hearing in greater numbers than opponents, who were caught off-guard.
“Everything does work better if you have a plan,” said Roger Brock of the Friends of the Historic Clay County Courthouse.
“Clay County should have had one of these plans in place years ago,” said Ed Roach.
“Could you build a road without a plan?” asked Lou Lanwermeyer. “Would you build a factory?” He continued: “The need for a plan for me is very straightforward. This plan has no statutes, no legislation and no force of law behind it. It encourages a balance. It encourages development while balancing environmental issues. There’s no ‘Take it or leave it’ in this, no ‘My way or the highway.’ We should use it and use it wisely during the next ten years because the years can come very quickly.”
“None of us like change,” said committee member, Tanya Long. “I’ll be the last to support zoning. We say ‘Live and let live,’ but the problem is everyone doesn’t think that way. This plan is a good thing. Just give it a chance.”
Dr. Gail Criss chaired the 11-person committee appointed by the commission to brainstorm the future of the mountain county. “We met for eighteen months,” Criss said. “Kristy Carter of N.C. Department of Commerce, Division of Community Assistance organized our meetings and made experts available to us.”
You could feel the tension leaving the citizens filling the multipurpose room of the courthouse as the former school principal decried zoning – this generation’s rural dread and successor to the fluoridation in toothpaste as prime word in the language spoken in rural America with contempt.
“The committee felt that land-use regulation through zoning is not appropriate for Clay County,” Criss said. “We recommend a set of goals for developers, and that the commissioners appoint a planning board to study development on steep slopes.”
“I don’t see any negatives in this, and I do see a lot of positives,” said Tighe White, a builder and developer who is a candidate for the commission in the Nov. 2 election. “It helps us get grants and it gives the county credibility.”
“I THINK this is a terrible thing,” said Jack Parker. “We have very little construction problems and they’re nothing like they would be if they zoned the county.”
“I just want to be left alone,” said a man who, like everyone else speaking that night, went to the microphone, but then this man would not disclose his name.
Another man not identifying himself complained: “There’s fifty pages of zoning here (shaking a copy of the public review draft of the plan).”
Mary Reese’s criticism of the 10-year plan encapsulated rural mountain conflict of the early 21st Century. “I want to be able to build on top of the mountain and cut off all the trees if I want to, and then I want to pass it on to my children who also can do with it whatever they like,” Reese said.
COMMISSIONER and board chairman, Hub Cheeks expressed his strong support for the plan at the regular commission meeting on Oct. 7 with an impromptu and heartfelt speech about the beauty of Clay County and the need to maintain its rural character. He remarked, “We need to try to be good stewards of what we have here in this county. That’s what this plan is all about.”
Commissioner Harry Jarrett said he is “pleased that it passed.” He continues, “I just feel like having a strategic plan that’s been worked on really for over two years will serve as a sort of guide or tool box that commissioners and leaders can access and use. They can look at the different recommendations in there, and prioritize them.
“I’m proud of the citizen participation we had. There are things in there, like four pages of economic development recommendations that could be put in place immediately.”
One plan recommendation that doesn’t cost a dime and could be implemented right away, should the commissioners decide to do so, is the formal endorsement of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s Lake Chatuge Watershed Action Plan. This action would help raise awareness about, and increase credibility of, the organization’s effort to decrease algae concentrations in the lake, protecting the county’s future water supply and the quality of water in Shooting Creek in the bargain.
Cheeks and Sellers are seeking re-election Nov. 2 but he isn’t, Jarrett said. “There are some things I want to do. I have some grandchildren who are out in the southwest. I’m getting some years on me. You try and see them all when you can.”
READ THE HIWASSEE River Watershed Coalition’s March 2007 Lake Chatuge Watershed Action Plan
HRWC’s historic stream bank restoration work earlier in this decade along Brasstown Creek, another Hiwassee tributary in Clay County, is detailed at (link coming soon).
READ TVA’s 2009 Mountain Reservoirs Land Management Plan that established zoning definitions along the Hiwassee and everywhere along all streams in TVA territory.
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community near Murphy, N.C., was a retired newsman, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition member/volunteer/donor and recipient of the 2015 Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award. Tom died on December 28, 2020.