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Editor, News-Register:
Who should be making decisions about how to use land in West Virginia? Obviously, our Republican legislature does not want the federal government to be making these decisions. But, current proposed legislation in the West Virginia Senate and House of Delegates suggests they do not want local governments and land owners having their say, either.
SB 171 and HR 2459 would pre-emptively reduce the authority of county zoning for "agriculture" and "residential" land. This is to allow for industrial businesses to set up shop in agricultural and residential zoned areas. This is occurring not because "industrial" land has not been designated by the county planning commissions, but because companies that wish to use specific parcels of land designated for agriculture and homes.
This has come up a couple of times in Hardy County, in the Potomac Highlands. In 2019, an out-of-state company approached the Hardy County Commission with a plan to build a wind turbine project on a mountain top near Baker. The parcel of land is in the middle of the area that the Hardy County Planning Commission has zoned as residential.
This zoning make sense by clustering the subdivisions in close proximity to existing infrastructure and services. Placing 19 wind turbines within 200 to 500 feet of subdivision property lines does not make sense.
When the county Commission outlined options, the company went to the state Legislature instead, claiming that West Virginia needed a statewide process to streamline wholesale power generation projects (HR 2459, "Growing West Virginia's Energy Portfolio.")
Local decision, or the state legislature control?
In the spring of 2023, Hardy County citizens learned that a company had started the process of getting authorization from the state to open a log fumigation facility on land that used to be a for poultry operation.
The proposed tarp-fumigation process would use methyl bromide. This would occur within a few hundred feet of both property lines and homes. This chemical is highly regulated in the U.S. and Europe, with the primary exception for logs being transported to China for processing into furniture, veneer wood sheets, etc. China requires this type of chemical treatment, even though less toxic options exist in the U.S.
Again, the local community, county Commissioners, and County Planning Commission reviewed and opposed this on grounds that the local zoning of that parcel of land was for agriculture, whereas a log fumigation plant was defined as industrial.
SB 171 ("Prohibiting County Commissions from Adopting Authorization that Exceeds State Law Regarding Agriculture Operations)", passed by the WV Senate on Jan. 12, broadly defines agriculture to include chemical operations. More specifically, SB 171 forbids county zoning from restricting any activity that the state defines as agricultural.
Local decision, or the state legislature control?
You may be wondering what wind turbines on mountain tops and log fumigation facilities in forested areas on the eastern side of the state have to do with the western and northern ends of the state, which had very different geography, geology, industry, and social history.
That is exactly the issue: each region, governed by county officials, has different aspects to consider.
Do we want the state Legislature making blanket definitions that cannot be adjusted for the coal, steel, glass, agricultural, forested, and residential regions of out state?
I doubt that the Wheeling Nailers want Mountain Stage to tell them how to stay in tune or make an appropriate hip check.
Right?
Oscar Larson
Baker, W.Va.