The Tyranny of Sustainable Development Invades South Carolina
By Kay J. McClanahan

     We planned our whole lives around the dream of retiring to our little horse farm so we could finally enjoy it full-time. That dream was destroyed in 1999 when the Richland County, South Carolina, Council passed 2020 Town and Country Comprehensive Land Use Vision Plan that will restrict us and our neighbors forever in the use of our land. The county did it the usual way, we are told. They quietly hired consultants and held "visioning" sessions with hand-picked citizens, most of whom were associated with the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, a SC nonprofit land trust which County Council had paid a year earlier to do the land use study that we now know will dictate our new restrictive zoning. We knew nothing about any of it at the time it was happening.

     At about the same time, Council set up a Conservation Commission to manage the land grab. This Commission's job is to acquire our land, or our rights to it (through conservation easements), especially after preservation downzoning ties our hands as to what we can do with it. The Commission hired the same Palmetto Conservation Foundation that did the land use study to select the properties they wanted for "preservation" and they prepared a secret map where our private properties were labeled "Conservation Opportunities." The Palmetto Conservation Foundation and their other land trust comrades will also be paid BIG BUCKS to manage our properties after control or ownership of them is wrestled from us.

     Kit Smith, a rich, liberal Democrat Councilwoman, who was on Clinton's EPA Board, and who was a founder of the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, is responsible for our Town and Country Plan.

     Smith's husband was the President of Nationsbank for NC/SC, then President of Bank of America for the entire East coast, at the time this was evolving, and he personally arranged for the bank to provide a $1.5 million dollar revolving fund for the Palmetto Conservation Foundation and a $50,000 dollar gift just before they were paid $100,000 to do the land use study and visioning meetings for the county.

     Although County Council is made of of 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans, the Town and Country Vision Plan passed it 11 and 0.

     The most damaging part of the Town and Country Plan is all in one chapter called the Vision. You can look it up at www.richlandonline.com under Comprehensive Plan. It calls for an urban growth boundary, created by downzoning rural properties to "Preservation Area" - green space - and denying them infrastructure. The Plan calls for "permanent preservation" of prime farmland, trees, any property on water and the land beside it, and land in the sand hills (all those areas that comprise our entire Southeastern half of the county), and refers to it - 330 square miles of Lower Richland - as the Congaree Preserve, a term we had never heard before,

     Preservation zoning of our land will mean that either the property can't be subdivided at all or will mandate that the lots be so large that the average rural property owner won't even have enough property to divide his land between his children, so that a judge as to order that it be sold in order to probate his estate. This is already happening Charleston County, SC, who got their downzoning nearly two years ago, where minimum rural lot sizes range from 10 to 25 acres, depending upon where you live. For example, if you're zoned "Ag 25" (25 acres minimum for one home), have two children, and less than 50 acres, you don't have enough land to legally divide it. It's called "large lot zoning." Unlike Charleston, however, Richland County's new plan will also dedicate large areas that can't be developed at all. It appears this may be accomplished by something they call overlay zoning - very restrictive zoning which they can place anywhere and supersede the existing zoning for any district.

     No one in our County is being told how we will be rezoned or what our new restrictions will be until AFTER the zoning ordinance passes, when it's too late to do anything about it.

     These Plans are about control and greed, not the environment. But ours does have a clear motive. Our Plan was specifically written to restrict minority growth. Besides providing for the clustered, mixed-use, and in-fill development in the city and urban fringes, and down-zoning the land outside it to worthlessness, our Plan also provides for development one -square-mile densely-populated communes called villages in designated areas throughout the County that will be segregated by the economic status of the people who live in them. Each village is to have it's own schools, so that only those children can attend whose parents have similar economic backgrounds.            

     The villages are to be of 3 kinds:

1) upscale resort-like villages, called existing villages, because they already have existing infrastructure, will be for the wealthy:

2) employment-based villages, which are like mill villages with an industry or other source of employment in the middle where everyone is encouraged to walk to work; and finally,

3) non-employment based villages. Non-employment based villages will be remotely placed and have no employment opportunities. The Plan says we will only be allowed 7 villages in all 330 square miles of Lower Richland, all non-employment based, and all, like reservations, will be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. We know this because they're on the Plan map. They will be a place, it would seem for the poor and the displaced not-so-poor to be hidden away after their land is taken from them.

     In light of the fact that 65% of that 330 square miles that the county wants is currently owned by blacks in Richland County means that the village concept of the Plan, if carried to completion, will rival Nazi Germany in its social engineering, and at the very least, will result in gentrification and segregation. And if successful, I believe it will serve as a blueprint for the rest of the country where there is minority ownership of land.

     Our white population in Richland County is declining and will remain just about level in the future, while the minority population is flourishing. What better way to stop this trend than to restrict ALL growth in the county, knowing that it will mostly be minority growth, and then go after the blacks' land? Many of our African American families are land-rich and money-poor, having been there since slavery, and will be an easy target for this elitist land grab.

     Ultimately, this Plan will make it possible for a very few individuals to control or own every piece of rural property in Richland County. And it won't cost them much..

   Lower Richland County is the largest mass of land that is primarily owned by African Americans on the East coast AND the largest contiguous mass of pristine farmland within a IS-minute drive of a state capitol or a major metropolitan city on the East coast. And it's not for sale.

   Our land, which has been nurtured for generations, has made us a target simply because we HAVE been wonderful stewards. They're doing it now because their statistics show that most S.C. farmers, black and white, are now senior citizens. They want our land before we die and leave it to our heirs. By depriving the elderly farmer the value of his land through zoning, who may have nothing else to fall back on for retirement plan or emergencies, they could well force him to give it up before he dies, if he needs money.

   All of Lower Richland has been targeted as the "Congaree Preserve."

   And this won't just hurt farmers. Home prices will be higher everywhere. Some people who once could afford a home on an acre of land will have to be subsidized in one of those non-employment-based reservations. The problem is compounded by the fact that, for the last two years, Richland County Council has stunned us by passing the two largest property tax increases in history.
   All of this will end the American dream.

   As all this was happening, we realized that only a handful of people were aware of what was going on. The media wouldn't print it. So in 1999, we founded the Richland Landowners Association in order to fight the implementation of this Plan. My husband sued the county on behalf of all rural property owners, and we dug our heels in. By 2000, we were devoting every spare moment to the cause. Instead of retiring to enjoy our farm, we retired in order to try to save it.

   We didn't have any money, so we reached out through the churches, civic groups, or any other way we could. On the state level, we blocked three bills that would give control of our creeks, ponds, and wetlands and the land beside them to the state, and another that would give them our farms, statewide. We held off, at least for now, the funding for the Conservation Bank Act, a bill that will give half a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to the Nature Conservancy and other trusts to grab our land. We kicked the American Farmland Trust clean out of SC. On the county level, we held up the writing of the specific zoning ordinances of the Town and Country Plan for four years and blocked the extension of the Interim ordinance, so that it expired two years ago without any ordinance to replace it. Thinking that solved our problems, we were amazed when the County continued to enforce the Plan without any legal mechanism to do so, and, when our lawsuit finally made it to the SC Supreme Court, two years and $18,000 later, they ruled that our injunction against the Plan couldn't be addressed because we had defeated the ordinance to enforce it.

   They're finally about to try to pass the new zoning now in September, but instead of individual ordinances that we could address one at a time, they had consultants prepare a 300-page "uniform development code" which will fully implement the Town and Country Plan as a single ordinance, as well as restrict everything about our county, gestapo-like, including building codes, churches, business licenses, and morals. It mandates what size your required front yard must be and how many, what size, and what variety of trees and shrubs will be required in your mandatory landscaped buffer zones in your front yard. It requires an 8 X 12 porch on each new home. It restricts signs and adequate parking, which will eliminate small businesses.

   It dictates what you must do with your dog's waste when you take him for a walk, where you must park your car, and how new roads must be built to discourage using them with automobiles. It restricts the harvesting of trees. It provides for trails for the public on private property. And it provides for preservation downzoning.

   Getting ready for all this, the County made Code Enforcement Officers, who had been under the Planning Department, into Deputy Sheriffs, so that we can now be arrested for digging a ditch on our own land and serve more time for it than for peddling dope.

   The Commission is conducting secret title searches and doing soil studies, and other evaluations, on our properties, so they WILL KNOW, before zoning, those of us who are THE MOST VULNERABLE. They know what we own because we paid millions of dollars to install a GIS system for them to use to spy on us. It's a satellite system to photograph us, our property, or anything else they want. It's Big Brother. They'll pick us out, zone us, swoop down on us, and once we cave in, they'll call us WILLING SELLERS.

   And according to the ordinance enabling them, if the Conservation Commission ever wrestles your downzoned property away from you, they can get the county to change the zoning back up on it, and then resell it.

   Holders of conservation easements in SC can also swap properties among themselves, and if the holder of the easement ever becomes the owner of the title, the conservation easement goes away, and they can develop the land.

   We're facing other problems, too. In Congress, Sen. Hollings and Rep. Clyburn of SC are pushing a bill to turn the Congaree National Monument - thousands of acres of swampland on the Congaree River in Lower Richland County that are surrounded by thousands of acres of our land - into a National Park under the Department of the Interior, and enlarge it. The Sierra Club applauded it. The map for the proposed National Park shows the land in the existing monument, plus the properties around it, each labeled with the owner's name. I fear we'll soon be fighting the federal government for our land.

   Meanwhile, County Council is making it harder and harder for anyone to be heard there. They say a citizen can only speak once, for two minutes, on any issue, no matter how many times it's heard. Council often holds the public hearing before the ordinance is even available on it, so we can't speak intelligently about it. Decisions are being made illegally in secret meetings and on telephones.

   Our members have been called liars, crazy, uneducated, and ignorant.

   In an effort to intimidate us, Sheriffs Deputies have taken law-abiding citizens out of Council meetings just because they dare to sign up to speak out against the Plan or Conservation Commission.

   Now we have to go through a metal detector with a Deputy standing over us when we go to try to sign up to speak. They say it's for "Homeland Security." If they want to protect our homeland security in Richland County, they need to concentrate on our government officials and their environmentalist buddies, not on our citizens.

   In February, a Deputy manhandled the 72 year old President of the Lower Richland NAACP, because she was quietly voicing her concerns, having been called upon to speak.

   In March, three Deputies attacked my 72 year old husband, Bill, after he, too, was called on to speak. He was not allowed to speak. Bill, who is partially blind and had just completed radiation therapy for cancer, was dragged from his seat by deputies, and when I begged them to let him go, they grabbed me too, twisting my arm behind me, tearing my elbow, shoulder, thumb, and back, and leaving huge bruises on me. I've had months of physical therapy.

   Finally, last month, Godfather-style, someone shot one of my innocent, beautiful, beloved horses through the heart.

   I'm hurting. But I'm not backing down. And neither are my friends.

   WE WILL NOT NEGOTIATE with these People. If you do, they'll just take what you offer and come back a year later and take the rest. That's what they did in Charleston.

   We will not be intimidated, arid we will not give up.

Kay J McClanahan is founder and president of the Richland Landowners Association.

The above article was published in the "APC News Wire" and distributed nationwide.

ATG: South Carolinians should read what has occurred in other states where these plans have been implemented - whether under the same name or some other in order to fool the public into thinking the planners are here to "help". Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Bush Interior Department keeps funding land grabs:

   Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced in July that $70 million of your tax dollars are being handed out to 29 states and non-government organizations to buy more land in the name of conservation. The program is funded through the "Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund," authorized by Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act.

   Here are a few obscene examples: $1.7 million to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Nature Conservancy to acquire portions of the Kyles Ford mussel shoal along the Clinch River; $6.25 million to California and its partners to acquire and protect interconnected habitat to support the Western Riverside Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan;
$2,156,675 to California to buy parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties for the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly; $2 million to Georgia to help project partners acquire permanent conservation easements to benefit the longleaf pine and wire
grass. Wire grass? And in Texas, $4,993,794 will allow partners of the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Place to buy 700 more acres to protect the black-capped vireo and yellowcheeked warbler. The Nature Conservancy is one of those partners. And then there's this one - A $206,054 grant to buy 120 acres of Mr. Joy Church Pond in Augusta County, VA, as a state natural area preserve to protect, are you ready, the largest population of the threatened Virginia sneezeweed.

   Keep in mind, all of that land is now private property owned by people who don't want to sell it. The money is in place. The squeeze is on. The property owners no longer have any right to the land and no law will protect them from losing it.

   This is how it happens. Don't be surprised when you get the notice saying your land, your home, is next. The nationwide land grab continues in full swing. Aren't you glad the Republicans are there to help you - lose your property? Mr. Bush, the red states need your help.

Source: Liberty Matters News Service

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The Nature Conservancy continues to buy up Texas

There isn't much public land in Texas, but the Nature Conservancy intends to change that fact. TNC has contracted to
buy 87,760 acres (137 square miles) of West Texas land near the headwaters of the Devil' s River to "protect it" from future development and reestablish abundant stocks of some sort of minnow, said their spokesman. The land belongs to lawyer Harold Nix, who collected huge attorney's fees in the state's tobacco lawsuit. TNC's national board authorized a $23 million loan to secure the deal, but TNC spokesman Niki McDaniel said they plan to sell most of the property to people who will agree to easements restricting development. TNC also owns two other tracts on the Devil's River totaling 40,000 acres downstream and manages the 19,850 acres Devil's River State Natural Area. With the new addition, they will control 25 of the river's 60 miles. Other Conservancy schemes in Texas include 32,000 acres in the Davis Mountains and 30,428 acres in the

Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan, where they are in cahoots with the City of Austin and Travis County. Carolyn Vogel, land trust coordinator for Texas Parks and Wildlife praised the Conservancy's purchasing saying: "Parks and Wildlife alone can't accomplish (purchase) all of this."

Source: Liberty Matters News Service

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GM helping TNC ride the range of its land grabs

By Tom DeWeese

   When you grab as much American soil as The Nature Conservancy you need special vehicles to help get around to it all. Mega-car maker General Motors to the rescue! GM has donated a total of 160 Chevy Suburbans to TNC to help carry its storm troopers into once-private property nationwide.

   The latest Suburban donated last March is being used for the TNC of Texas' work in the Crosstimbers and Southern Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregion, which stretches from Kansas to South Texas. "Up until now we have been using our personal vehicles to cover this vast region, so we're delighted to have this four-wheel-drive vehicle," said Ecoregional Manager Jim Eidson, who is based in North Texas.

   Jim Sulentich, state director for the Nature Conservancy of Texas, noted that GM's donation of vehicles has been instrumental in the accomplishment of the Conservancy's mission and goals.

   GM and the Nature Conservancy have an ongoing relationship that is unprecedented in size and scope. In 1994, GM made a 10-year commitment to provide $10 million in cash and vehicles. Since then, GM has donated more than $6.7 million in cash and 160 trucks for TNC work in the US and many other countries.

So when the boys from TNC show up at your door to announce the good news that your home is now privileged to be part of the great American private property grab - thank GM- oh yes, and don't forget to thank the Bush Interior Department too.

Tom DeWeese is president of the American Policy Center.

[Behind the Headlines is syndicated to newspapers and radio stations, free of charge, by the American Policy Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of our free enterprise system and constitutional form of government. For more information, or to learn how you can help support us, send a self addressed, stamped envelope to: American Policy Center, 50A South Third Street, Suite 2, Warrenton, VA 20186. Phone: 540-341-8911. Email: apc@amerlcanpolicy.org. Website: www.amerlcanpolicy.org.]

ATG: ATG has been publishing articles on the land takeover by the government and its shadow agencies for the past seven years. Well, folks, it is here and few complaints are being heard. Like the proverbial frog in the pond...water heating up little by little until he dies.....this is what is happening to communities across America. Do you really want to live under communism? For there is no other word for what is taking place right here in South Carolina.