The Dirt Controversy 

By Charles Houston

Four years ago, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a Board Member Initiative to protect prime agricultural soils. Despite the original 9-0 vote, it’s taken forever to translate that BMI to actual zoning code as a ZOAM (Zoning Ordinance Amendment) which the Board did on June 12. 

What does it do? The text for the new ZOAM is confusing. It does protect some prime soils, in some instances. In other instances, it gives developers an escape route.

Conservation people finally won something, though not all we wanted.  It was a huge struggle, a bare-knuckle fight with a handful of land barons and zillionaires. It was their intransigence that made everything take so long. They succeeded in weakening the final bill.

Motives

The psyche has always fascinated me. In the fifth grade I wrote a paper on schizophrenia. It was only a page or two, but I got an A+ for it. Many years later my world included some difficult people, especially my then mother-in-law. so I bought the then-latest version of DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders – to see what diagnosis might fit her. It was fascinating and I found myself “diagnosing” various people. Including myself.

That’s relevant to the squabbles over the Prime Soils ZOAM. It is probably wrong to assign motives to the good guys and the bad guys, but I’ll do it anyway.

The Good Folks

The Good Folks outnumbered the Bad Folks many times over, but the squabble was an even fight.  The overarching sentiment for the Good Folks was a love of the land, for farming and for our way of life. The second-most obvious sentiment was fear: Transmission lines, data centers, cluster subdivisions, loss of good land for agriculture, general sprawl. The Good people were passionate.

The Bad Folks

These guys were dispassionate and only cared about one thing – money. Their opposition was couched in general terms such as “Property Rights” and “Downzoning.” Many of these people went one step further and stated that the ZOAM would reduce the value of their land. That’s pretty good evidence that, most of all, they were driven by money. Funny, the leader of the Bad Folks is already incredibly wealthy. I need to find that DSM and see what might fit him.

Despite months of wrangling, the parties could not come up with anything that satisfied both sides. They came very close until the King of Konservation had a last-minute demand that gutted the ZOAM. I could be wrong about this, but I believe he threatened that if the ZOAM passed, he’d never do another easement in Loudoun. Classy. 

Another bad guy actually threatened to sue the County if the ZOAM passed. Impressions are made in the first few seconds and this guy did himself no favors. Slovenly dressed and with an angry mien, he simply shot himself in the foot. It was wondrous.

Gropper

William Gropper was an American painter of the Social Realism School, which focused on the Depression Era conflict between the rich and the poor; he was a committed radical. Gropper’s most important works were caricatures ofbombastic tycoons, with enormous heads, lording it over the people. 

Aside from differences in cranium size, his paintings remind me somewhat of the King of Konservation.

The American Scene

This school of art popped up in the middle of the 20^th century. It depicted ordinary people, particularly farmers, working hard. Some of its more famous members were Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood (“American Gothic”) and John Steuart Curry. 

Their celebration of the ordinary man reminds us that his importance can be greater than that of tycoons. The county belongs to the people, not land barons or outsiders. Passing the prime soils ZOAM is a small step in that direction. 

To Recap

Passing the ZOAM is worth celebrating since we are usually the losers on land use issues. Opponents of land conservation usually win to the detriment of regular citizens. In this case the opponents showed their true selves, which were not pretty.

It was encouraging to hear various objections raised by the Bad Guys and then see them shot down. Central of their objections to the ZOAM was that it would reduce density (i.e., the number of houses that may be built upon a property, couched as acres-per-house.) The greater the density that can be built upon a property, the more valuable it becomes.

The Good Guys pointed out specific language in the ZOAM that protects the existing density of five acres per house in the northwestern part of the county. 

The Bad Guys slid by that fact and started ranting that their development costs would be higher if the ZOAM passed. Some land barons believed this; I didn’t.

What’s Next?

State law requires counties to update their comprehensive plans every five years. The current plan was passed in 1999 and it’s now 2024. We need to start work now, but whatever group leads the effort should primarily be citizens, not developers, engineers, realtors or their accomplices. 

I bet that most complaints Supervisors get are related to sprawl. The answer? Cut the current allowed density by half. Better yet, just say no to more development. Period.  

Charlie Houston considers himself a conservative populist. He misses a lot of the past and dislikes a lot of the present. Sometimes he misses his old job – developing large office buildings. He lives in Paeonian Springs.