By Keenan Willard
The Fancy Hill area of Rockbridge County is known for its beautiful scenery, rustic homes, and bountiful orchards. But right now, Fancy Hill only means one thing to the county: trash.
The Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously at a contentious meeting on Sept. 11 to move ahead with the plan to construct a solid waste collection facility in Fancy Hill about eight miles south of Lexington.
The motion had previously been considered twice by the board, most recently at the board’s Aug. 27 meeting, but was deferred each time after significant pushback from the community prompted Buffalo District Supervisor John M. Higgins to pursue alternative sites. That pushback was driven largely by property owners adjacent to the proposed site, most notably Lexington’s Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Speaking in front of dozens of members of the congregation who had turned out to oppose the motion, church representative Steven Coffey outlined the numerous concerns that the collection center posed to their organization, namely that their property value would suffer as a result of the site’s construction.
“Our concern is how it will impact the use and operation of our building,” Coffey said. “It will be unsightly. We have been using our church as a place of worship for 40 years, and we would like to continue that way.”
The county’s plan calls for the planting a row of trees on the property line it shares with the church, but Coffey was skeptical of the effectiveness of such a divider. He said the trees would have to be nearly 40 feet tall to give the church the privacy it needs.
Owner Valerie Estabrook of the nearby Virginia Gold Orchard spoke out against the collection site as well, presenting the board with a petition to find an alternate site that had 19 pages of signatures in support. Estabrook was primarily concerned with the potential influx of trash to an area that depends heavily on tourism to generate revenue.
“This site would seriously threaten small businesses and farms,” Estabrook explained during her public comment. “It would be an economic loss felt by the entire county.”
Other citizens who spoke during the discussion of the plan insisted that the need for a collection facility in the Fancy Hill area outweighed the potential concerns raised by the neighbors.
“This is the best location it could possibly be in,” said Bob Dillard, a resident of the Buffalo District. “There is a highway department on one side, and a church on the other. Churches are only used once a week, unlike residences where people would have to see it every day.”
The motion even received an endorsement from one of the site’s neighbors, with farmer and civil engineer Steve Hart explaining to the board that he would rather the site be constructed at a property the county already owns than pay increased taxes for the county to purchase a new location for it.
“I am fine with you putting this facility next to my property because as an engineer, I know it is the right place to put it,” Hart said.
After closing the public comment session and moving to vote, board member David W. Hinty, Jr. explained that while he sympathized with the concerns of the dissenters, a seven-month search for alternative sites for the facility had proven fruitless, and the need for the site’s construction in the near future made extending the search any longer impossible.
The board then voted unanimously to approve the proposed Fancy Hill location for the collection facility. After the vote, dozens of people immediately stood up and streamed out of the room, grumbling their disapproval.