Sludge and Trailers

Sludge and Trailers

It is interesting to speculate how the members of the General Assembly who seem to take glee in limiting the county’s authority to control what goes into agricultural zones would feel about similar limitations on their ability of suburban jurisdictions to control what goes into residential subdivisions.

This session may well bring an end to the county’s ability to ban mobile homes from agricultural zones, as well as the ban on sewage sludge. >

Two conservative values have bumped up against each other in these issues: the desire to remove burdensome regulation and the desire to preserve local control, and local control is losing.

In an area where all agricultural lands are in large parcels the presence of mobile homes might have little effect. In Rappahannock a significant amount of land zoned agricultural is in fairly small parcels.

Two years ago the General Assembly said the county could not ban double-wide mobile homes. Thjs^year the width limit is about to goThese

bills are promoted by the manufactured housing industry. Their argument is that manufactured housing is more affordable than conventionally constructed homes. That is no doubt true. History indicates that it is far less permanent also.

It might help if those involved in the construction industry would help fight this movement instead of leaving it up to rural counties to protest this encroachment on their authority to control land use.

The Department of Environmental Quality has apparently gotten out of the business of regulating the application of sewage sludge, leaving all state regulation to the Health Department. The county’s supervisors are far from convinced that the Health Department can guarantee this will be no more than a nuisance to neighboring landowners. A review of the history of agricultural pesticide use indicates this skepticism is justified.