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or planned, right at the edge of the county: Clevenger’s Corner, Wildwood Forest, Longlea, South Wales, etc.
Look at nearby country crossroads and you will see the sudden appearance of the standard cluster of a gas station or two, a mini-storage facility, rental trailers, fast food franchises, and maybe a truck stop. Once the development steamroller starts, there is no way to stop it.
Lobbyists for the housing industry are smoothly working with the Virginia General Assembly to neutralize the ability of rural counties to control their own destinies. The Dillon Rule, which lets Richmond keep counties on a short leash, allows the sprawl community to make profits while shifting the after-burden costs to the ordinary taxpayer. It’s “us” who will be paying the increased property taxes for more schools, sewers, jails recreation areas, emergency services, etc., not “them.” They will have made their profits and moved on to their next project, leaving their legacy of “deficits” for the local citizenry to wrestle with.
Let’s get back to farmland. The American Farmland Trust estimates that the U.S. is losing 50 acres an hour to sprawl development. An acre is about the size of a football field. Picture 50 football fields of development underway each hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, non-stop. By the time you have coffee and look through the morning newspaper, 50 football fields of farmland will have disappeared. And the Piedmont is one area where farmland is disappearing at the fastest rate.
Is there any solution? Can Rappahannock County remain different? Preventing the further loss of farmland through the use of conservation easements or the transfer of development rights, plus the concentration of any “local”
95.6%