Cover Story: Targeted for U.N. takeover?
Things have gotten a little, well, crazy in Habersham County. Is it something in the water?
A hundred miles north of Atlanta, the Soque River is little more than a stream, nearly hidden from view by overhanging trees along Goshen Creek Road. It was along this quiet stretch of water on a June afternoon that Kristin Costley found herself caught in a rising flood of acrimony that has washed this picturesque mountain region with suspicion and fear.
For several months, Costley, a petite, soft-spoken technician for the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, had been taking water samples from the Soque, part of a project to monitor the health of the stream that provides water for many of Habersham County's 35,902 souls.
The landowner, though, was having none of it.
"I just don't allow anybody to trespass on my land without permission," says Grady Sutton, who demanded that Costley leave and even threatened to have her arrested.
But there is more to his apparent inhospitality than trespass. "I don't trust those people, really," says the farmer. "They say they aren't out to do any harm to anyone, but there's got to be a reason they're taking samples. If it's not for some kind of evidence, what's it for?"
Costley didn't need to be told twice. Although she was on a highway right-of-way, she took her gear and left.
"I'm still a little uncomfortable talking about it," she says. "I don't want to get in any more hot water."
The water in Habersham County was heating up long before Costley's run-in. For months, farmers and landowners here have been seething with anger at anyone who would presume to tell them what they can and can't do with their land. The meddlers include bureaucrats, environmentalists and "smart growth" advocates — all reviled as well-meaning idiots or the Fifth Column of a "U.N.-sponsored land grab" — and Atlanta, where politicians sit in their grossly polluted hellhole and try to tell others what to do.
The result is a bizarre nexus where property rights, creeping sprawl, political opportunism, New World Order conspiracy angst and ages-old mistrust of newcomers all have come together in a hot beam of resentment. The seemingly innocent debate over protection of local streams has provided a forum for rightwing propagandists. Even one-time Atlanta mayoral candidate and conspiracy theorist Nancy Schaefer, who moved here a couple of years ago, recently commandeered a public meeting at the courthouse to screen a video about the evils of the United Nations.
"I live up here," says Costley, "and I really love this place."
But, she adds, "It's gotten kind of scary."
Suspicion and stubborn self-reliance long have been a part of the makeup of the folks in north Georgia. It was here, 140 years ago, that pockets of willful Georgians remained loyal to the federal cause (hence the name of nearby Union County). Resentment of governmental interference — whether it's from Atlanta, Richmond or Washington — has been almost as strong as the adherence to that old-time religion. Zell Miller, Georgia's most famous mountain man, remembers the area as one where "we were all of the same color and similar Protestant persuasions."
Even today, despite a 30 percent jump in population over the past decade, Habersham County remains largely what it has always been — white (about 90 percent) and conservative (George W. Bush received almost three times as many votes here as Al Gore).
A land of steep hills and forests generally unsuitable for crops, Habersham has long relied on poultry farms and tourism for its livelihood. At least as far back as the 1980s, residents have debated how to protect their natural resources. Particularly important is the impact of development and agricultural runoff on the Soque River, a scenic tributary of the Chattahoochee that is entirely contained within the county and runs through the center of Clarkesville, the county seat.
So when the Georgia Department of Community Affairs issued guidelines in 1989 dictating, among other things, a minimum distance between streams and new construction, most residents seemed willing to go along. In fact, the county's own regulations were more stringent than those issued by the state, says Jim Blackburn, president of the Habersham Smart Growth Coalition.
But with 159 counties to inspect, regulators didn't get around to Habersham County until last year. Counties that don't comply eventually can be decertified, jeopardizing state funding for planning, development and environmental protection.
"We gave the county and cities there a deadline to come in compliance," says Mike Gleaton, planning and environmental development manager for the Department of Community Affairs, the state agency making the inspection. "But as it got closer, they got more concerned about impact on private property rights, that the state was in there taking their citizens' land.
"All environmental protection laws do some taking, in a way. They may require you to develop your land in a different way than you've done it historically, for instance. Well, that really didn't play well up there," he says with a chuckle.
In fact, news that the state was coming in touched a raw nerve in Habersham County. No matter that the regulations didn't apply to farmers. Even assurances from farmer-friendly state Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin — himself a Habersham native — failed to quiet an increasingly vocal opposition.
Randy Moser, a member of the Soque River Watershed Association, recalls two particularly contentious meetings last spring. Attendees spilled out into the hallway. Some passed around copies of a five-page pamphlet, "Family Concerns Report": Beneath a photograph of Schaefer is the heading, "Gun Control, Smart Growth and the United Nations" — an impassioned screed with lines like: "Today, Americans need to grasp the fact there are two things standing between them and the United Nations World government: Christianity and the Constitution of the United States."
"It was really a bunch of upset people," Moser says. "They came out of the woodwork, and a lot of them had this kind of attitude."
"They really just wanted to come up to the podium and vent. On federal regulations, state regulations, pretty much all over the map," Gleaton says. "There was no way to respond. And they were in no mood to listen."
While much of downtown Clarkesville's storefront property is vacant, one industry is thriving here. A short stroll through the town square takes a visitor past three real estate offices. The windows of each are filled with snapshots of homes and lots, many offering creek or river frontage property, and few with price tags of less than $150,000. Most are far higher. Even the country's largest private landowner, Ted Turner, has gotten into the Habersham act, purchasing two parcels, including 90 acres of river frontage directly across from the Chattahoochee National Forest.
"You've got river frontage selling for $1,000 a foot," says Dudley Sisk, a longtime resident. "There's a guy just outside town who just sold a 50-acre farm for $20,000 an acre. ... Some of these people stand to make a killing."
"What you've got is a lot of the old-timers who're sitting on land they've held for years, and stand to make a big profit selling it for development ... and they're afraid these rules will impact that in the future," says Steven Patrick, the county extension agent, who is seen as a moderating voice on both sides. "Of course, these DCA rules are meant to rein in development and sprawl, and it won't impact the farmers who are complaining, because agriculture is exempt. But the way property values are rising, they're all looking to sell out, then they want to protect the land."
One of those people is Larry Copeland, who owns some 220 acres near Clarkesville. A third-generation Habersham resident, Copeland is a former county commissioner and planning board member who is now among the leaders of opposition to the regulations. While he worries that federal rules limiting the runoff from large poultry operations such as his — he and his son-in-law operate 11 chicken houses on his spread — may change the way he does business, he also concedes that any land-use regulation — agricultural or otherwise — may hit him in the pocketbook.
"Who can blame me?" he asks. "I'm sitting up here, where my granddad paid $4,000 for 400 acres in 1940, and it'll command $10,000 an acre now. This is my 401K plan ... and if we get regulations restricting development, land prices ain't going to be worth a dime."
But Copeland also expresses suspicion about the motives of those pushing land-use rules.
"They're trying to regulate how I use my property, and I take strong exception to that," he says. "And not for the reasons some might think: I want to take care of the land and water as best I can, but I need to make a living on it, too."
"I've got 30 acres with about 10 cows on it," says Sutton, the landowner who none-too-courteously invited Costley to depart. "And I've heard a lot of different stories about how they might make me fence my cows out of the river. There's a lot of us up here who that kind of thing could hurt."
"The farmers do have a good argument," concedes Sisk. "'Why is the state government coming up here and restraining us? Look at all the garbage you put in the creeks and rivers down in Atlanta. There's a feeling that the special interests in Atlanta have power, but the poor farmers up here don't have any pull."
Randy Moser retired to the mountains six years ago after a career at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He describes how two neighborhood associations became concerned that booming development along the Soque — where one day's trout fishing at the nationally renowned Brigadoon reserve can run $300 per rod — eventually could choke the stream, one of the area's key resources. The two groups merged to form the Soque River Watershed Association.
Last year, County Manager Ron Vandiver approached the group with encouraging news: The state was making available $600,000 to assess water quality. Would the Soque River Watershed Association like to oversee the project for the county?
"We were very excited," Moser says. "The wastershed association and Chattahoochee Riverkeeper would do the monitoring, under the county's authority."
It was when the state approved the grant that things got sticky. Before county commissioners were to vote on whether to accept the money, Vandiver — the official who learned about the grant in the first place — circulated a memo that misstated the monitoring project as a "water protection" measure (a term linked, in farmers' minds, to demands to fence livestock out of streams and other such measures, says Moser) that "would go beyond existing land-use regulations." A final warning — "and probably other things in addition to these" — indicated that there was even more at stake.
"It was just loaded with inflammatory, inaccurate language," says Moser, who's still puzzled by the memo. Sure enough, when the meeting commenced, "some of the same group of opponents showed up screaming and yelling about it."
It was during that July 2 meeting that Costley — the diminutive Riverkeeper water sampler — was singled out and accused of trespassing amid nasty charges that "outsiders" and "biased environmentalists" were running roughshod over local landowners.
"When it came up that the watershed association and Riverkeeper would be doing the sampling — just doing an assessment, nothing to do with regulation — people started saying they don't want us on their property," recalls Costley.
The commissioners tabled the measure. So much for the grant.
"They had essentially been given some bad information, and were confusing two or three land-use regulations with this grant," says Wendy Romaine, a state Environmental Protection Division technician who attended the meeting to answer questions and was bombarded by anti-government invective. "I just think they were confused."
Some very likely were. Others, like Copeland, were very much aware of what was going on. A former member of the county planning commission, Copeland knows that the monitoring program would be a science-based assessment of local water quality. But he doesn't think Moser or Costley will find the results he'd like them to find.
"We don't trust these people," he says. "They're biased. They see something different than I do. Now I'm biased, too, I don't mind admitting that. But when you've got somebody reading EPA regulations and Sierra Club materials, they're going to see it different from somebody else. ... I use that water for my farm; they're gonna look at that as a source of pollution. If I was in their place, I'd probably look at it that way, too."
But where Copeland sees a threat to his bottom line, county manager Vandiver sees more sinister forces at work.
Vandiver himself is something of an enigma. A tousle-headed, bearded man who speaks with quiet deliberation and claims Habersham family roots going back to 1789, he once was cited by the smart growth faction as both a supporter and an innovator in the area of land-use regulation. More recently, however, those same folks say he's become one of their most ardent foes.
Blackburn and others suspect that Vandiver's shift has less to do with ideology than with politics. After the November elections, when the Democratic — pro-regulation — commission chairman was defeated, and two new members were elected, the atmosphere changed markedly.
"Some of the new ones said the right things, but they're not as supportive as before," says Blackburn. "Also, around that time, for still-puzzling reasons, our county manager — who had worked with us, encouraged and supported us — for some reason he became the spokesman for folks who believe in absolute unabridged property rights."
Conversation with Vandiver is not necessarily linear. After a detailed discussion of various state regulations and environmental concerns, he smoothly slides onto a side track.
"When I was a child, planned government and economies was something they did in Soviet Russia. Centralized planning was something of a no-no," says Vandiver. "I remember hearing, 'All the people in the U.S. have the opportunity to discern what they want to do with their lives and property.' That went hand-in-hand with the statement that, in Soviet society, all people were encouraged to spy on their neighbors. Well, now I believe we may have come 180 degrees in this country over the past 40 years."
Informing farmers that state regulations do not apply to them (even though it's accurate) "seems to be an ongoing attempt to divide regulated segments of the community," says Vandiver, "to tell a certain portion of this regulated community, 'Oh, you're agricultural, this doesn't affect you.' I submit that some day, that agricultural land will no longer be a farm. And as soon as they plant that 'For Sale' sign, it's subject to all these laws and regulations ... They're meant to divide, make groups easier to bend to their submission: control, rather than protection."
To Vandiver, regulations are a way for one person, or group, to impose their ideals on another.
"All of this regulation is under the guise of water regulations," says Vandiver. "The federal Clean Water Act has the ability to shut down the United States. In its many forms, it could stop all activity within the country. Sometimes that act is used for other regulations, and the true motive for those other regulations may not really be clean water. It makes a convenient excuse."
Vandiver's remarks came during an interview in June. Since then, though, he's declined to speak with CL.
Vandiver's fears pale compared to the ominous forebodings of Schaefer, a longtime Christian conservative activist who has been a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, lieutenant governor and who moved to Habersham after losing — badly — a 1998 bid for the Republican gubernatorial primary. She lost a battle for that district's Senate seat in 2000.
Schaefer also is the founder and president of Family Concerns Inc., a registered nonprofit that pushes a hard-line pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda similar to James Dobson's "Focus on Family." In May, when the county commission unanimously voted to hang the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, Schaefer appeared at the next meeting with a framed copy of the regulations — non-governmental ones are OK — and presented them to the body. Afterward, according to the local newspaper, she launched into a diatribe against Gov. Roy Barnes and his predecessor, Zell Miller; environmental regulation; the Endangered Species Act and the UN. When the county attorney attempted to cut her off, he was shouted down and the commissioners asked her to continue. After the meeting, she showed a videotape, Global Governance: The Quiet War Against Independence, to the commission and residents who remained.
"I almost don't know where to begin," says Schaefer, who acknowledges that she's weighed in on the environmental issues dividing the county, but says her concerns are far larger.
"All these land-use regulations are connected together," she says. "Yes, there's been growth around here, but some of these regulations don't have as much to do with growth and sprawl as the people are being led to believe. ... Certainly, everybody I know around here has been taking care of the lakes and streams for centuries; they don't need portions taken over by the state."
Reminded that the regulations in question say nothing about any government takeover, Schaefer plays macro connect-the-dots.
"I feel like the regulations are a bit strong, and are not necessary," she says. "But I'm more concerned with smart growth itself, and where it originated — which is right out of the United Nations."
Schaefer is hardly the originator of this blend of pseudo-populism, Christian fundamentalism and rightwing paranoia, but it seems to have found fertile ground here. And, while the motives that drive property owners like Copeland — who admits to his self-interest in holding back land-use regulations — are clear enough, the bazooka-style attacks on those rules, along with the appearance of media-hungry pols like Schaefer and the political sail-trimming of elected officials, disturbs some of those who see the God-and-country rhetoric as a distraction from the real issues involved.
"The frustrating thing about all this," says Blackburn, "is that people who know very well that these regulations have been in place for years have represented them as being proposed by new county amendments, and by smart growth and by the United Nations. Farmers were told they could no longer farm near streams, had to fence them — all of those were outright falsehoods, used to gather large numbers of people to oppose things that didn't apply at all."
Even more frustrating, he says, is that officials who should have been ensuring that accurate information was being disseminated actually fomented the unrest.
"I guess the most significant thing is that normally, when you'd have this type of misinformation, county officials would present the right information." In this case, he says, county officials made no attempt to explain the regulations.
The hidden forces at work here, says Blackburn, have very little to do with protecting farmers or keeping blue-bereted UN troops from occupying the Habersham winery.
"It's money," he says. "I think these farmers are being used as pawns. The leaders of this resistance are people whose primary interests are development."
Mac McCullough, a gregarious man with a snowy beard and sun-reddened pate who retired and moved to Habersham from Atlanta, has come to the County Commission meeting to hand out "Citizens Alert" flyers at the door. "Alabama Land Owned By United Nations?" asks one headline. "To have clean water we must have your land," blares another.
"I saw on the Internet where there's a fella up at the UN in New York named Kofi Annan, and he says the only thing standing in the way of world government is the U.S. Constitution, 'cause it allows citizens to bear arms," says McCullough.
A few yards away, a teenager rests his head on his father's shoulder. His blue T-shirt boasts the United Nations symbol — a stylized globe encircled by olive branches — over which is centered a rifle's cross-haired sight. "Got ammo?" reads the caption.
The night's meeting unfurls calmly. There's talk about the "tyrannical" county code inspector, followed by an exhortation for "those folks down in Atlanta" to tend to their own pollution woes before demanding that Habersham further restrict its own growth.
"I don't ever remember going to the polls and voting for Smart Growth to run my business," fumes Joe Dodson.
"According to the Clean Water Act, compensation is required for the taking of buffers," says Denise Yearwood, as she presents the board with two hefty volumes she identifies as environmental regulations. "Are you county commissioners going to stand liable for compensating these people for taking their land?"
McCullough has his own concern. "When are we going to hang up the Ten Commandments? There's an outfit in Virginia that'll fight the ACLU for us." He also wants to know when the commission will reintroduce a measure making the old Georgia flag — the one largely comprised of the Confederate battle emblem — the new Habersham County flag.
"A friend of mine said it'll probably annoy some of the northern folks that live here — he calls 'em carpetbaggers, but I don't," says McCullough, turning to grin at the laughing crowd until the officer standing at the podium instructs him to address the mic.
But the high point comes when Vandiver, fed up with a few questions as to how he got appointed to a full-time job by three of five commissioners at a meeting purportedly called to deal with unrelated matters, abruptly announces he's quitting and stomps out, followed by a retinue of hand-wringing supporters. (The next morning, he'll be back on the job.)
Whatever else is going on up here, participatory democracy is alive and well, no doubt about it.
"Shoot, this is a quiet meeting," says a grinning young man firing up a smoke during a lull in the action. "Couple months back, we were fixin' to circle the whole county with chainlink fence and shoot anybody that tried to get in."
greg.land@creativeloafing.com
For several months, Costley, a petite, soft-spoken technician for the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, had been taking water samples from the Soque, part of a project to monitor the health of the stream that provides water for many of Habersham County's 35,902 souls.
The landowner, though, was having none of it.
"I just don't allow anybody to trespass on my land without permission," says Grady Sutton, who demanded that Costley leave and even threatened to have her arrested.
But there is more to his apparent inhospitality than trespass. "I don't trust those people, really," says the farmer. "They say they aren't out to do any harm to anyone, but there's got to be a reason they're taking samples. If it's not for some kind of evidence, what's it for?"
Costley didn't need to be told twice. Although she was on a highway right-of-way, she took her gear and left.
"I'm still a little uncomfortable talking about it," she says. "I don't want to get in any more hot water."
The water in Habersham County was heating up long before Costley's run-in. For months, farmers and landowners here have been seething with anger at anyone who would presume to tell them what they can and can't do with their land. The meddlers include bureaucrats, environmentalists and "smart growth" advocates — all reviled as well-meaning idiots or the Fifth Column of a "U.N.-sponsored land grab" — and Atlanta, where politicians sit in their grossly polluted hellhole and try to tell others what to do.
The result is a bizarre nexus where property rights, creeping sprawl, political opportunism, New World Order conspiracy angst and ages-old mistrust of newcomers all have come together in a hot beam of resentment. The seemingly innocent debate over protection of local streams has provided a forum for rightwing propagandists. Even one-time Atlanta mayoral candidate and conspiracy theorist Nancy Schaefer, who moved here a couple of years ago, recently commandeered a public meeting at the courthouse to screen a video about the evils of the United Nations.
"I live up here," says Costley, "and I really love this place."
But, she adds, "It's gotten kind of scary."
Suspicion and stubborn self-reliance long have been a part of the makeup of the folks in north Georgia. It was here, 140 years ago, that pockets of willful Georgians remained loyal to the federal cause (hence the name of nearby Union County). Resentment of governmental interference — whether it's from Atlanta, Richmond or Washington — has been almost as strong as the adherence to that old-time religion. Zell Miller, Georgia's most famous mountain man, remembers the area as one where "we were all of the same color and similar Protestant persuasions."
Even today, despite a 30 percent jump in population over the past decade, Habersham County remains largely what it has always been — white (about 90 percent) and conservative (George W. Bush received almost three times as many votes here as Al Gore).
A land of steep hills and forests generally unsuitable for crops, Habersham has long relied on poultry farms and tourism for its livelihood. At least as far back as the 1980s, residents have debated how to protect their natural resources. Particularly important is the impact of development and agricultural runoff on the Soque River, a scenic tributary of the Chattahoochee that is entirely contained within the county and runs through the center of Clarkesville, the county seat.
So when the Georgia Department of Community Affairs issued guidelines in 1989 dictating, among other things, a minimum distance between streams and new construction, most residents seemed willing to go along. In fact, the county's own regulations were more stringent than those issued by the state, says Jim Blackburn, president of the Habersham Smart Growth Coalition.
But with 159 counties to inspect, regulators didn't get around to Habersham County until last year. Counties that don't comply eventually can be decertified, jeopardizing state funding for planning, development and environmental protection.
"We gave the county and cities there a deadline to come in compliance," says Mike Gleaton, planning and environmental development manager for the Department of Community Affairs, the state agency making the inspection. "But as it got closer, they got more concerned about impact on private property rights, that the state was in there taking their citizens' land.
"All environmental protection laws do some taking, in a way. They may require you to develop your land in a different way than you've done it historically, for instance. Well, that really didn't play well up there," he says with a chuckle.
In fact, news that the state was coming in touched a raw nerve in Habersham County. No matter that the regulations didn't apply to farmers. Even assurances from farmer-friendly state Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin — himself a Habersham native — failed to quiet an increasingly vocal opposition.
Randy Moser, a member of the Soque River Watershed Association, recalls two particularly contentious meetings last spring. Attendees spilled out into the hallway. Some passed around copies of a five-page pamphlet, "Family Concerns Report": Beneath a photograph of Schaefer is the heading, "Gun Control, Smart Growth and the United Nations" — an impassioned screed with lines like: "Today, Americans need to grasp the fact there are two things standing between them and the United Nations World government: Christianity and the Constitution of the United States."
"It was really a bunch of upset people," Moser says. "They came out of the woodwork, and a lot of them had this kind of attitude."
"They really just wanted to come up to the podium and vent. On federal regulations, state regulations, pretty much all over the map," Gleaton says. "There was no way to respond. And they were in no mood to listen."
While much of downtown Clarkesville's storefront property is vacant, one industry is thriving here. A short stroll through the town square takes a visitor past three real estate offices. The windows of each are filled with snapshots of homes and lots, many offering creek or river frontage property, and few with price tags of less than $150,000. Most are far higher. Even the country's largest private landowner, Ted Turner, has gotten into the Habersham act, purchasing two parcels, including 90 acres of river frontage directly across from the Chattahoochee National Forest.
"You've got river frontage selling for $1,000 a foot," says Dudley Sisk, a longtime resident. "There's a guy just outside town who just sold a 50-acre farm for $20,000 an acre. ... Some of these people stand to make a killing."
"What you've got is a lot of the old-timers who're sitting on land they've held for years, and stand to make a big profit selling it for development ... and they're afraid these rules will impact that in the future," says Steven Patrick, the county extension agent, who is seen as a moderating voice on both sides. "Of course, these DCA rules are meant to rein in development and sprawl, and it won't impact the farmers who are complaining, because agriculture is exempt. But the way property values are rising, they're all looking to sell out, then they want to protect the land."
One of those people is Larry Copeland, who owns some 220 acres near Clarkesville. A third-generation Habersham resident, Copeland is a former county commissioner and planning board member who is now among the leaders of opposition to the regulations. While he worries that federal rules limiting the runoff from large poultry operations such as his — he and his son-in-law operate 11 chicken houses on his spread — may change the way he does business, he also concedes that any land-use regulation — agricultural or otherwise — may hit him in the pocketbook.
"Who can blame me?" he asks. "I'm sitting up here, where my granddad paid $4,000 for 400 acres in 1940, and it'll command $10,000 an acre now. This is my 401K plan ... and if we get regulations restricting development, land prices ain't going to be worth a dime."
But Copeland also expresses suspicion about the motives of those pushing land-use rules.
"They're trying to regulate how I use my property, and I take strong exception to that," he says. "And not for the reasons some might think: I want to take care of the land and water as best I can, but I need to make a living on it, too."
"I've got 30 acres with about 10 cows on it," says Sutton, the landowner who none-too-courteously invited Costley to depart. "And I've heard a lot of different stories about how they might make me fence my cows out of the river. There's a lot of us up here who that kind of thing could hurt."
"The farmers do have a good argument," concedes Sisk. "'Why is the state government coming up here and restraining us? Look at all the garbage you put in the creeks and rivers down in Atlanta. There's a feeling that the special interests in Atlanta have power, but the poor farmers up here don't have any pull."
Randy Moser retired to the mountains six years ago after a career at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He describes how two neighborhood associations became concerned that booming development along the Soque — where one day's trout fishing at the nationally renowned Brigadoon reserve can run $300 per rod — eventually could choke the stream, one of the area's key resources. The two groups merged to form the Soque River Watershed Association.
Last year, County Manager Ron Vandiver approached the group with encouraging news: The state was making available $600,000 to assess water quality. Would the Soque River Watershed Association like to oversee the project for the county?
"We were very excited," Moser says. "The wastershed association and Chattahoochee Riverkeeper would do the monitoring, under the county's authority."
It was when the state approved the grant that things got sticky. Before county commissioners were to vote on whether to accept the money, Vandiver — the official who learned about the grant in the first place — circulated a memo that misstated the monitoring project as a "water protection" measure (a term linked, in farmers' minds, to demands to fence livestock out of streams and other such measures, says Moser) that "would go beyond existing land-use regulations." A final warning — "and probably other things in addition to these" — indicated that there was even more at stake.
"It was just loaded with inflammatory, inaccurate language," says Moser, who's still puzzled by the memo. Sure enough, when the meeting commenced, "some of the same group of opponents showed up screaming and yelling about it."
It was during that July 2 meeting that Costley — the diminutive Riverkeeper water sampler — was singled out and accused of trespassing amid nasty charges that "outsiders" and "biased environmentalists" were running roughshod over local landowners.
"When it came up that the watershed association and Riverkeeper would be doing the sampling — just doing an assessment, nothing to do with regulation — people started saying they don't want us on their property," recalls Costley.
The commissioners tabled the measure. So much for the grant.
"They had essentially been given some bad information, and were confusing two or three land-use regulations with this grant," says Wendy Romaine, a state Environmental Protection Division technician who attended the meeting to answer questions and was bombarded by anti-government invective. "I just think they were confused."
Some very likely were. Others, like Copeland, were very much aware of what was going on. A former member of the county planning commission, Copeland knows that the monitoring program would be a science-based assessment of local water quality. But he doesn't think Moser or Costley will find the results he'd like them to find.
"We don't trust these people," he says. "They're biased. They see something different than I do. Now I'm biased, too, I don't mind admitting that. But when you've got somebody reading EPA regulations and Sierra Club materials, they're going to see it different from somebody else. ... I use that water for my farm; they're gonna look at that as a source of pollution. If I was in their place, I'd probably look at it that way, too."
But where Copeland sees a threat to his bottom line, county manager Vandiver sees more sinister forces at work.
Vandiver himself is something of an enigma. A tousle-headed, bearded man who speaks with quiet deliberation and claims Habersham family roots going back to 1789, he once was cited by the smart growth faction as both a supporter and an innovator in the area of land-use regulation. More recently, however, those same folks say he's become one of their most ardent foes.
Blackburn and others suspect that Vandiver's shift has less to do with ideology than with politics. After the November elections, when the Democratic — pro-regulation — commission chairman was defeated, and two new members were elected, the atmosphere changed markedly.
"Some of the new ones said the right things, but they're not as supportive as before," says Blackburn. "Also, around that time, for still-puzzling reasons, our county manager — who had worked with us, encouraged and supported us — for some reason he became the spokesman for folks who believe in absolute unabridged property rights."
Conversation with Vandiver is not necessarily linear. After a detailed discussion of various state regulations and environmental concerns, he smoothly slides onto a side track.
"When I was a child, planned government and economies was something they did in Soviet Russia. Centralized planning was something of a no-no," says Vandiver. "I remember hearing, 'All the people in the U.S. have the opportunity to discern what they want to do with their lives and property.' That went hand-in-hand with the statement that, in Soviet society, all people were encouraged to spy on their neighbors. Well, now I believe we may have come 180 degrees in this country over the past 40 years."
Informing farmers that state regulations do not apply to them (even though it's accurate) "seems to be an ongoing attempt to divide regulated segments of the community," says Vandiver, "to tell a certain portion of this regulated community, 'Oh, you're agricultural, this doesn't affect you.' I submit that some day, that agricultural land will no longer be a farm. And as soon as they plant that 'For Sale' sign, it's subject to all these laws and regulations ... They're meant to divide, make groups easier to bend to their submission: control, rather than protection."
To Vandiver, regulations are a way for one person, or group, to impose their ideals on another.
"All of this regulation is under the guise of water regulations," says Vandiver. "The federal Clean Water Act has the ability to shut down the United States. In its many forms, it could stop all activity within the country. Sometimes that act is used for other regulations, and the true motive for those other regulations may not really be clean water. It makes a convenient excuse."
Vandiver's remarks came during an interview in June. Since then, though, he's declined to speak with CL.
Vandiver's fears pale compared to the ominous forebodings of Schaefer, a longtime Christian conservative activist who has been a candidate for mayor of Atlanta, lieutenant governor and who moved to Habersham after losing — badly — a 1998 bid for the Republican gubernatorial primary. She lost a battle for that district's Senate seat in 2000.
Schaefer also is the founder and president of Family Concerns Inc., a registered nonprofit that pushes a hard-line pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda similar to James Dobson's "Focus on Family." In May, when the county commission unanimously voted to hang the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, Schaefer appeared at the next meeting with a framed copy of the regulations — non-governmental ones are OK — and presented them to the body. Afterward, according to the local newspaper, she launched into a diatribe against Gov. Roy Barnes and his predecessor, Zell Miller; environmental regulation; the Endangered Species Act and the UN. When the county attorney attempted to cut her off, he was shouted down and the commissioners asked her to continue. After the meeting, she showed a videotape, Global Governance: The Quiet War Against Independence, to the commission and residents who remained.
"I almost don't know where to begin," says Schaefer, who acknowledges that she's weighed in on the environmental issues dividing the county, but says her concerns are far larger.
"All these land-use regulations are connected together," she says. "Yes, there's been growth around here, but some of these regulations don't have as much to do with growth and sprawl as the people are being led to believe. ... Certainly, everybody I know around here has been taking care of the lakes and streams for centuries; they don't need portions taken over by the state."
Reminded that the regulations in question say nothing about any government takeover, Schaefer plays macro connect-the-dots.
"I feel like the regulations are a bit strong, and are not necessary," she says. "But I'm more concerned with smart growth itself, and where it originated — which is right out of the United Nations."
Schaefer is hardly the originator of this blend of pseudo-populism, Christian fundamentalism and rightwing paranoia, but it seems to have found fertile ground here. And, while the motives that drive property owners like Copeland — who admits to his self-interest in holding back land-use regulations — are clear enough, the bazooka-style attacks on those rules, along with the appearance of media-hungry pols like Schaefer and the political sail-trimming of elected officials, disturbs some of those who see the God-and-country rhetoric as a distraction from the real issues involved.
"The frustrating thing about all this," says Blackburn, "is that people who know very well that these regulations have been in place for years have represented them as being proposed by new county amendments, and by smart growth and by the United Nations. Farmers were told they could no longer farm near streams, had to fence them — all of those were outright falsehoods, used to gather large numbers of people to oppose things that didn't apply at all."
Even more frustrating, he says, is that officials who should have been ensuring that accurate information was being disseminated actually fomented the unrest.
"I guess the most significant thing is that normally, when you'd have this type of misinformation, county officials would present the right information." In this case, he says, county officials made no attempt to explain the regulations.
The hidden forces at work here, says Blackburn, have very little to do with protecting farmers or keeping blue-bereted UN troops from occupying the Habersham winery.
"It's money," he says. "I think these farmers are being used as pawns. The leaders of this resistance are people whose primary interests are development."
Mac McCullough, a gregarious man with a snowy beard and sun-reddened pate who retired and moved to Habersham from Atlanta, has come to the County Commission meeting to hand out "Citizens Alert" flyers at the door. "Alabama Land Owned By United Nations?" asks one headline. "To have clean water we must have your land," blares another.
"I saw on the Internet where there's a fella up at the UN in New York named Kofi Annan, and he says the only thing standing in the way of world government is the U.S. Constitution, 'cause it allows citizens to bear arms," says McCullough.
A few yards away, a teenager rests his head on his father's shoulder. His blue T-shirt boasts the United Nations symbol — a stylized globe encircled by olive branches — over which is centered a rifle's cross-haired sight. "Got ammo?" reads the caption.
The night's meeting unfurls calmly. There's talk about the "tyrannical" county code inspector, followed by an exhortation for "those folks down in Atlanta" to tend to their own pollution woes before demanding that Habersham further restrict its own growth.
"I don't ever remember going to the polls and voting for Smart Growth to run my business," fumes Joe Dodson.
"According to the Clean Water Act, compensation is required for the taking of buffers," says Denise Yearwood, as she presents the board with two hefty volumes she identifies as environmental regulations. "Are you county commissioners going to stand liable for compensating these people for taking their land?"
McCullough has his own concern. "When are we going to hang up the Ten Commandments? There's an outfit in Virginia that'll fight the ACLU for us." He also wants to know when the commission will reintroduce a measure making the old Georgia flag — the one largely comprised of the Confederate battle emblem — the new Habersham County flag.
"A friend of mine said it'll probably annoy some of the northern folks that live here — he calls 'em carpetbaggers, but I don't," says McCullough, turning to grin at the laughing crowd until the officer standing at the podium instructs him to address the mic.
But the high point comes when Vandiver, fed up with a few questions as to how he got appointed to a full-time job by three of five commissioners at a meeting purportedly called to deal with unrelated matters, abruptly announces he's quitting and stomps out, followed by a retinue of hand-wringing supporters. (The next morning, he'll be back on the job.)
Whatever else is going on up here, participatory democracy is alive and well, no doubt about it.
"Shoot, this is a quiet meeting," says a grinning young man firing up a smoke during a lull in the action. "Couple months back, we were fixin' to circle the whole county with chainlink fence and shoot anybody that tried to get in."
greg.land@creativeloafing.com