Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992 TAG: 9203300078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE
DATELINE: RINER LENGTH: Medium
If Winkle grants the state a conservation easement on his farm and gives up his right to develop the property, he won't have to pay a $50,000-plus fine for a manure spill that caused one of the worst fish kills in the state.
But first, the state Water Control Board, which meets today in Richmond, has to agree.
"It's the unusual thing to do, and I hope they do it," said Charles Stitzer, an enforcement agent with the agency.
As far as he knows, it would be the first time in Virginia, and possibly in neighboring states, that the state government would accept a conservation easement as payment for environmental damage.
The 58-acre farm would not become public property, but would remain undeveloped forever. And conservation easements follow the land, so future owners would not be allowed to develop it, either.
"It's all right, I reckon, 'cause I can't get the $50,000, you know," Winkle said last week. "And the place, it's mortgaged pretty heavy."
Stitzer, at the board's direction, has been working for the past several months to find a way to punish Winkle for the manure spill, yet not put the farmer out of business.
Last autumn, a valve on a huge holding tank on Winkle's farm malfunctioned, spilling the liquid muck into Elliott Creek, a feeder stream of the South Fork of the Roanoke River. Among the tens of thousands of dead fish were 333 endangered Roanoke logperch.
Winkle has said the spill was accidental and that a $50,000 fine would put his struggling dairy operation out of business.
The water board recently added another $17,000 to the possible fine for the logperch kill. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has come up with an estimated cost of at least $50 per logperch, based on how much it would cost to replace one.
The board could have sent Winkle's case to the attorney general's office for routine prosecution, Stitzer said.
"Then what's the point? We demand our money and don't get it" because banks and other creditors would be first in line, he said. "We put a man out of business, the creek doesn't benefit, we don't get the fish back."
Instead, a conservation easement - and perhaps a combination of other alternatives that Stitzer declined to discuss before the board meeting - could be a win-win solution for all, he said.
Winkle could continue to farm the land, the state would have the assurance that the land would remain undeveloped, and the creek would have a better chance to recover more quickly.
The idea is a "whole lot better" than being forced out of business, a business his sons' families now depend on, Winkle said. The bad part is he won't get as much money for the farm if he sells it, which he said he's considered in the past.
"Maybe I'll have to retire right here," he said.
Winkle said that since the spill, he's fixed the tank so that the pipe from a collection pit empties the manure into the top.
A few years back, the piping was switched - in violation of state regulations - so that it pumped the manure through a valve into the bottom. On Sept. 15, a rock or something lodged in the valve, causing up to 50,000 gallons of manure to back up and ooze into the nearby creek.
Winkle said he's also put a 50-foot fence along the creek to prevent any future spills from getting into the stream.
He plans to be in Richmond today, to see what the board decides.
Winkle is one of a dwindling number of dairy farmers in Montgomery County and Southwest Virginia. Publicity about his plight spurred about 750 people to sign a petition to the governor asking that the state go easy on Winkle, Stitzer said.
Stitzer is working with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which would administer the conservation easement.
"Nothing has been settled," Stitzer said. "Nobody's signed anything or made any agreements."
Winkle must formally apply to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, an organization created by the General Assembly in 1966, and which now administers 400 easements covering 80,000 acres of Virginia.
But it's never dealt with land involved in a regulatory tangle, Executive Director Tyson B. Van Auken said.
"We're as curious as everyone else as to whether this will work or not," he said. "This will be a precedent."
To qualify for the program, property must be prime agricultural land, have scenic or natural values, and be designated in the jurisdiction's comprehensive plan as open space, he said.
A staffer from the foundation has been out to Winkle's farm and Van Auken said the property probably is eligible for the easement program.
But that decision would be up to foundation's board of trustees, which next meets June 1.
by CNB