THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509090281
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: KILL DEVIL HILLS LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Environmentalists wanted to save a rare inland sand dune.
School Board members hoped to build a new Outer Banks high school nearby.
After seven years of negotiating, officials signed a land swap agreement on Friday that they said will accomplish both goals.
Run Hill sand dune will become part of The Nature Conservancy's Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve.
And the Dare County Board of Education will have 40.8 acres near the First Flight schools on which a new high school can be built.
``For those of us who've been working so long on this, it's just a big time celebration today,'' said Fletcher Willey, who chairs the School Board's high school planning committee.
``Now, all the property we own near the First Flight schools is zoned correctly for a new high school facility,'' Willey said. ``And Run Hill will be back where it belongs: in the hands of The Nature Conservancy.
``Planning for Dare County's new high school will take place over the next year.''
School Board officials have considered building another Dare County high school on the northern beaches for many years. Manteo High School has 902 students this year - 142 more than the capacity recommended by the state Department of Public Instruction. Within two years, education officials say, the high school's population will swell to 1,087 pupils.
``When the population reaches a certain point, we'll begin building that new high school,'' said Willey, adding that he did not know what that critical population level was. Already, he said, four trailer classrooms have been added to Manteo High to accommodate the extra students.
In December 1992, a local task force recommended building a high school in Kill Devil Hills. Construction should be completed by 1998, the group said. Recommendations called for the new school to have a swimming pool and classroom space for up to 1,000 students - for a cost of up to $20 million.
Dare County's school board has owned 50 acres on Run Hill for years, and education officials have long considered constructing a high school on the 75-foot-tall dune which sits just north of First Flight Middle School.
But representatives of The Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups have opposed such plans. They said the 165-acre sand hill protects Nags Head Woods, a rare maritime forest, from damaging salt spray. If a school were built atop the dune, they said, the existing ecological preserve would be jeopardized.
In May, the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation received a $550,000 grant from the National Heritage Trust Fund to buy the school board's portion of Run Hill. The land will be managed by The Nature Conservancy. Kill Devil Hills officials, who own another 47 acres on the giant sand dune, also agreed to convey their property to the Conservancy so that all of Run Hill can be preserved by the environmental group.
State officials told the legislature that the sand dune natural area has been appraised at $530,000.
On Friday, the Nature Conservancy agreed to buy 40 acres of the dune from the school board for a cost of $12,361 per acre. The school board, in turn, paid the Nature Conservancy $128,010 for a 9-acre tract near the First Flight Middle School playground. That land, Smith-DeBlieu said, is flat and had been mined by Outer Banks Contractors.
``Our geologists encouraged us to hold onto that property at the base of the dune. But the school board really felt they needed it,'' said Jeff Smith-DeBlieu, who manages Nags Head Woods for The Nature Conservancy. ``So as a gesture of good faith, we agreed to sell them that portion of flat land.''
The school board held onto another 10 flat, vegetated acres that abut the sand dune. Education officials also bought another 21 acres from the town of Kill Devil Hills for $293,058. That tract, Willey explained, is across the street from the First Flight elementary and middle schools - west of Veterans Memorial Drive, adjacent to the town's public works complex.
``We've got about 40 acres of buildable land now, divided into three separate tracts,'' Willey said. ``This may mean that the new high school's football stadium or track facilities will have to be built down the street from the school itself - or, at least, on non-contiguous property. But that's done in a lot of other areas already. It won't be a problem for us.''
Willey, Smith-DeBlieu and Kill Devil Hills Mayor Terry Gray praised each other and the negotiations process, saying all parties were extremely cooperative and willing to work toward a common end.
Smith-DeBlieu is still negotiating an agreement to buy the rest of the sand dune from Kill Devil Hills, and probably will complete that transaction by the end of the year.
He and Gray also said they will continue to work on finding an alternative means of discharging waste water from the Ocean Acres treatment plant. Currently, the outfall from that plant goes into the sound.
``The Nature Conservancy has agreed to make land available to us to do some sort of land application from that plant, to eliminate the point source discharge,'' Gray said. ``If we can eliminate that, too, the Run Hill land agreement will be an even greater accomplishment for all the citizens of the Outer Banks.'' by CNB