Laurel Valley Watch, Inc. is a non-profit 501c3 organization formed in December 2005 by the residents of Laurel Valley, a peaceful glen of rural grazing land and gardens in the northwest corner of Madison County, North Carolina. This neighborhood group formed as an urgent response to the sudden realization that hundreds and hundreds of pristine acreage had been bought up by the owners of Wolf Laurel Ski Resort, under the guise of B&E Ventures, and other out of state investors, with rezoning applied for from residential/agricultural to resort and commercial variously. Some of the purposes of Laurel Valley Watch are:
1. To preserve and protect the rural character of the Laurel Valley and other similar parts of Madison County characterized by agricultural and low-density residential use;
2. To assure a continued, healthy, and abundant supply of water from the Laurel Valley springs that are the source of water for the Laurel Valley residents and to protect the creeks and streams that feed into the French Broad River Basin and the Mars Hill Watershed from despoliation and pollution;
3. To assure the continued presence in the Laurel Valley and other similar parts of Madison County of the flora and fauna native to the Southern Appalachian Mountains;
4. To educate and inform the residents of the Laurel Valley and other similar parts of Madison County about the unique and threatened heritage of their residential environment in order that this heritage may be preserved.
5. To protect and to promote the clean and healthy environment of the Laurel Valley, of the Appalachian Trail, and other similar parts of Madison County;
6. To foster the economic well-being of the residents of the Laurel Valley and other similar parts of Madison county without compromising the environmental and cultural well-being of the Laurel Valley and similar parts of Madison County;
Wolf Laurel Ski Area, Wolf Ridge, and Breakaway are perpetrating the unbridled development, and are not to be confused with Wolf Laurel Resort, which comprises some 3000 acres of a (mostly) summer community, and has been in existence for decades. They are not related. It is essential to realize that Laurel Valley is accessed by a completely different road, is on the other side of the ridge, contains the Mars Hill drinking watershed, has only one business (a trout pond), two churches, and has been lovingly inhabited and cared for for millennia. The two areas have nothing to do with each other besides sharing a county refuse collection depot.
The developers have termed their intrusion into our lives a “natural flow”, as if mountains left alone naturally tend toward high-density development. The developers Rick Bussey and Orville English have been extremely inarticulate and evasive in revealing their plans, but have not been shy in spending millions and leveling woods and wetlands. One worst fear is incessant blasting and mountain top removal for a 3200 foot jetport that they have presented as a fait accompli. You cannot put thousands of homes on a mountainside without severe problems with pollution, erosion, habitat destruction, traffic, noise, lights (currently this is place from which the Milky Way is still visible), water levels and sewage. We do not believe they can ruin our lives and neighborhood, unless we roll over and allow them.
We at Laurel Valley Watch understand that the interests of business far supercede the interests of the people in 21st century corporate America. County commissioners and planning boards rubber stamp development with alarming indifference to the desires of the people. The US Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of eminent domain seizure of private properties, not for civic projects such as roads, but for subsidized business development. With this website we are committed to documenting our attempts at slowing and containing this rampant development, and opening our successes and failures to be viewed by other groups and individuals facing similar destruction of their rural way of life. At all times we are open to working with any county agency that is sincere in its desire to find a path that works for all parties concerned, rather than the monied few, and developing long-tern visionary plans for all Madison Country residents, rather than short-term windfall profit for an elite. Laurel Valley Watch is committed to finding ways to reassert our already Constitutionally guaranteed rights to pursue our own peace and happiness in the face of greed addiction and destruction of natural habitat, because this tawdry movie will be rerun again and again until we get sick of the bad acting.
LVW IS NOW A 501c3! PLEASE GIVE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO OUR FUND FOR THE HEARING CHALLENGING THE SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT. GO TO THE MAKE A DONATION BUTTON.
Our next public members meeting is scheduled for Tuesday November 11th, 7 pm at the Center Community Center in Grapevine. Call 680 9484 for directions.
Check out the History page for the latest updates.
Last updated 090408
