ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 7, 1995                   TAG: 9503070058
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE CHANGING COUNTRYSIDE

``There's an old adage that people are like rats - they follow the sewer. So we put sewer and water out to the Botetourt County line. They didn't go. Instead, they continued to go to southwest county, up 221, regardless of what we said.

``All right, fine, we're not going to give you water, we're not going to give you sewer - this is to the developers. Have a nice day. They went up there and built anyway. Even the best-laid plans - we had an excellent planning staff.

``Now comes the pressure. What does government do? Government reacts. Or somebody will take your place, and they will act for you. Two people lost their seats in southwest county on the Board of Supervisors. Now the action is get the infrastructure up there to those people. We were hauling water up there in tanks and fire trucks. That's not the efficient way. Yet those people developed out there within the standards.''

- Bob Johnson, Roanoke County supervisor

\ ``They object to other people coming in. They do not own the land and cannot control it, but they do not want other people coming in and hurt that land. They want that view, they want that spaciousness, but they're selfish and want to control.''

- Lois English, Franklin County supervisor, on new residents at Smith Mountain Lake

\ ``Roanoke County has a good comprehensive plan; it offers the farmers some protection. They have the land-use taxation program, which we couldn't live without. Some of the counties have done away with this, and some of the others are considering doing away with it.

``But, I say with subdivisions, you're going to have expenses - schools, sewage disposal, water systems - that are going to far exceed what the farmer gets in that tax break. And without it, I'll be quite frank with you, the majority of farmers can't hold on.''

- Louise Garman, Catawba farmer 


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