RACEWAY BACK ON TRACK
Post and Courier, November 8, 2005
HARLEYVILLE - A twisting, turning, 10-year legal race to prevent a stock car track from being built near the Beidler Forest wildlife sanctuary was stopped cold Monday by a circuit\ court judge who reversed a state environmental board decision.
Judge Markley Dennis said the state Department of Health and Environmental Control board could not send a storm-water permit issued by its Ocean and Coastal Resource Management division back to the division to be reconsidered.
It means developers "are free to start moving the dirt on this project," said Chris Holmes, attorney for the developers. "Anybody can read into this that it's absurd it takes 10 years to get anything permitted in this state."
The decision shook environmentalists, who had fought the permit as far as the S.C. Supreme Court and who fear the ruling could take traction off the state's authority to manage wetlands. The state's permitting of wetlands has been the proving ground of a number of legal battles between development and environmental interests. The racetrack case has been closely watched and supported on both sides.
Ironically, the ruling came 10 years to the day that the permit was issued. But it, too, can be appealed and could well send the fight into yet another round in court, although opponents and state environmental department attorneys said they would wait for the judge's written ruling before deciding.
"We're going to fight this thing to the death. It's horrible," said Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League. "The court seems to be trying to strip the DHEC board of its proper role. Let the permit be decided on the merits of the permit."
Developers Mike Brown and Howard Tharpe won a permit in 1995 to build a $1.5 million concrete-oval stock car racetrack off S.C. 27 near I-26 within five miles of the forest, a 13,000-acre National Audubon Society cypress swamp wilderness in FourHolesSwamp.
With recent acquisitions, the project is now within a mile of the forest, said Norman Brunswig, Audubon South Carolina executive director and BeidlerForest sanctuary manager.The sanctuary holds the heart of what might be the largest remaining virgin cypress-tupelo swamp forest in the world. Owned by the National Audubon Society, it is a nesting ground for threatened songbird species.
The nub of the legal battle hinged on whether the coastal management division had considered the greater environmental impact of the project on the sanctuary before issuing the permit.
"Certainly noise and light will have a significant impact on an internationally significant wildlife area where songbirds come to nest and breed," Vinson said.
The case wended its way through the environmental board, courts and the state administrative law judge to the Supreme Court. That court ruled in 2002 that state environmental regulators overstepped their authority in denying developers a storm-water permit and sent the case back a lower court to be amended. In 2003, the DHEC board sent the permit back to coastal resource management to start over.
"That was our point to the judge: They already did this once. It's like getting two bites at the apple," Holmes said. Brown did not return calls for comment.
Contact Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or .