(Note: This could have been written by the fox guarding the chicken coop, assuring the chickens that they're safe with him. What a minefield of language deception! Kay McClanahan is one thousand percent right with her concerns and comments, although she is portrayed by this 'reporter' as being 'fearful.' Ha! Hattie Fruster is right, too!)

October 9, 2003

By Joey Holleman, staff writer

jholleman@thestate.com  or 803-771-8366

http://www.thestate.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: stateeditor@thestate.com

Some Lower Richland residents fear a change in the designation of Congaree Swamp National Monument will prompt restrictions on how they can use their property, despite assurances from the National Park Service and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn to the contrary.

Hundreds of concerned residents showed up to ask Clyburn questions at a public meeting Monday in Hopkins, and a small group traveled to Washington last week to voice their disapproval of a plan to change the name to Congaree National Park and add 4,600 acres to the park.

“If you allow these changes to take place ... you will threaten our homes, churches, farms, rights and children’s inheritance,” Hattie Fruster, president of the Lower Richland NAACP, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on October 2.

Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., and longtime park backer Harriott Hampton Faucette spoke in favor of the park expansion and name change.

Sue Masica, associate planning director for the National Park Service, said the agency would prefer to delay action on Hollings’ request to allow for an intense study of the additional 4,600 acres.

Hollings and Clyburn, D-S.C., have filed legislation in the Senate and House requesting the changes.

Neither bill has been approved.

Similar language has been included in an appropriations bill approved by the Senate and facing reconciliation with the House.

'Environmental groups' and 'tourism leaders' have backed the plan.

Supporters say a national park designation will draw more people to the largest remaining old-growth bottomland forest on the East Coast, which draws about 120,000 visitors per year.

The owners of the 4,600 acres to be added to the park want to sell their land, which would extend the park along the Congaree River to the confluence with the Wateree River.

But many residents of the area, led by the Richland Landowners Association, fear the changes will lead to regulations that will limit use of their property.

Several hundred people showed up at Clyburn’s question-and-answer session this week.

“Our position is not flaky or uniformed,” said Kay McClanahan of the landowners group. “There is clear evidence out there that the National Park Service is gobbling up land.”

She points to private property rights conflicts around Everglades National Park in Florida, the Buffalo National River in Arkansas and Redwood National Park in California.

Regulatory changes made it difficult for some landowners around those parks to use their property as they pleased.

Clyburn tried to assure the crowd that wouldn’t happen at Congaree Swamp.

“Local homeowners will see no difference between the impact of the current national monument and the creation of a national park on their property values or their ability to develop their land or pass it on to future generations,” Clyburn said.

There is no more regulation of land near a national park than near a national monument, according to Martha Bogle, superintendent at Congaree Swamp.

She said the agency has heard few complaints from neighbors.

Southland Fisheries Corp. raises game fish in 37 ponds it built just outside the park in 1981.

David Burnside, one of Southland’s owners, said having a national monument next door has had little effect on his business.

The National Park Service has asked him not to burn trees at certain times, and the agency turned down a request for a drainage easement through land Southland recently sold to the government.

Still, “we get along with them fine,” Burnside said.

McClanahan said her fears go past the National Park Service [and extend] to how the change can be used by Richland County -- and even the United Nations -- to restrict property rights in Lower Richland.

The county’s Town and Country plan, which is still in the developmental stage, includes a Congaree Preserve 'conservation area' that would add restrictions for land along streams in the area, said county planning director Michael Criss.

That provision isn’t linked to the proposed National Park Service changes, he said.

Though Congaree Swamp has been a national monument for 27 years, adjacent land zoned rural has no more restrictions than rural-zoned property anywhere else in the county, Criss said.

The United Nations link comes from Congaree Swamp’s designation in 1983 as an International Biosphere Reserve.

That U.N. program recognizes unique ecosystems worth saving.

McClanahan worries about provisions in the U.N. program that call for buffer zones around biosphere reserves “where only activities compatible with the conservation objectives can take place.”

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/6967725.htm

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http://www.thestate.com/images/thestate/state/6971/48594979420.jpg