Towards a Kentucky Land Use Policy

This issue of Appalachian Heritage contains an essay by Wendell Berry entitled, “To Break the Silence.” It also contains Mary Popham’s review of The Embattled Wilderness by Erik Reece and Jim Krupa, the book that provided a springboard for Wendell Berry’s essay, along with the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry M. Caudill.

I well remember Wendell Berry’s eulogy twenty-two years ago, at the funeral of Harry Caudill in a church in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Caudill’s home town. Caudill’s books included My Land Is Dying (1973), a polemic against strip mining. Wendell Berry has now inherited the mantel from Harry Caudill as Kentucky’s most prominent public critic of environmental destruction, and Erik Reece, who also authored Lost Mountain, is widely viewed as one the state’s leading authors of books on the subject.

Wendell Berry’s essay in this issue presents a new and very attractive proposal. He asserts that Kentucky needs an officially sanctioned land use policy. As matters stand now, any developer—including a state land grant university—that wants to exploit the land can argue its case on the grounds that the proposal will enrich the state by bringing money into the state’s coffers, providing employment, or even flattening out the land for alternative uses. There is no need to give thought to the negative impacts of their proposition or the eventual impoverishment that their devastation could cause. If our Commonwealth had a clearly stated land use policy, that would provide a context for judging each new development scheme.

In 1926, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the right of political jurisdictions to regulate land use in the Euclid vs Ambler case, but it wasn’t until 1961 that the first state, Hawaii, passed a comprehensive land use policy. In 1970, Vermont passed Act 250. It set up a grass-roots process by which development proposals are vetted locally. In 1972, Florida followed with its Environmental Land and Water Management Act and Oregon passed legislation in 1973. Four states, including Georgia, followed suit in the 1980s and four more, including Tennessee, in the 1990s. Several states, including Pennsylvania, have since passed such legislation.

One important goal that state land use plans can achieve is protecting mountain ridge lines from adverse development that ruins the view of nearby property owners and travelers. The 1983 North Carolina Mountain Ridge Protection Act has been mostly, but not completely, successful. The Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act was killed in committee in 2013.

In the early 1950s, Los Angeles passed shoreline protection legislation, and, in 1971, Washington state’s Shoreline Management Act protected its state shorelines. Many other kinds of adverse developments can be mitigated by land use legislation, which protects not just views and shores, but also biological diversity and urban sprawl. Of particular concern in Appalachia is flood-plain development. A state-wide land use policy could allow those living in the flood plain, including infants, to stay for the rest of their lives, but not permit further development in places where flooding could be a disaster to those downstream. It could also regulate a variety of practices that cause and exacerbate flooding.

In addition to calling for a Kentucky land use policy, Wendell Berry’s essay further argues that Kentucky taxpayers deserve to reap more benefit from the professors whose salaries we pay by urging them to marshal their talents towards constructive goals like creating and debating appropriate land use policies for our Commonwealth. The state’s universities and colleges offer an ideal venue not only for further research, but also for forums, teach-ins, and other efforts geared toward designing an effective law for Kentucky and avoiding the problems other states have experienced. For example, a college or university class could take as its task for a school term to fashion a Kentucky land use policy and to share their findings.

Coordination among those working on land use policy would be very beneficial, and it would be great if the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and...