By Alan Montgomery
Special to the Rural Messenger
EMPORIA — Scenic, riverside bike trails in Lyon County have been cut from the county’s official long-range comprehensive plan, in response to protests by county residents.
Some saw the bike trail provision as the groundwork for uninvited, forced intrusion into their farms and rural residence acreages, citing descriptions in the plan for routing the trails through cattle pastures by using “cattle guard” pipe bridges, or installing gates for bikers to open and close.
In Emporia, the Lyon County seat, officials said there was never any plans to use eminent domain or other legal means to put trails across private land when the landowner was opposed to it.
Sam Seeley, who is the county’s director of planning, zoning and floodplain management, said the joint comprehensive plan — which has been in development and revisions by City of Emporia and county officials since 2015 — has been taken down from the county’s website and is now being revised again, to remove the riparian (riverside and creekside) bike path descriptions.
“We are keeping the Rails to Trails,” he said, referring to biking trails that have been developed on former railroad track rights-of-way, after the tracks had been removed. Those trails also can be used by people with utility vehicles, such as John Deere Gators and other knobby-tired, golf-cart-like machines.
The loss of the riparian bike trails meant losing some chances to stabilize land along the creeks and rivers, Seeley said.
“We’re always looking for ways to reduce sedimentation” in the streams and rivers, he said.
Filter strips of vegetation can be planted along the bike trails to help hold soil during rain and flash flood events. Uses of rock, fencing and other materials also can help hold the soil, he said.
Having the riparian bike trails in the plan was “just an idea in its infancy,” he said.
But fears of intrusion by bikers are just one concern of those in Lyon County who are resisting the comprehensive plan.
The Resistance
Georganna “Angel” Cushing and her husband, Tom, raise herds of goats on their 40-acre Lyon County farm near Allen, about 20 miles north of Emporia. They sell the goats for slaughter, in an industry that is currently thriving, she said.
Cushing, a farm wife in her late 40s, considers the comprehensive plan, and the new zoning regulations that went into effect in early April, as a plot to push Lyon County farmers and ranchers off of their land.
“We decided to draw a line in the sand,” she said. “Fight it right here.”
The zoning regulations, which have been revised since Cushing began showing up at meetings with crowds of supporters, are still purposely “vague,” she said, which allows the zoning officials to do whatever they want.
“It sounds like a tin foil hat conspiracy,” she said. “That was the reaction I would get from people when I would walk up to people and say, ‘You know, they are trying to ban barbed wire fences.’ It’s not an easy way to approach a conversation.”
Back at the county courthouse, Seeley said the first published set of the new zoning regulations had sections for both the city of Emporia and for the county in it, causing some confusion. Barbed wire fencing is not permitted in the city, but it is allowed out in the county’s rural areas, he said.
A revision of the regulations, separating the city from the county regulations, in two separate documents, clarified those points — but some people, he said, still mistakenly insisted that they outlawed barbed wire in the county, which then was perceived as a move to run out farmers and cattle ranchers.
The joint comprehensive plan was developed after years of community input, from city and county residents, through public meetings, focus groups, workshops, online surveys and planning committee hearings, Seeley said.
Bug business
Cushing said she also has reason to believe the planners want to replace cattle ranches with cricket farms.
The consulting firm that was hired to compose the comprehensive plan and zoning regulations for Lyon County is based in Portland, Oregon, and one of its owners also has interests in raising crickets commercially as a food source for people, Cushing said.
And on the consultant’s business web page, the Portland woman talks about how the bugs are the protein source for the future, and should replace all livestock operations. “That we definitely will be eating bugs,” Cushing said.
In February, at a county commission meeting where the new zoning regulations were approved, Cushing told the board she was disappointed that they did not heed her requests to insert, “Agriculture exempt” at the top of various sections in the zoning regulations.
In a local news story, she was quoted as saying she was “very disappointed that you passed this.”
“My understanding was that maybe you would go back and have a few more exemptions added on to it. So, I guess there’s nothing we can do about it. Know that I’m not quitting, I’m not backing down. And you will stay off my land.”
Cushing said she believes that the power brokers in Emporia and Lyon County would replace the county’s farms, ranches and ag industries, such as Tyson meat packers, with wind farms, solar energy installations, bike paths, parks and cricket farms.
Say what?
Replacing ranches with cricket farms likely would be met with consternation by at least two of the county commissioners — Rollie Martin and Scott Briggs — who are Lyon County cattle ranchers.
In a recent phone interview, Briggs said he was about to head out the door to build some pasture fence, with his grandson.
It was “unbelievable” that people would repeat rumors from social media that the county was going to outlaw barbed wire fences on farms and ranches, even as county commissioners said there was no truth to the claims, he said.
“I ranch. I am 65 years old,” he said. “My first question was, ‘So you are going to believe them, over me?’”
He supports the idea of bicycle recreation, he said.
“I am fine with bike trails. In Lyon County, that’s a big thing. Bike racing. That is OK. But the county is not going to take your land by eminent domain to put in a bike trail. Why would you believe this? They say, there’s a petition on Facebook. I said, ‘That is your problem right there. Stay off of Facebook and go back to work.’”
Briggs said he suggested they compare the old plan with the new one. “90 per cent of them said they hadn’t read either one of them.”
The commission invited the Kansas Livestock Commission to attend meetings and review the plans. They did. “They thought the new plan was better than the old one,” he said.
Majority rules
Rollie Martin, who is a commissioner for the county’s 3rd District, and a rancher, said he voted against passage of the plan, but only because there was not enough public support for it in his district.
“But I have no fear of it,” he said. “I thought all the Xs and Os were OK. I am not a legal expert, or zoning expert. After studying it for three years, and presentations by landowners and property owners, our planning committee, they got to the point where they recommended it to the commission. We had lot of hearings, and made changes accordingly. We got it done, passed by 2-to-1 vote.”
At the county planning office, Seeley summed up the essence of the plan.
“The Comprehensive Plan is primarily a guide for future development,” he said. “It helps to explain why some things are done, being done, and what might be done in the future. However, we live in an ever-changing world, so we review the plan annually to make sure that plans reflect what we want to see in the future. Nothing about the plan makes it ‘a legal way to take land to make the ideas become real.’”
