Gavin Stone | Daily Journal
Hamlet City Attorney T.C. Morphis speaks at the May meeting of the Hamlet City Council.
ROCKINGHAM — The lawyers in the case of the Gardner family, the Norton family, and Hamlet and Dobbins Heights versus Richmond County made their arguments this week to Superior Court Judge Dawn Layton this week, and her ruling remains pending. At issue in the case is whether the county violated statute when it rezoned a property on Marks Creek Church Road to Heavy Industrial last summer, which is now the site of the forthcoming International Tie Disposal facility.
Representing the families and municipalities was T.C. Morphis, Jr. of the Brough Law Firm, who is also the city attorney for Hamlet, and representing the county was Hal Kitchin, a partner with McGuireWoods. The plaintiffs filed their complaint in December, and the county has since filed their motion to dismiss it.
The complaint seeks to invalidate the October rezoning of the Marks Creek Church Road property. It takes issue with the Board of Commissioners’ consistency statement adopted to make the rezoning official, which the plaintiffs argue failed to describe how the rezoning is consistent with the county’s land use plan and failed to explain why the rezoning is “reasonable and in the public interest,” as required under General Statute 153A-341.
The plaintiffs also charge that the county violated statute by only considering one use for the rezoned property, that of International Tie Disposal, which produces biochar by processing creosote treated railroad ties through a process known as pyrolysis.
Kitchin argues that the first argument is invalid because the county’s consistency statement does meet the statutory requirements and is therefore not subject to judicial review. He also argued that as it relates to at least Hamlet and Dobbins Heights, these municipalities do not have standing in the issue because they are too far away to claim a “specific personal and legal interest in the subject matter affected by the zoning ordinance…”
Morphis countered that Hamlet’s water supply, which serves more than 10,000 residents including Dobbins Heights, is within 2,500 feet of the industrial site.
Kitchin also disputes the claim that the Board of Commissioners only considered International Tie Disposal for the rezoned site, but Morphis hoped that he could convince Layton to allow for discovery, which could show more explicitly the considerations made by the commissioners in the lead up to their vote.
