Fones Cliffs along the Rappahannock River in Richmond County is a favorite place for bald eagles to gather, to sleep, and to watch for their next meal in the river and marshes below. But a plan for a commercial development is pitting conservationists against entrepreneurs.
Miami-based Diatomite Corporation of America wants to rezone their 975-acre property and begin building a championship golf course, restaurant and bar and more than 700 houses. Depending on whose side you're on, the development will either join or displace the bald eagles atop the cliffs.
Below, where waterman Wayne Fisher has been fishing for 20 years, is a plan for seven piers. Today he's unloading his day's catch.
"We've already got poor water quality now than when we had, Fredericksburg is steady growing, King George County is steady growing. This is supposed to be the country, that's why we live here. We don't want to see it built up."
Environmentalists, state and federal organizations, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also want Fones Cliffs left alone. But Diatomite president Allan Applegate is a formidable foe. The 82-year old Harvard law school graduate ditched law and became an entrepreneur, but that didn't keep him from going to court. When Argentina defaulted on its bonds, he led a class action suit against the government to recoup the money, and when he lost money in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, he sued the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He hired Richmond attorney Robert Smith, a native of Richmond County to speak for him.
“I’m a Northern Neck boy. I love the Northern Neck. It’s holy ground. But you know what, I’m also a capitalist and I know the way the world works and you cannot exist without jobs and growth.”
Hannah Overton Tiffany is a real estate broker in Richmond County. She too should be excited by the prospect of selling new homes.
“The very thing they're marketing as an attractive benefit of living in a subdivision in this area will be destroyed when they build it. This is in direct opposition to the Richmond County comprehensive plan.”
Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has tried to purchase important ecological lands along the Rappahannock from owners willing to put the land in easement or sell outright. They range from a few hundred acres to a couple of thousand acres. Bill Portlock, an educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, likens them to a “string of pearls.”
“By saving this area, we are adding to that necklace and creating essentially an intact ecosystem with development in appropriate places. Not necessarily on the top of a 100-foot cliff.”
Along the Rappahannock from Tappahannock to Port Royal are 90 eagle nests, including one on the Diatomite property. Smith said Diatomite offered to sell the property to Fish and Wildlife for nearly $20 million, an amount he describes as minuscule.
“We’ve owned this property since 1958, we’ve paid taxes on it and we’d like a return on our investment.”
Smith is quick to point out costly environmental regulations the state has put in place.
“Ain’t nobody going to die, nobody’s going to be poisoned, the environment is going to exist just like it did before. And bald eagles are going to perch in people’s yards.”
Richmond County Supervisors plan to vote on the rezoning Thursday night.
