To the editor:

At the Feb. 4 commissioners’ meeting commissioner Holbert asked that Mitch Stott be allowed to tell his side of the story on the Chocolate Drop Mountain Development. According to that story it is the State of North Carolina and the regulations imposed by DENR and DOT that bear the full burden of this disaster. Mr. Stott asserted that if the developers had been able to circumvent some of these regulations the erosion caused by excessive grading and tree removal, necessary to comply with the imposed standards, would never have occurred. Thankfully their plan for building retaining walls to hold back the mountain will never be tested.

Save Our Slopes (SOS) was founded by Lisa Krolak in response to the denuding of Chocolate Drop, the poster child of environmental degradation in our area. The community at large is still enraged, upset and saddened by this tragedy. To preclude another “Chocolate Drop” the Columbus City Council enacted strict rules governing the proposed development of Foster Creek. Commission chair, Michael Gage, then a City of Columbus council man, supported these rules. Polk County commissioners, at the urging of citizens, drafted and passed the Mountainside and Ridgeline Protection Ordinance (MRPO).