News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: Play ball!

By Lightning Editorial Board, Published: July 17, 2024

Sometimes the best outcome is not the originally intended one.

As we write this, one day ahead of a Board of Commissioners meeting that’s certain to be a marathon, we know that sewer and sports are on the docket. And it’s looking like soccer kids, pickleball and tennis players, softball teams and others pursuing sports and recreation could have reason to rejoice when Wednesday’s meeting draws to a close.

Why? The rules for spending American Rescue Plan money and the inexorable passage of time, chiefly.

As Commissioner Bill Lapsley says in our Page 1 coverage, the county has simply run out of time to get a contract in place for the proposed Clear Creek sewer plant and for the collection lines running somewhere in Edneyville. We don’t know where the lines will run, or whether the sewer plant will happen at all, now that the budget for the project has been slashed by $9.4 million.

Lapsley and the ever-windy Daniel Andreotta have staged public tantrums to a fare-thee-well whining that the state took too long to issue a permit for the wastewater treatment plant.

“I think the Secretary of the DEQ needs to stand where you’re standing and apologize to us and to the citizens of the county, especially the eastern part of county, and make that apology in person,” Andreotta told consulting engineer Will Buie last week. “I’ll clear my calendar to make sure I’m here for that.”

Mr. Andreotta can block off as many dates as he’d like. The secretary of the state Department of Environmental Regulation is not going to travel to Hendersonville to apologize for doing her job — which was to thoroughly scrutinize a proposal to dump a half million gallons of treated sewage a day into a creek officially rated as “impaired” in water quality. (DEQ issued a permit for 200,000 gpd.)

Whatever the rhetoric from the honorables in the Historic Courthouse, the winners here are likely to be the aforementioned sports players of all ages. Soccer moms and dads have suffered long enough watching kids play in the cow-pasture conditions of Jackson Park; pickleball paddlers howl for more courts; the Hendersonville High School women’s softball team needs a home. Heck, maybe School Board member Blair Craven’s vision for a natatorium will one day bear fruit.

Commissioners have $9½ million available for a sportsplex — $7½ million shifted from the sewer plant plus $2 million they earmarked in October 2022. Because it’s all ARP money, it has to be obligated by midnight on Dec. 31. That suggests to us that new playing fields will need to go on land the county already owns. The likeliest location for a sportsplex is Berkeley Mills Park, although Jackson Park is not entirely out of the picture. Both sites are centrally located and accessible by good roads. Creating as many as four full-sized soccer fields, a softball diamond and pickleball and tennis courts would be far easier to do at Berkeley Park. The same project at Jackson Park would disrupt one or two seasons, at least, of youth soccer, Little League baseball and other recreation programs.

Mr. Andreotta, the renowned orator, made a good point in October of 2022 when he spoke in favor of setting aside $2 million in ARP money for outdoor sports.

“One of the things I’ve learned here is what a great unifier recreation is,” he said. A major sportsplex has the potential for “serving the most people — the very young, the senior adults and everybody in between.”

The county spent $4½ million on the new veterans center and will spend $160 million (or more) on the courthouse-jail expansion — both needed and worthy investments. An $11 million sportsplex is a worthy investment, too — one that would serve thousands of Henderson County families for decades to come.