Top 10 stories of 2006

Sunday, December 31, 2006

By Marcie Young, Hannah Mitchell and Jen Aronoff
Charlotte Observer Staff Writers

Furniture factories closed and property taxes rose in 2006, but the biggest news in the Catawba Valley was water.

The biggest story of the year erupted in a crowded auditorium in Valdese, when Unifour residents gathered to oppose Concord and Kannapolis' request to take millions of gallons of water a day from local rivers.

The proposed interbasin transfer united the region, with even the smallest of towns reserving funds for a potential legal battle.

The region also saw a few shocking stories in 2006, including a gruesome, small-town murder in Caldwell County and two fatal plane crashes at regional and private airports.

But the news wasn't all bad. Officials began touting the region as a hot retirement destination, Target announced it would build a distribution center in Newton with the promise of nearly 600 new jobs, and a local man discovered a world-class emerald.

Here are the 10 biggest stories of 2006, as picked by the Catawba Valley Neighbors staff.

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Interbasin transfer

The year's biggest story probably won't go away any time soon.

Counties and towns across the region normally focus on needs inside their borders - needs that sometimes conflict with those of their neighbors. But this year, they united to oppose Concord and Kannapolis' attempt to take Catawba River water.

The bid for up to 36 million gallons a day from the Catawba and Yadkin rivers upset locals so much that more than 600 of them packed a September hearing in Valdese before officials of the N.C. Division of Water Quality. The hearing got pretty heated at times, with one man shouting, "Dig a well!"

A coalition of area governments has since organized and raised about $1 million to fight the transfer.

Catawba Valley officials say dry spells like the area's five-year drought that ended in 2003, and the need to replace thousands of manufacturing jobs, make the river an essential resource that they can't afford to share.

The N.C. Environmental Management Commission is scheduled to consider the issue on Jan. 10. If the commission approves the proposal, Catawba Valley officials and their allies have said they would likely take their case to court.

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Synthron

In one of the worst industrial disasters in the state's recent history, Morganton's Synthron chemical plant exploded Jan. 31, injuring 15 workers - one of whom later died.

Experts believe an out-of-control chemical reaction sparked the fiery blast, and its consequences continue to reverberate.

In July, the N.C. Department of Labor fined Synthron $379,000, the fourth-highest amount ever assessed by the department.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October and is appealing the penalties.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took over demolition and cleanup efforts in May and expects work will wrap up by the end of January. In the spring, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board plans to issue its full report on what went wrong.

The story may not end there: Victims have also said they're considering lawsuits.

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David Huffman

For a quarter-century, David Huffman has led the Catawba County Sheriff's Office, the largest in the region. But during the 2006 election season, Huffman was nearly ousted - twice.

Huffman, a Republican, won a bitter and expensive primary race against Mike Ledford by only 140 votes. The campaign left him with only $359 in his re-election fund.

Then, in November, Huffman narrowly retained his job, despite running in one of the state's sturdiest Republican strongholds, beating Democrat Steve Hunt, a 30-year veteran of the Hickory Police Department. Huffman won by a slim margin of 411 votes out of 34,289 cast.

Huffman vowed in November that his seventh term will be the last.

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Jerry Anderson

For the past year, Caldwell County residents have been intrigued by a down-on-the-farm murder-mystery.

On Dec. 29, 49-year-old Emily Anderson disappeared from the Sawmills farm she operated with her husband and was found 10 days later in a South Carolina restaurant parking lot about 100 miles from Lenoir.

She had been shot twice, and her body was crammed into the large tool compartment of her Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.

Nearly a month after she disappeared, her husband, 47-year-old Jerry Anderson, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing. He could face the death penalty if convicted and awaits trial from the Caldwell County jail. "Everybody is eager to see what happens," lifelong Caldwell County resident Dowe Annas said. "There's a group of people who just don't want to believe it, and I'd imagine there's a few who are dead certain he did it."

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Furniture woes

Caldwell County's wooden furniture industry continued to crumble this year, with Broyhill Furniture Industries announcing it would shut two Lenoir plants and lay off about 1,000 workers.

Long one of the region's dominant employers, Broyhill will have only two domestic manufacturing plants, both upholstery operations, left after February, when its last U.S. wood-furniture plant, Lenoir Furniture Corp., is set to close. Caldwell's unemployment rate remains among the highest in the state.

Lenoir factories have made wooden furniture for more than a century, but their numbers have dwindled to only about a half-dozen, most making specialty products, as companies increasingly turn to inexpensive Asian imports.

Just two years ago, Broyhill itself had six wood-furniture factories in Lenoir.

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Retirement

Communities across the Catawba Valley increasingly looked this year to lure a new growth industry: retirees and baby boomers headed toward retirement, who can offer time and talent, don't crowd schools and stimulate the local economy by spending money on goods and services.

"Competition for the retiree is just like competition for industry," said Morganton City Council member John Cantrell, who noted that Burke County plans on increasing its retiree marketing in the coming year. "Anybody that's not interested in attracting retirees is missing an opportunity."

At the same time, a number of new housing developments targeted at the 55-plus crowd were announced across the region, including in downtown Morganton, northeast Hickory and the town of Catawba. Planners also expect the large, outdoors-oriented developments planned in rural Caldwell County to appeal to retirees.

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Target

For a region battered by layoffs and plant closings, the July announcement that Target would build a massive distribution center in southwestern Catawba County was big news indeed.

How big? Minneapolis-based Target, the nation's No. 2 discount chain, plans to invest $100 million and create at least 580 jobs - positions that can't easily be moved offshore, experts noted.

At 1.5 million square feet - the size of 27 football fields - on 247 acres off U.S. 321 and N.C. 10 west of Newton, the building would become the largest distribution center in the Charlotte region.

The center is expected to open in late 2009 and will serve the mid-Atlantic region, with 100 trucks a day entering and leaving the site. Construction is set to begin in the spring.

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Revaluations

Property values in three Catawba Valley counties rose when tax assessors revalued real property this year to reflect market prices.

On Lake Norman in Catawba County, values sharply increased, by 50 percent on average. The area, which is commuting distance from Charlotte, continues to draw people from other counties and states, driving property values up so fast assessors can't keep up with them.

Elsewhere in Catawba, shuttered factories actually caused industrial properties to decrease in value, by 5.5 percent on average.

Alexander and Burke counties were still calculating new values and expected to mail notices to property owners in early 2007.

Next year, county commissioners in each county will set the property tax rate by which tax bills are calculated along with property values. Some boards lower tax rates in revaluation years to soften the effect of higher values.

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Jamie Hill

Jamie Hill, known as Alexander County's "emerald man," pulled another big gem out of the Hiddenite bedrock in August.

The 10-inch, 591-carat emerald made eyes pop when Hill showed it off to friends and reporters. It's shaped like two long green-glass cigars fused together on one end and dotted with yellow flecks.

Because of its unusual length and twin formation, Hill called it a museum-quality piece instead of one that would be cut for jewels.

This month, he said gem experts have proclaimed it the world's longest natural emerald crystal. A Connecticut jewelry gallery, E.F. Watermelon, was marketing the emerald to potential buyers.

Hill's mine also produced sizeable emeralds in 1998 and 2003.

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Plane crashes

Two fiery crashes at small, regional airports killed three local men in 2006.

In a July 24 crash at the at Hickory Regional Airport, the pilot of a single-engine Korean War-era fighter jet died when the plane skidded off a runway, crashed through a fence and exploded.

The pilot, vintage-airplane buff Wyatt Fuller of Hickory, was headed to an air show in Oshkosh, Wis., carrying 800 gallons of fuel when the 1954 F-86 Sabre crashed. Hickory officials said the wreck was the only fatality they could recall at the small airport.

Less than five months later, in Alexander County, two other local men were killed at the Taylorsville Airport when the homemade plane they were flying crashed and burst into flames.

Leon Marion Fagan Jr., 44, and Billy Kermit Little, 53, both of Taylorsville, died Dec. 10 when the plane crashed behind a service station moments after takeoff. Flames had engulfed the wreckage when emergency crews arrived.

The plane, registered to Fagan, was an experimental aircraft that was built from a kit in 2005.


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