‘Make it more environmentally sound’: Citizen group takes on popular Southwest Va. trail network

A network of popular off-roading trails through Southwest Virginia has been wracked by two years of contentious fights over drainage problems between state regulators, trail officials and citizen activists.

The Spearhead Trails are four months into new leadership, and a little more than half a year into a binding agreement that outlines its responsibilities to control stormwater at new and existing trails. Yet the Clinch Coalition — a local group that’s complained about the issues for nearly three years — says that drainage problems are still happening. Last month, the group released a trove of emails obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests that it said shows state regulators have been aware of the issues but failed to adequately enforce clean water rules and keep the public informed.

The Spearhead Trails are Virginia’s counterpart to West Virginia’s Hatfield-McCoy Trails. Virginia legislation passed in 2008 created the board that oversees it, the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority, and enabled the creation of the trail network largely from pre-existing roads originally built for logging, coal mining and other purposes. Spearhead’s trails attract visitors from around the world and are a major driver of a growing tourism industry that’s helping provide an economic lifeline to depressed coal communities.

For three years, however, a local citizens group called the Clinch Coalition has flagged a steady stream of problems with erosion and sediment control. The activists document what they identify as state and federal clean water violations, then log complaints with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Emails between Spearhead Trail officials and DEQ staffers over that time show that the Clinch Coalition’s many complaints triggered a push and pull between the two state entities that eventually wrapped in two state senators. Last summer, the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority signed an agreement with the DEQ to better manage its erosion troubles; since then its leadership has turned over, and DEQ officials say the new team is making good progress.

In December, though, the Clinch Coalition issued a news release “calling on regulators to take increased action to address environmental issues on the Spearhead Trails network.” Included were nine attachments with emails and documents obtained through open government requests that showed the DEQ’s awareness of drainage issues. 

The Clinch Coalition criticized both the DEQ and Spearhead for not better communicating “findings on the trail system, current trail closures and ongoing efforts to address locations of concern.” It also complained that the DEQ’s internal reports reflect more concern than what had been shared publicly with regional residents.

“We do not want to be combative,” said Clinch Coalition President Sharon Fisher. “We want to be cooperative, and we want to work for the same goals. That includes more recreation, more economic revenue coming into the counties. We’re just saying, ‘Let’s make it more environmentally sound.’”

“We don’t want to see the entire Spearhead Trail system shut down,” said Wally Smith, a professor at UVA Wise and vice-president of the Clinch Coalition. “But if there are problematic trail segments, they need to be corrected. They can be shut down and fixed the right way.”

Officials at both the DEQ and Spearhead Trails said the Clinch Coalition is overstating its case. They say previously identified drainage issues largely have been repaired, or are in the process of being fixed.

“It is inconceivable that the authority and the Clinch Coalition do not work together for the benefit of the Southwest Virginia region,” wrote Bradley Ratliff, the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority’s lawyer. “Unfortunately, attacks by the Clinch Coalition directed at Spearhead Trails are nothing new and remain hard to comprehend. There is nothing new in the allegations purported in their press release. There has been no wrongdoing or neglect by Spearhead Trails.”

The Clinch Coalition “mischaracterized” the situation, said Kelly Miller, stormwater and watershed planning manager for the DEQ’s Southwest Regional Office in Abingdon, after the Virginia Mercury forwarded the news release and attachments. Miller said the DEQ doesn’t generally publicize the blow-by-blow of its enforcement work, and that it has cooperated with the Clinch Coalition to investigate complaints and release public records.  

“The official documents, they’ve seen that stuff before,” Miller said, who added she was “heartbroken” when she read the group’s news release.

Spearhead Trails Director Melissa Rose also said she hadn’t seen the news release before the Virginia Mercury forwarded it to her for comment. “I have never had any contact with any of them,” Rose said. “No one has ever reached out to me. We’re open to that. Working together would be a key part of making things better.”

Rose said the Spearhead Trail’s approach to management has shifted since previous director Shawn Lindsey left in the fall.

“Since we made all the changes here, our motto is, ’It’s a new day,’” Rose said. “We have a ranger on almost every trail system. We have a staff that’s working 10 hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week rotation on the trails. That’s a huge change for us.”

‘A conduit to get it to the right agencies’

The Spearhead Trails sprawl over 600 miles through Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell and Wise counties and the city of Norton. They’ve provided a visible boost to a regional economy whose reliance on the depressed coal industry meant that it missed out on much of the economic rebound that’s propelled Virginia since the Great Recession. 

Coalfield counties have lagged the state in measures of prosperity, and have lost residents as young people seek better opportunities elsewhere. The Spearhead Trails have triggered tourism- and outdoor-based economic development, fueling off-road dealers, outfitters and campgrounds, as well as secondary businesses such as restaurants, breweries and motels.

The trails require frequent maintenance, however. They frequently use pre-existing roads built for logging, coal mining and natural gas wells, and often run across land owned by third-party landowners and holding companies who don’t actively manage the property and often are removed from what happens there. The Spearhead Trails has also built new trails to make connections and increase access.

The people who most often see the trails are off-road riders out for exploration and adventure. As with any user group, they run the gamut in their attitude toward stewardship and responsible riding.

Erosion and sediment control problems, though, have become a problem for some nearby residents. That’s where the Clinch Coalition stepped in. Initially founded in the late ‘90s to express local concerns about logging in the Jefferson National Forest, the Clinch Coalition has become a clearinghouse for local residents with environmental problems.

“When local residents have some kind of environmental concern, a lot of times they don’t know where to go,” said Wally Smith, a professor at UVA Wise and vice-president of the Clinch Coalition. “We don’t have great coverage of regulatory agencies here in this part of the state. A lot of what we have done is taken concerns from citizens and be a conduit to get it to the right agencies. The Spearhead Trails came on our radar when we heard concerns from people who live on and near the trails about sediment and erosion.”

Those complaints range from sediment running into streams, to runoff coming down the trail out into the road by houses, to users driving through a family cemetery. Smith and Fisher, the Clinch Coalition president, say Spearhead Trail officials consistently denied the existence of problems, while DEQ staff were largely unresponsive. To date, the agency hasn’t filed a formal enforcement action against Spearhead Trails.

However, emails obtained by the Clinch Coalition through FOIA suggest the DEQ was indeed aware of the problems — and taking actions behind the scenes. In the emails, DEQ officials verified some of the drainage problems documented by Clinch Coalition volunteers and pressed the Spearhead Trails to address them.

In an email from July 2020, a staffer at the DEQ’s Abingdon office mentioned the complaints and noted that two inspectors sent to look into issues at the Original Pocahontas section of the trails found “many instances of a potential unauthorized discharge of fill within what appears to be ‘waters of the state.’”

The staffer goes on to say the regional office has been frustrated because the trails largely haven’t fallen under typical stormwater permits and often use pre-existing roads for logging, coal mining and natural gas wells. Compounding the problem is that many of the trails run through private property, owned by third-party landowners who were distant and unresponsive.

‘Shawn’s solution was to take it to the legislators’

By spring of 2021, DEQ staffers were developing a memorandum of agreement (MOA) for Spearhead Trails that would clarify its responsibility to address erosion and sediment control issues. Then-Spearhead Director Shawn Lindsey was not initially receptive, said Miller, the DEQ’s regional stormwater and watershed planning manager.

“There was a lot of hesitation, and Shawn’s solution was to take it to the legislators and get them to write an exemption into the state law that would exempt recreational trails from any of these permit requirements,” Miller said. “Luckily our legislators were smart enough to say, ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. No one ever sponsored it.”

However, in April 2021, as the DEQ was still developing its draft MOA, Virginia Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, forwarded an email to DEQ Director David Paylor from Lindsey that included Spearhead’s own proposal to address the issue — to exempt the group from required erosion and sediment control permits and essentially trust it to solve the problems on its own.

“We need an immediate remedy to keep our trails safe and environmentally sound,” Lindsey wrote. Attached to Hackworth’s forwarded email was a draft document between the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority, which oversees the Spearhead Trails, and the DEQ that would exempt the trail network from having to obtain state erosion and sediment control permits. Lindsey’s signature was already on the document, which was post-dated to December 2019 — before many of the problems the DEQ had verified.

Emails between DEQ staff members in response to Hackworth’s email and Lindsey’s proposal were largely dismissive.

“I am open to any suggestions on this, but their MOU [memorandum of understanding] contains a fair bit of erroneous information and some wording that could be easily misconstrued,” wrote one staffer.

Miller responded, “I don’t have any suggestions for the new draft MOA and wholeheartedly agree there’s nothing in the SRRA MOU sent to Paylor through Hackworth worth any value and is full of inaccurate and inappropriate information.”

By the end of the month, the DEQ had finalized its own memorandum of agreement, which was subsequently signed by Paylor and SRRA chairman Jack McClanahan. The document identified 16 different problems on the Spearhead Trails identified by DEQ staff, and laid out 13 requirements for SRRA to identify and address the drainage problems, including changes to rules and permits for trail users.

Even after the DEQ’s MOA was finalized, the agency continued to hear from state senators about the issue. In July, Miller met with Hackworth and Virginia Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach.

“Hackworth and DeSteph called a meeting and called us on the carpet, just raving mad at us because we wouldn’t let Spearhead perform maintenance activities so they could host this great big nationwide event,” Miller recalled. But “after five minutes of talking to Hackworth, he says, ‘I see what you mean. Let’s do this, let’s do this.’ I thought he was spitting mad at me, but once I started answering questions, he was like, ‘I know what you’re talking about. We’ll fix this.’ The other guy [DeSteph] was still raving, spitting mad at us.”

https://twitter.com/SRRAspearhead/status/1478190876098981888?s=20

Reached by phone, Hackworth said the Spearhead Trails are “very important to our economy,” but “we’ve got to learn to coexist with some of these environmental concerns.” Hackworth said he’s confident in Spearhead’s new leadership and its commitment to ensuring the trails are well maintained. 

‘We’ve made significant progress’

DEQ’s memorandum of agreement and the meetings around it became a turning point, when Spearhead Trails tacitly acknowledged problems on its trails and agreed to fix them.

“To date, we’ve made significant progress on those items in the MOA,” Miller said. 

In September, Lindsey left the Spearhead Trails for a job managing the Doe Mountain Recreational Area in northeastern Tennessee. 

“There’s really nothing I can say,” said Lindsey when reached by phone last week. “I think that Spearhead’s always trying to do what DEQ asks them to do. There’s a lot of problems around these old coal sites. It just takes time to fix everything. When I was there, it was top priority for us.”

Miller acknowledges “some stumbling blocks” in the past when the DEQ tried to work with Spearhead Trails. 

“I’m not pointing fingers,” Miller said. But “for every two steps forward there was two steps back. There were a couple yelling matches between the two of us. This situation now with current leadership is totally different. There’s nothing but mutual agreement to do the right thing.”

That’s not to say all the drainage problems have been fixed. Portions of the Original Pocahontas Trail in Tazewell County have been an ongoing problem due to steep terrain along a stream. Miller said a new route has been blazed to channel riders away from the worst spots — but that still hasn’t stopped some riders who insist on pushing into areas that have been closed off.

Despite her frustration with the Clinch Coalition, Miller also acknowledged that the group had informed the DEQ of some drainage problems that turned out to be legitimate. But she said that most of the complaints it filed were about issues that couldn’t be enforced, in part because of the limitations of the enforcement process generally. 

Still, both the Spearhead Trails and DEQ said they’re finally working on the same page after years of dispute and acrimony. The Clinch Coalition said problems still remain, and it will continue to watchdog environmental troubles on the trails.

Miller said that local residents can report problems by using the DEQ’s online system or by calling the Southwest Regional Office at (276) 676-4800. The Clinch Coalition also maintains a “Leave a Tip” tool at its website for local residents who want to send an anonymous complaint.