There is no room for horsing around at the Seven Lakes Stables.

Stable Manager Kate Pennington has worked hard to determine the needs of the current herd and riders, and now she hopes to generate revenue to support the stables operation by boarding horses for private owners.

At the Monday, March 11 Seven Lakes Landowners Association [SLLA] Work Session, Pennington presented an in-depth proposal for offering boarding services.

“Currently, we have eight horses and two ponies,” Pennington said. “At the end of April, we will have seven horses and two ponies. I think we should board horses. We would have a stall for every horse, and we could maintain our operations.”

Equine Separate but Equal

Modifications would need to be made to keep the boarded horses separate from the SLLA herd and residents, Pennington said.

“We would need to add a couple of gates and a fence line,” she explained. “We should really have our pastures segregated anyway. That is how our pastures are already set up.”

The existing pasture shelters are sub-par and need to be rebuilt for the existing herd, she added.

“The ones out there right now, they are much too narrow,” Pennington said. New shelters would be relativity inexpensive to build, requiring four posts, painted plywood siding and a tin roof.

What should every North Carolina resident be aware of? That North Carolina ranks forty-sixth among the fifty states in average teacher salary, Superintendent Aaron Spence told members of the Moore County Board of Education during their Monday, March 11 meeting.

Teacher salaries have been frozen since 2009 — and 18% of state-funded teachers are frozen at the bottom of the pay scale, Spence said. Given increases in the cost of living over that period, the average teacher has, in effect, taken a $4,000 pay cut.

Citizens can take action by contacting their state senator and representative and requesting a five percent increase in pay for educators. “It is not enough, but it is a start,” Spence said.

It was a sincere but brief farewell that outgoing President Bob Darr gave concluding his last Seven Lakes Landowners Association Open Meeting on Wednesday, February 27.

“It’s been a real ride with this group in front,” Darr said, referring to his fellow Directors. “What I have accomplished I did because of these gentleman sitting here at this table.”

Resident Bob Stephan did not let Darr fade quietly into the sunset, but stood up and said, “I think we owe a great deal of thanks to Bob Darr for a hell of a job that he has done — and to this board.”

Full Pond for Lakes Longleaf and Sequoia

Mother Nature is finally cooperating with ample rainfall and helping to refill Lake Echo. The SLLA Board discussed ways to take advantage of the steady rainfall and reduce the expense of pumping water from Lake Sequoia into Lake Echo.

Community Manager Ray Sohl proposed “as an alternate plan” the following: The first phase of pumping from Sequoia to Echo will begin the week of March 3 and last for seven days. After seven days, the Board will access the levels and decide then whether to continue pumping. If the rain continues and Lake Echo reaches a reasonable level, the pumping may then be discontinued, realizing a savings of about forty percent of the nearly $10,000 projected cost of the pumping project.

“I think it is important to get on with this as soon as possible,” Director Conrad Meter said. “Longleaf is above full pond and overflowing into Sequoia. Sequoia is over full-level by two inches. If we can immediately pump from Sequoia to Echo, we could take advantage of that water going over the dam.”

A resident in the audience brought to the Board attention smaller lakes Ramapo and Timber. “You are still not addressing the problem of the other two lakes that are also below level,” she said.

“If we were to raise Lake Echo ten inches and see what kind of rain we will get, we would then have the opportunity to attend Ramapo and Timber,” said Director Don Fentzlaff. “We haven’t forgotten you.”

Resident George Temple also urged the Board to begin pumping as soon as possible. “The important thing is to do it. Go ahead and approve the whole works. Look at the first stage and if we have to go forward then we can go forward.”

A motion was made by Racine to begin pumping and reassess after the first week. The Board would then decide whether to continue pumping. The total cost would not exceed $10,500.

[In fact, pumping from Lake Sequoia to Lake Echo began on Tuesday, March 5. — GH.]

In other lake level news, Director Fentzlaff told the Board: “I want to let everybody know that Little Juniper Lake is probably seeing a milestone here. For the first time in its history, it is less than 2 inches below full. When it is full, we will shut off that pump. It has done a yeoman’s job and didn’t break down once.”

Residents on Edgewood Terrace and Stanly Street in West End are a step closer to having their water supplied by Moore County Public Utilities.

The County has been awarded a $41,000 grant by the NC Rural Economic Development Center, Interim County Manager Wayne Vest reported during the Tuesday, March 5 meeting of the Moore County Board of Commissioners.

The grant will cover half the expected $82,000 cost of laying water mains to bring County water to the small West End neighborhood, which has been plagued by failing wells.

It will not cover the cost of tap-on fees or regular water bills, both of which will be the responsibility of individual homeowners. The tap fee for a standard three-quarter inch meter is $1,950.

If the project moves forward, it will be the first application of a new policy the Commissioners approved in January, which allows Public Utilities to extend water to unserved areas within the current footprint of the County water system, based on a return-on-investment calculation.

Public Works Director Randy Gould told The Times that the cost of a system extension is laid against the expected revenue that will be generated by new customers in the target area, including income from tap-on fees and ten years worth of water bills at the base rate. If the projected revenue exceeds the expected cost, the project can move forward.

A proposal to add solar farms to the Moore County Zoning Ordinance was on the Thursday, March 7 agenda of the Moore County Planning Board, and it came just in the nick of time.

Three industrial-scale solar energy production facilities are in the works for Moore County -- two near the Montgomery County line and another on NC Highway 24/27 near Robbins. These solar farms use row-upon-row of photovoltaic cells stretched across dozens of acres of pastureland, capturing sunlight to make electricity, which is passed through an inverter and sold to power companies like Progress Energy or Randolph Electric Membership Corporation.

But, as Planner Jeremy Sparrow pointed out in introducing a proposed text amendment, the County's Zoning Ordinance doesn't currently provide for the development of solar collector facilities.

Three Solar Farms planned

Much as a new hospital in North Carolina must have the blessing of a state agency before expanding to add more beds, industrial scale energy producers must secure a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity from the NC Utilities Commission [NCUC] before getting into the power generation business.

Three companies planning solar farms in Moore County have filed the necessary paperwork with the Commission:

Samarcand Solar Farm, LLC is planning a 4.65 megawatt [MW] collection facility on a portion of a 200-acre tract on Samarcand Road, north of NC Highway 211. A filing with the NCUC indicates the project will cost $13.25 million and will have a design life of at least 25 years. The electricity will be sold to Progress Energy.

Spicewood Solar Farm, LLC is planning a similar facility nearby, on two tracts of land the lie between NC Highway 211 and the Perdue chicken feed plant, currently being used to grow turf grass. Spicewood's NCUC filing indicates that the 4.65 MW solar farm will occupy approximately 36 acres of the 47 acre parcel. Both the Samarcand and Spicewood facilities are working with solar provider Argand Energy Solutions of Charlotte.

Carthage Farm, LLC, working with Strata Solar of Chapel Hill, is planning a 7.0 MW solar farm on a 99 acre tract near the intersection of NC Highway 24/27 and Mount Carmel Road, Southeast of Robbins. They plan to sell power to the NC Electric Membership Corporations.

Sparrow told Planning Board members that the increased interest in solar power generating facilities is due in part to a law that the NC General Assembly adopted in 2007, requiring that electric public utilities increase their use of renewable energy from 3 percent of the power sold at retail to 12.5 percent by 2021. By 2018, 0.2% of power sold to retail customers must come from solar sources.

There are also attractive federal and state subsidies for the producers of solar and other renewable energy.