BURLINGTON — The nearly three-year battle between a landowner fighting to save his family's 500-acre farm in western Boone County and an agency using powers of eminent domain to take it for a sewer plant begins its final round today.

        “We will not sell,” Donald Stites told the Enquirer in June of 1999, after the Sanitation District No.1 board first unanimously approved the condemnation process.

        The retired Procter & Gamble employee, 72, and his wife Marion — after years of environmental impact studies, development feasibility studies and other legal efforts — take on Sanitation District No. 1 directly in Boone County Circuit Court today at 9 a.m.

        The bench trial, before Judge Joseph E. “Jay” Bamberger, is a challenge to an eminent domain condemnation filed in June 2001 for 147 acres in the center of the property. “There's been a lot legal maneuvering in the meantime. They filed condemnation; we tried to get it dismissed. We have filed our answer and other motions and we ended up coming to trial,” Mr. Stites said Sunday afternoon.

        Attorneys for the Sanitation District did not immediately return phone messages Sunday, but one — Gerald F. Dusing of Covington — said in court in November that the Stiteses have used “Any argument, any tactic to delay, delay, delay” and play to the media.

        Eminent domain allows governments or government agencies to legally force landowners to sell their land for projects for the public good. Landowners have the right to challenge the condemnation in court.

        The Western Regional wastewater treatment plant proposed for the Stiteses' property is one of two new plants the Sanitation District includes in its 20-year plan to handle the growing needs of booming populations in Boone and Campbell counties.

        Census data shows that Boone County's population increased 49.30 percent from 1990 to 2000, and Wilder in Campbell County was the fastest growing city in the state in that period, with a 279.70 percent increase in population since 1990.

        The farm, owned by the Stiteses since 1972 and in Mrs. Stites' family for nearly 60 years, is located on Ky. 20 in the Belleview Bottoms area of largely rural Western Boone County.

        The riverfront property is about 26 miles southwest of downtown Cincinnati and 9 miles southwest of Interstate 275 and overlooks the Indiana hills.

        The Stiteses' argue that prime farmland like theirs should be saved, preserving part of the last remaining rural sector of rapidly growing Boone County. They also argue that their piece of land is not the only, nor the best, place for this plant.

        Because there are other options Mr. Stites said, his opposition to the Sanitation District's eminent domain taking is different from the recent case in Hardin County in which a farmer's refusal to sell his land to the state was blamed by Gov. Paul Patton for derailing a bid to get a $1 billion auto plant. In that case, Mr. Stites said, there was “a specific piece of property that was needed for this package that they were trying to put together, whereas we maintain that the sewer plant could go almost anywhere, particularly at End End Power Plant or, at a property that's for sale.”

        But the Stiteses' fight is not without impact on the region.

        In March 2000, the Kentucky Division of Water placed a moratorium on new sewer hookups in Alexandria — effectively halting growth in the Campbell County city — because the Eastern Regional wastewater plant or interim measures that would ease Alexandria storm overflow woes is dependent upon Division of Water approval of the 20-year plan that includes the still-unresolved Stites property issue.

        Neither the Sanitation District nor the Stiteses can discuss any monetary offers made for the land before the condemnation because both sides signed a confidentiality agreement.

        Mr. Stites said Sunday that the Sanitation District made its initial offer years ago and he and his wife refused it. They have been fighting since.

        “It is a beautiful piece of property and is a highly productive piece of farmland and we would very much like to keep it that way. It is a terrible land use to take this beautiful property and put a sewer plant on it, right on the river.”

        Mr. Stites has pointed out other possible sites for the treatment center, including one on East Bend Road near a power plant, one south of Big Bone Lick State Park near Union, one near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, or one somewhere in Gallatin County.

        The East Bend power plant site — owned by Cinergy Corp. — was controversial because after it was originally chosen as the site for the plant in January 1999, Bill Burleigh, then president and chief executive officer of the E.W. Scripps Co., sent a letter to Cinergy Chairman James E. Rogers saying that a “public relations disaster” could take place if the utility sold the land for a sewage plant near Mr. Burleigh's Rabbit Hash farm.

        Three weeks later after receiving the letter on Scripps letterhead, Cinergy decided to not sell the property and the Sanitation District looked at other sites, settling on the Stites property.

        Mr. Burleigh, now retired, headed the Cincinnati-based media company that owns the Kentucky Post and WCPO-TV (Channel 9). He said in the past his letter spoke for itself and that no place in Boone County is appropriate for the wastewater treatment plant.

        The Stiteses, who live in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Wyoming, are represented by Robert Manley of Cincinnati and Todd McMurtry of Covington. The Sanitation District is represented by William T. Robinson III and Mr. Dusing, both of Covington.

        The trial is expected to last two to three days.

        ---

        Enquirer reporters Kristina Goetz and Karen Samples contributed.

Priests: Sex no longer a taboo topic in seminaries
Priests: Entry requirements
Priests: Homosexuals not necessarily excluded
Priests: Hundreds more claim abuse in Boston area
Priests: TV ads pulled
BRONSON: Porn pushers
Some Good News
You Asked For It
Jailed anti-abortion activist continues fight from behind bars
Ohio in new lottery as sales fall
Proms return to downtown
Racial profiling settlement 'not the end-all'
Cities consider helmet laws
Council studies mall site
Dayton bus decision due
Death of convenience store owner underscores job risk
King weighs in on Roach hiring
Mall developer temporarily backs off getting aid
Yavneh Day students go to D.C.
Tristate A.M. report
Kenton rolls out skate park plan
Man charged in sheriff's slaying
Owners fighting to keep farm from sanitation district
Teacher union merger ends NEA pressure