Near the bottom of every ballot in Western North Carolina is a race many voters don’t know much about: soil and water conservation district supervisor. The office receives no salary and draws little attention, but after Tropical Storm Fred and Hurricane Helene, it has become a key part of flood recovery in the mountains.
BPR reached out to Bill Yarborough, who chairs the Haywood County Soil and Water Conservation District and isn’t on the ballot this year, to learn more about what the districts do and why their work matters.
“The soil and water conservation district is really a locally led conservation group,” he said, explaining that districts look at what each county needs and “then try to find those solutions for those needs.”
Conservation runs in Yarborough’s family. His father was a district supervisor. Yarborough traces his own interest to the first pond on the family farm, which a soil and water district helped build. Watching it fill up set him on a career in conservation at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, he said. He is also an officer of the North Carolina Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
A North Carolina idea
Talk with Yarborough about the districts, and he’ll start with their roots. The country’s first conservation district was formed in 1937 in Anson County, during the Dust Bowl and the Depression. It was championed by Hugh Hammond Bennett, an Anson County native often called the father of soil conservation, who had watched erosion ruin farmland across the country.
“He decided something needed to be done,” Yarborough said.
Today there are nearly 3,000 districts nationwide. In North Carolina, every county is part of one, and each district is a small unit of local government that helps farmers and other landowners prevent erosion and protect water quality.
Most North Carolina districts are run by five unpaid supervisors. Three are elected in nonpartisan races, and two are appointed by the state. All serve four-year terms.
What supervisors do
Supervisors set each district’s priorities. Districts draw on local, state and federal money, and supervisors help decide how it’s spent. Most often, it goes to farmers for projects like fencing cattle out of a creek or planting cover crops to hold soil in place.
District staff help farmers plan those projects and find cost-share funding. The state’s Agriculture Cost Share Program reimburses up to 75% of a project’s average cost.
The aim, Yarborough said, is to head off problems before they start. “If you’re a fireman, you don’t just put out house fires every day,” he said. “You try to help people understand that here’s things that you can do to prevent a fire.”
From prevention to recovery
In recent years, mountain districts have had to do plenty of "firefighting," too.
In 2021, Tropical Storm Fred flooded the Pigeon River, and six people died in Haywood County. Afterward, Yarborough said, his district started a pilot program that brought in staff from other districts to help tally the damage, estimate repair costs and quickly put together requests for funding. “We were hoping we wouldn’t see this again,” he said. “And of course, then Helene came.”
Fred repairs were still underway at the time, Yarborough said. The counties that had been through that earlier storm used what they had learned to help respond to the much larger one.
Since then, districts across the region have been doing the same kind of work on a bigger scale. In Henderson and Transylvania counties, for example, districts have sought federal emergency watershed funding to clear debris-clogged streams and repair unstable stream banks that threaten homes, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. State money is helping pay for similar repairs elsewhere in the region.
“It’s going to be several years before we’re completed with what we need to do,” Yarborough said. Across the mountains, the supervisors elected this fall will help shape that work.
Sizing up the candidates
For voters deciding between candidates, Yarborough suggested asking them: What does the county need most? What would you do about it? Is the district doing enough now? He also suggested voters ask themselves, “Do you think you’re getting value for what your taxes are paying for?”
“It’s a county project. It’s a state project. It’s a federal project, but more importantly, I think it’s human conservation,” Yarborough said. “When you talk about soil and water, there’s nothing that’s going to be more basic than those needs.”
Look up your sample ballot through the North Carolina State Board of Elections’ Voter Search tool. Early voting ends at 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
