Suzieq
Veteran Member
By JOE MANDAK
Associated Press
November 24, 2012
NICKTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Levi Zook doesn’t want to move his wife and eight children from the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania to New York state but strongly believes he has no choice.
That’s because the 34-year-old farmer and the Andy Weaver Swartzentruber Amish congregation to which he belongs — the most conservative branch of the most conservative sect of Amish — concluded they have no future on the scenic plateau of Barr Township, some 70 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Zook chose his words carefully when asked what prompted the 21-family congregation to begin moving away this year. Zook and the remaining families figure to be gone by spring, he explained, pausing to rein in his horse as he chatted with a reporter standing next to his buggy.
‘‘Well, the sum of it is, the issue as far as moving out, I guess, it started off with the sewage issue.’’
That issue erupted in 2008, when some non-Amish neighbors complained that two Swartzentruber families were emptying outhouse buckets at the edge of their farms. The neighbors rightly feared typhoid or cholera in their well water, said William Barbin, an attorney for the Cambria County Sewage Enforcement Agency.
The sewage dispute eventually led to citations, a court order to padlock the clan’s school, and even sent one member to the county jail for three months because he refused to pay fines for state and county sewage violations.
Although many less conservative Amish congregations co-exist with their non-Amish neighbors, the Swartzentruber and other more conservative sects have a history of civil battles when building codes and other laws conflict with their rigid rules for maintaining simple homes.
The fight dragged on for years. Finally, in the summer of 2011, Swartzentruber bishops from Ohio and New York came to meet with the local bishop, county officials and the state Department of Environmental Protection. The Swartzentruber families agreed to build an underground tank where the outhouse buckets would be emptied and pumped out by a state-licensed firm using more primitive methods in keeping with Amish beliefs.
But the sewage tank has never been used.
Instead, the Swartzentrubers began making plans to move, spurred by increasing land values driven by the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling boom, and concerns, Zook said, that the DEP was also requiring them to use more expensive sand mounds to filter their ‘‘gray water’’ — sewage from bathtubs and sinks, not toilets — instead of cheaper leach fields. The DEP declined to comment for this story.
‘‘We try to be as simple and humble as we can. We don’t have the money to reach around like a lot of people do,’’ Zook said, using an Amish idiom that equates to making ends meet.
The Pennsylvania group is moving to St. Lawrence County in upstate New York, where some lived before moving to Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, though others may go to Maine or a newer settlement south of Buffalo, N.Y., said Professor Karen Johnson-Weiner, an Amish expert at the State University of New York-Potsdam.
More: http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...ing-upstate/e7IpresDcFdmw32KRf7lUN/story.html
Associated Press
November 24, 2012
NICKTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Levi Zook doesn’t want to move his wife and eight children from the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania to New York state but strongly believes he has no choice.
That’s because the 34-year-old farmer and the Andy Weaver Swartzentruber Amish congregation to which he belongs — the most conservative branch of the most conservative sect of Amish — concluded they have no future on the scenic plateau of Barr Township, some 70 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Zook chose his words carefully when asked what prompted the 21-family congregation to begin moving away this year. Zook and the remaining families figure to be gone by spring, he explained, pausing to rein in his horse as he chatted with a reporter standing next to his buggy.
‘‘Well, the sum of it is, the issue as far as moving out, I guess, it started off with the sewage issue.’’
That issue erupted in 2008, when some non-Amish neighbors complained that two Swartzentruber families were emptying outhouse buckets at the edge of their farms. The neighbors rightly feared typhoid or cholera in their well water, said William Barbin, an attorney for the Cambria County Sewage Enforcement Agency.
The sewage dispute eventually led to citations, a court order to padlock the clan’s school, and even sent one member to the county jail for three months because he refused to pay fines for state and county sewage violations.
Although many less conservative Amish congregations co-exist with their non-Amish neighbors, the Swartzentruber and other more conservative sects have a history of civil battles when building codes and other laws conflict with their rigid rules for maintaining simple homes.
The fight dragged on for years. Finally, in the summer of 2011, Swartzentruber bishops from Ohio and New York came to meet with the local bishop, county officials and the state Department of Environmental Protection. The Swartzentruber families agreed to build an underground tank where the outhouse buckets would be emptied and pumped out by a state-licensed firm using more primitive methods in keeping with Amish beliefs.
But the sewage tank has never been used.
Instead, the Swartzentrubers began making plans to move, spurred by increasing land values driven by the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling boom, and concerns, Zook said, that the DEP was also requiring them to use more expensive sand mounds to filter their ‘‘gray water’’ — sewage from bathtubs and sinks, not toilets — instead of cheaper leach fields. The DEP declined to comment for this story.
‘‘We try to be as simple and humble as we can. We don’t have the money to reach around like a lot of people do,’’ Zook said, using an Amish idiom that equates to making ends meet.
The Pennsylvania group is moving to St. Lawrence County in upstate New York, where some lived before moving to Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, though others may go to Maine or a newer settlement south of Buffalo, N.Y., said Professor Karen Johnson-Weiner, an Amish expert at the State University of New York-Potsdam.
More: http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...ing-upstate/e7IpresDcFdmw32KRf7lUN/story.html
Last edited:
) 
