Four weeks after narrowly enrolling the old county landfill in the state’s walk-in hunting program, Bourbon County commissioners unwound the deal Monday. The sale of the land is dependent on environmental paperwork the county has owed on the property for years.

“I’m making a motion to withdraw our contract with the walk-in hunting on the old” landfill, Commissioner Joe Allen said. “The reason why is the city has opted out on their portion, and this was a package deal, and so we need to opt out on our side.” (video, Aug. 24, 65:54)

The board then voted to list the roughly 24-acre parcel — southwest of Oak Grove Cemetery at 225th Street and Native Road — for sale, but only after groundwater testing and only with a restrictive covenant filed against the deed. Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee supplied the conditions in her second: “pending water testing and restrictive covenant.” (video, 68:22)

Chairman Gregg Motley explained: “The big one is groundwater, because if that groundwater travels, we can’t expunge ourselves from liability.” (video, 67:12)

Four weeks, four meetings

The walk-in hunting idea arrived on July 27, when Justin Harbit, a wildlife biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, pitched enrolling the parcel in the Walk-In Hunting Access program: about $10 an acre per year — roughly $260 for the tract, by Chairman Samuel Tran’s math — with the state posting, patrolling and publishing the ground in its hunting atlas, and covering liability — Harbit pointed commissioners to a state recreational-use statute. (video, July 27, 30:09) Commissioner David Beerbower moved to enroll the same night, and it passed 3–2 — Beerbower, Motley and Allen in favor — over objections from Milburn-Kee and Samuel Tran that the public had not been given notice. County Clerk Susan Walker flagged another issue in the same discussion: the county has “an obligation” on file from the landfill’s closure, and the ground cannot be used for anything that disturbs the soil for 30 years, a restriction that runs to 2039. (video, 46:53)

On Aug. 3, as the contract came back for signature, Tran read aloud an email reply the clerk had obtained from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Walk-in hunting itself was fine, KDHE wrote. It is considered an “acceptable post-closure use” that would not disturb the landfill’s cover soil. But on the restrictive covenant required on closed landfills under state regulation, “our files do not represent that [a] restrictive covenant has been filed, and Bourbon County has been notified several times that this is required.” KDHE gave the county until Sept. 30 to file one, noted the covenant “runs with the land so any further buyer is aware that a closed landfill is on the property,” and pointed out that under state law a buyer inherits the site’s post-closure care. Commissioners agreed to hold the matter until the county attorney returned mid-month to review the deed issues. (video, Aug. 3, 123:05) Beerbower, who had made the enrollment motion a week earlier, said he was still weighing other ideas for the property, “I’m not done researching some options for that land,” though when Motley asked whether he opposed signing the hunting agreement, he said no, “it wouldn’t impact that anyway.” (video, 120:54)

On Aug. 10, the neighbors arrived. Oak Grove Cemetery’s caretaker, Phillip Pavey, asked how the plan came about (video, Aug. 10, 26:50), and Milburn-Kee read a letter from Richard and Alyssa Cronemeyer, whose land adjoins the parcel: 24 years of trespassing hunters, cut fences, game cameras and deer stands on their trees, calls from out-of-state hunters wanting access and a reminder that roughly a decade ago a county commissioner had personally posted the ground against hunting. (video, 28:52) The same night, Milburn-Kee pressed the other unfinished obligation: “I ask that we fulfill our duty to the legalities of testing the water on that old site, which have not been fulfilled as to this point.” (video, 32:23) The board authorized her to draft a proposal directing Public Works to conduct the testing with KDHE and file the deed restrictions. (video, 55:22)

By Aug. 24, with the city out, the county withdrew. Beerbower reported one more wrinkle from his research: under the closure restrictions the land cannot be dug or built on — but “somebody that wants to use it for private hunting land” could buy it. (video, 67:21) Milburn-Kee offered the other possibility: “Or an adjoining neighbor that wants nobody to touch it.” (video, 67:46) Either way, one use that would survive a sale is the same one the county just declined to lease to the state. And the delinquent paperwork was on the commissioners’ minds as they voted: “we are delinquent,” Beerbower acknowledged. “We have until September or something.” (video, 68:06)

The city’s half of the deal

The county’s 24 acres were never the whole plan. Harbit told commissioners the City of Fort Scott owns “20 some” adjoining acres — 22, he said at a later meeting, that KDOT owns roughly 45 acres to the south, and that the goal was “one big contiguous block” of public hunting ground — but he would not enroll the city’s piece without the county’s, “just because of access and the size.” (video, July 27)

The city is no stranger to the program. It has held a walk-in hunting agreement with the state around Lake Fort Scott for years. City staff cited the agreement, which runs through 2027, as far back as October 2021, when staff raised it as the commission weighed — and tabled — an unsolicited $350,000 offer on 80 lake acres. The city’s 2018 comprehensive plan describes “many acres of walk-in hunting” around both Fort Scott Lake and Rock Creek Lake, and Harbit noted the city also has “a big chunk across the river at the wastewater treatment plant” — the reason the county tract was proposed as archery-and-shotgun only, to match the rules already posted next door.

Harbit and KDWP’s Don George were on the city commission’s Aug. 18 agenda for walk-in hunting contracts and a wildlife-parks grant. By Monday, Allen reported the city had opted out, but what the city decided, and when, is not yet in the public record: no recording of the Aug. 18 city meeting has appeared on the city’s YouTube channel, and approved minutes are not yet available.

The program the county walked away from

Kansas’s Walk-In Hunting Access program, started in 1995, leases more than a million acres statewide from landowners, mostly private, and opens them to public hunting on foot, no vehicles or camping, from fall through spring. Enrolled tracts are posted with the program’s signs, patrolled by the department, and published in the annual hunting atlas and a statewide GIS map. Harbit told commissioners the program is thin in eastern Kansas, where access is hardest to come by: “citizens and everybody … they’re just being priced out of hunting and fishing.” In Bourbon County, he said, the program already includes “all the city property and a handful of others.” (video, July 27, 41:56)

Contracts run September through May; long-term deals, historically 15 years for government-owned land, can pay up front in a single check, with a prorated refund owed if the land is sold or withdrawn mid-term. A federal Farm Bill grant, expected to be decided this fall, would have allowed such a long-term contract to be paid up front here. The program also offered habitat cost-sharing to knock down the Johnson grass on the county site.

What has to happen now

Before the parcel can be sold, two obligations from the landfill’s closure have to be met: the groundwater testing and the restrictive covenant KDHE expects filed by Sept. 30. The 30-year no-disturbance restriction runs with the land to 2039 either way, which is why, as Motley observed when the idea first surfaced, “landfills are hard to sell.” (video, July 27, 44:40)