Twenty years ago, one of the three candidates running this year for Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor was serving two life sentences for double murder — charges for which he would later be acquitted.
Another of the three candidates told CityView she has never voted. She said she first registered to vote this summer. While she was registering to vote, she said, she decided to run for office and asked which seats she could file for. At the time, the filing period was open for the Soil and Water board.
The third candidate for the seat is the incumbent, Lena Lloyd Simmons. She is running for her second term.
This is a non-partisan election that has no primary.
Every two years, elections for the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors typically generate news articles that seek to ask and answer a key question: What the heck is the Soil and Water Conservation District? (More on that in a minute.)
This year, the two people challenging Simmons for her seat on this generally anodyne government board, Josh Ballard and Kristal Watts, are unusual candidates. Ballard served seven years in jail and prison on murder charges before he was acquitted. Watts is a newly registered voter.
What is the Soil and Water Conservation District?
Local Soil and Water Conservation Districts have their roots in America’s Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, when dried-out soil in the Midwest literally blew away. Congress and state governments set up these agencies to help people protect the soil.
“The District’s responsibilities are to prevent soil erosion, protect water resources and other related natural resources from abuse and deterioration,” says the website of Cumberland County’s board.
A five-person Board of Supervisors oversees the Cumberland Soil and Water Conservation District. Three members are selected by the voters, and two are appointed by the North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Commission.
The agency sells rain barrels to collect water and seedlings for trees to be planted to prevent soil erosion. It rents out farm equipment to help farmers plant crops without tilling the land. It also oversees government programs that help landowners pay for land conservation practices.
The incumbent, Lena Lloyd Simmons
Simmons was first elected in 2020. She is the chair of the Cumberland board as well as the chair of a nine-county region of Soil and Water Conservation districts.
“What can the public expect with the option of a second term in office? I will continue to implement to the best of my ability the Got to be NC initiative by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer services,” she said in an email to CityView. “It is the promotion of local products in the restaurants, store shelves, and kitchen tables.”
She wants to continue to provide farmers with “equipment, science, technology, and conservation practices to enhance a productive and plentiful harvest.”
The new voter, Kristal Watts
Watts, 32, said she registered to vote for the first time this year. “I’ve never voted,” she said.
The presidential election piqued her interest. “This is a very important year for voting, and I just wanted to put a vote in where it might count,” Watts said.
Watts said she wasn’t aware of the Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors until she visited the county elections office over the summer.
“It was to register to vote, because I wasn’t sure if they had gotten my application, because I’m impatient,” she said. “And then I saw that there was something that could be ran for. And I was like, ‘Well, let me see what it’s like to run for office.’”
The filing period this year was June 10 to July 5.
As a resident of Grays Creek, Watts said she is concerned about the PFAS contaminants in the area’s water, which have been connected to the nearby Chemours chemical factory. Watts said her home has filters to block PFAS. She wants to be an advocate, she said.
“Soil and Water has nothing to do with policy,” she said. “However, the soil and water supervisor has the ability to talk to the people who are in charge of policy.”
Josh Ballard — acquitted of murder
Ballard, of northern Cumberland County, operates his family’s fishing lure business, Deep Creek Lures. In 2001 he was a 17-year-old high school student accused of shooting to death and robbing a young, pregnant, drug-dealing couple in Fayetteville’s Lake in the Pines apartment complex.
Two co-defendants pleaded guilty and went to prison. One of them, James Kelliher, testified that Ballard planned the robbery and shot and killed the couple. (Kelliher is serving life in prison and eventually could be paroled.)
Ballard, professing his innocence, went to trial in the summer of 2004. He said he went into the couple’s apartment for a drug deal, not a robbery, and that Kelliher suddenly pulled the gun and shot and killed them.
“He stated that he did not even know Kelliher had a gun with him that night,” says a 2006 Court of Appeals ruling in Ballard’s case.
The jury in 2004 convicted Ballard, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
But in 2006, the North Carolina Court of Appeals said the trial had been unfair — and should have ended with a mistrial — after it emerged that Ballard’s lawyers had a conflict of interest between Ballard and a man who could have testified as to Ballard’s innocence. That man was another one of their clients, and if he had testified for Ballard he risked implicating himself in criminal activity, the court said.
Ballard was granted a new trial. In 2008, a jury acquitted him. He had been behind bars for seven years.
“Ever since this happened, I’ve tried to turn it into a positive,” Ballard said. “In fact, this Sunday, I’ll be at a church in Washington, North Carolina, giving my testimony about it.”
He said he tells young men to learn from his experience and to be aware of who they are around.
“It’s always obviously not something I’m proud of, but it’s not something that I hold my head down about either,” Ballard said. “I was a dumb kid, just like a lot of grown ups now were. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.”
Why is Ballard running for this seat?
“To be honest, I was laying in bed one night, and I just kind of was overcome with … kind of like, just some gratitude.” He said he feels as though he has been blessed and he wanted to find ways to contribute to the community, and he thinks service on the Soil and Water board would be a way to do that.
Ballard would like to expand some of the Soil and Water programs to bring them to more people, such as the tree seedling and rain barrel sales.
“If I accomplish bringing more awareness to the office, letting more people know that it’s out there, and what resources they offer, and letting everybody know how good of a job the employees and stuff are actually doing up there, I would feel more than satisfied,” he said. “Because there’s a lot of resources … a lot of people just don’t know about them.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.This story was made possible by donations from readers like you to the CityView News Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to an informed democracy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
This article about the county’s support to agriculture and plant trees I found important, Replanting trees is important for long term survival.
I am curious about the rain barrels, because my neighbor uses open topped blue recycle bins at all of his downspouts as water collection devices. They are very effective at breeding mosquitas! Complaining to the city did nothing, but I can’t work in my yard except in full sun, long sleeves and long pants.