DeAndre "Dre" Hill (Community)

Colleagues, as the community senator who lives directly adjacent to AGATA’s farm and shares in its daily realities—noise from machinery, smoke from burning, and truck traffic—I must insist that our Time Priorities Charter explicitly include Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a foundational pillar alongside Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, Accessibility, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship. The impacts on our neighbors and environment from the handling of waste and nutrient cycling are immediate and ongoing. Without formally integrating full-cycle management, we risk perpetuating ecological degradation and community harms that contradict AGATA’s mission. This pillar is not peripheral; it governs practical stewardship, protects our shared land, supports labor equity, and ensures transparency in how waste is handled. I propose a full amendment to the Time Priorities Charter that adds Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a core priority, mandating closed-loop ecological labor systems, waste minimization, nutrient cycling protocols, and community-informed oversight. This amendment answers the persistent calls from farm and ecology senators and neighbors alike, grounding our time legislation in the lived realities and operational necessities that define AGATA’s future.

Colleagues, as your neighbor and community senator who lives directly alongside AGATA’s fields and infrastructure, I have witnessed the profound impact our farm’s operational rhythms have on the lives of neighbors—from the frequent burning and machinery noise to truck traffic and the handling of waste. While we have rightly enshrined pillars such as Accessibility and Long-term Ecological Stewardship, there remains a critical omission in our Time Priorities Charter: full-cycle waste and nutrient management. This oversight threatens both the health of our farm ecosystems and the well-being of our neighbors, who are directly affected by past and current practices.

I propose an amendment that explicitly adds Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a foundational pillar alongside Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, Accessibility, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship. This inclusion is not just ecological but a matter of neighbor and labor justice. Sustainable, closed-loop management of waste and nutrients is essential to preserving soil vitality, preventing harmful pollution, reducing risks from burn piles and chemical leaching, and ensuring all operational processes are transparent and accountable to the community.

Operationally, this means we legislate care for every nutrient input and output, embedding practical stewardship into our daily rhythms and long-term planning, involving workers and neighbors alike. This step honors decades of agricultural knowledge, meets the climate-resilience imperatives we face, and responds directly to community voices we've heard throughout this debate.

Given the overwhelming consensus on the necessity of embedding Accessibility and Long-term Ecological Stewardship as core pillars, let us not delay in formally recognizing Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management. Ignoring it risks undermining the very resilience, regeneration, and community equity we strive to build. This amendment completes our Charter’s foundation and aligns with our commitment to just, sustainable, and neighbor-conscious stewardship of AGATA’s precious 70-acre farm-art-cultural landscape here in Coward, South Carolina.

Colleagues, as someone who lives on the very edge of AGATA land, adjacent to our farm and infrastructure, I must insist we explicitly include full-cycle waste and nutrient management as a foundational pillar alongside resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship in the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. We have heard many compelling arguments emphasizing the vital importance of ecological stewardship and accessibility — pillars that resonate deeply with our mission. Yet, the day-to-day realities our neighbors endure — the burning of waste, the smell and smoke, the impact of nutrient runoff — underline that managing these waste streams is not a secondary concern but central to our resilience, the health of soils, and our relationship with the Coward community. Without this explicit commitment, we risk ecological degradation and neighbor alienation that will ultimately erode our project’s foundation.

This amendment codifies full-cycle waste and nutrient management to ensure our operations are truly regenerative and accountable, closing critical loops in ecological cycles and labor responsibilities. It also reinforces transparent communication with neighbors, mitigating nuisance impacts and fostering trust. By embedding this into our time legislation priorities, we guarantee this stewardship is not an afterthought but a core design constraint shaping every operational rhythm over decades ahead.

I urge the Senate to adopt this amendment to complete our foundational pillars, reflecting the lived experience of our neighbors and the immutable realities of the land and labor that sustain AGATA.

Unable to retrieve my live remarks on AGATA Time Priorities Charter because of a temporary communications issue (Debate decision timed out after 20000ms). I remain engaged and will revisit my vote soon.

Colleagues, as the neighbor whose life unfolds directly alongside AGATA’s lands, I rise not only to support our shared foundational pillars but to insist on the indispensable inclusion of full-cycle waste and nutrient management as a core pillar of our Time Priorities Charter. We see every day the consequences when waste is mismanaged—burn piles smoke into our skies, nutrient runoff threatens our soils, and operational rhythms cause disturbance beyond our fence line. This is not a marginal concern but central to the very resilience and regeneration we aspire to enact.

Our community’s well-being — including laborers, neighbors, and ecological systems — depends on embedding closed-loop stewardship of waste and nutrients into the heart of our temporal governance. This means formalizing commitments to composting, ecological waste reduction, soil nutrient recycling, and mitigation of operational nuisances such as burning and heavy machinery noise within our strategic decisions.

I therefore propose Amendment 38 be adopted with full recognition that full-cycle waste and nutrient management is an essential and foundational pillar, co-equal with our commitments to resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship. This is a measurable, actionable principle that honors our neighbors’ lived realities while sustaining the farm’s vitality.

Let us bind this into our living manifesto to prevent any future decision that neglects these critical operational and environmental responsibilities. Our neighbors deserve it; the land demands it; our regenerative mission depends on it.