Stonewater, Lafayette County Sign Agreement

By Alyssa Schnugg

News editor

alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors and Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center have come to an agreement, ending the county’s lawsuit seeking to close Stonewater.

On Nov. 28, the county filed a Complaint for Injunction and Declaratory Relief in the Lafayette County Chancery Court against Stonewater on the grounds that the residential drug and alcohol treatment facility for minors between the ages of 12 and 17, constitutes a “public nuisance” due to the frequency of runaway minors from the facility.

On Monday, Chancery Court Judge Larry Little signed an agreement order, dismissing the complaint after both parties agreed to several measures that Stonewater will implement over the next 30 days.

According to the complaint, there had been 14 incidents of teens running away from the facility between September and November of 2022.

The county agreed that in exchange for Stormwater’s agreement to put certain security measures into place, the county would dismiss the pending lawsuit.

Stonewater agreed to hire on-site 24/7 security charged with detecting and monitoring runaways; install an 8-foot-high fence along the defined perimeter of the Stonewater campus and place lockable gates where appropriate; install high-resolution cameras to create perimeter coverage to detect runaways; and implement a community notification system for reporting activity that could affect the local community, including runaways in progress.