Despite impassioned pleas from the property owner, the contractor and an attorney, Wood County commissioners denied special permission Monday to rebuild a home on a lot at Lake Quitman.

Bruce and Linda Noblett were asking permission to build up their lot off County Road 1448 so that the replacement home they planned to build would be above the high-water line of the lake.

Commissioner Jerry Gaskill made the motion, seconded by Commissioner Justin Bowring, and the vote was unanimous.

Attorney Stuart Reynolds of the Richardson firm Schneider, Miller and Reynolds presented the Noblett’s case, which commissioners had heard twice before in January and took time to research the matter, which involves rules concerning construction around county lakes, some going back to the 1960s.

Reynolds began his remarks saying that they do not consider the matter to be adversarial.

He offered two possibilities, which he described as win-win for the county and the Nobletts.

The first was to consider the matter a “grandfathered” opportunity, as they are building back on the same spot as the original home.

The second was to grant the special permission requested, which is allowed in the county’s rules. It was pointed out that no such request for special permission had ever been granted.

Gaskill said that the property below the water line belongs to the county, and thus all the taxpayers, and commissioners could not approve something to benefit just one.

Contractor Trey Norris of Yantis noted that while newer property deeds do stop at the high-water line, some of the older ones go to the water line and even into the lake.

He said that based on a conversation with former Prec. 1 Commissioner Virgil Holland Jr., he thought they were doing things right. They spent 30 days demolishing the old structure and another 30 moving in dirt to raise the new structure above the flood line.

Then they received a call in August from Holland that they had to stop, and what they were doing was not allowed, since some of that dirt is on county property, below the high-water line.

“It’s frustrating,” he said.

“We’re trying to get our home back where it was,” Bruce Noblett said. “To put back a home we were told (was OK) by a member of this court.”