The want of any higher-level, local approval for Alamance County’s rural subdivisions hasn’t discouraged residents from approaching the county’s top brass with their objections to the two mammoth developments that have been proposed near Saxapahaw.
On April 20, five people took advantage of a regular public comment period to air their concerns about the projects before Alamance County’s board of commissioners. These reluctant neighbors, who hailed from both sides of the Orange-Alamance border, went on to protest the size and density of the two subdivisions as well as their impact on public infrastructure, such as the rural roads that run through southern Alamance County.
A number of these speakers also objected to the demands that Hunter’s Ridge and Morrow Mill could put on the wells that provide drinking water to residents in this part of the county. With no access to public water or sewer, these two developments would rely on large community wells and septic systems that proved especially angst-provoking for critics like Laura Streitfeld.
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“The two subdivisions would require wells pumping close to 400,000 gallons a day and disposing a similar volume of wastewater on the property,” Streitfeld went on to declare. “These massive water draws would likely have a devastating impact on water capacity and the quality of existing wells.”
Meanwhile, Mike Holland of Saxapahaw warned of the danger these projects could pose to a 1,000-acre park that he had previously pitched to the commissioners – and in particular, an old slave cemetery that he said lies in the area slated to be developed.
But perhaps the most poignant entreaties came from Ida Dashti, a 14-year-old resident of Morrow Mill Road who called on the commissioners to do more to protect her and her neighbors from ill-suited development.
“Alamance County has many acres of beautiful farmland, rivers, and forests that are constantly threatened by developers,” she told the county’s governing board. “Development, though exciting, can get out of hand, and out of place, without land development regulation.”
Subdivide and conquer
The outpouring of discontent in April over Morrow Mill and Hunter’s Ridge was largely drowned out by the fierce opposition to another development proposal for a so-called “stump dump” in the southwestern part of the county.
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The brainchild of local resident Kenneth Phillippie, this project had been submitted under the county’s ordinance for heavy industrial development – which, in contrast to its subdivision ordinance, demands hearings before both the county’s planning board and the board of commissioners.
Originally, an administrative nod had been sufficient for a developer to obtain a permit under the county’s ordinance for heavy industrial development. This changed in 2021 when the administrative approval of a stone quarry in the unincorporated community of Snow Camp sparked such a backlash from residents that the commissioners decided to bring themselves and the county’s planning board into the approval process.
Although they wrote themselves into the review process, the commissioners have nevertheless retained the basic approval framework that had existed under the county’s rules for heavy industrial development. Under these regulations an applicant is more or less guaranteed a county-level permit if all the ordinance’s requirements are met – a fact that the opponents of the Phillippie landfill learned to their chagrin when the commissioners voted 4-to-1 to issue the requested permit in April.
A cause célèbre on the order of the Snow Camp quarry has yet to emerge over the county’s rules for residential subdivisions. As a result, the county’s subdivision ordinance retains the provisions for administrative approval that the commissioners have stricken from the county’s rules of heavy industrial development. As things currently stand, the county’s board of commissioners has no role in the approval of subdivisions within unincorporated parts of the county.
The buck stops . . . where?
The superfluity of the commissioners in the approval of residential subdivisions may not have been obvious to some of the speakers who approached the commissioners in April to share their grievances over Morrow Mill and Hunter’s Ridge. It was clear, however, to area resident Peter Childers, who appeared before the county’s governing board at its latest meeting on Monday.
“I am under no illusion that you will attempt to help us. The county does not even have the courtesy to inform neighboring property owners when massive changes like this are proposed. . . We have seen successive county commissioners refuse to enact even modest land use controls that would marginally protect existing residential landowners . . . The constituents that commissioners do help are developers, builders, and contractors. The rest of us are left to our own fate.”
– Peter Childers
“I am under no illusion that you will attempt to help us,” Childers said during a designated public comment period that morning. “The county does not even have the courtesy to inform neighboring property owners when massive changes like this are proposed. . . We have seen successive county commissioners refuse to enact even modest land use controls that would marginally protect existing residential landowners . . . The constituents that commissioners do help are developers, builders, and contractors. The rest of us are left to our own fate.”
The pessimism of residents like Childers has drawn a varied response from the commissioners themselves.
Some like commissioner Pam Thompson have openly stated that Alamance County must overcome its traditional abhorrence to zoning if it intends to avoid further clashes between rural residents and business interests.
“We hear all the time ‘I don’t want anyone to tell me what I can do with my land.’ I don’t either. But we also don’t want someone to move in next to your land and ruin it.”
– County commissioner Pam Thompson
“We hear all the time ‘I don’t want anyone to tell me what I can do with my land.’ I don’t either,” Thompson confessed after Monday’s comment period. “But we also don’t want someone to move in next to your land and ruin it.”
“No one wants zoning until it affects them, and then they want zoning.”
– Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners
“No one wants zoning until it affects them, and then they want zoning,” concurred Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, was eager to stress the political impracticality of introducing zoning to the county’s rural areas.
“If people don’t want it [countywide zoning], it doesn’t behoove us to try to pass it.”
– County commissioner vice chairman Steve Carter
“If people don’t want it, it doesn’t behoove us to try to pass it,” Carter asserted before he directly addressed Childers and his neighbors directly.
“The feeling that I’ve gotten is that most people are opposed to land use zoning. As we continue to grow, that may change.” – County commissioner Sam Powell
“The feeling that I’ve gotten is that most people are opposed to land use zoning,” agreed Sam Powell, the latest addition to the county’s governing board. “As we continue to grow, that may change.”
Powell went on to add that the commissioners may have some tools in their regulatory arsenal to protect residents even without countywide zoning. Commissioner Ed Priola also put his faith in these other tools as a potential solution to the complaints that he and his colleagues have heard from rural residents.
“There are ways of doing it without embracing zoning and a new level of bureaucracy. I think we can accomplish the same level of balance through ordinances and a careful level of planning.”
– County commissioner Ed Priola
“There are ways of doing it without embracing zoning and a new level of bureaucracy,” he declared. “I think we can accomplish the same level of balance through ordinances and a careful level of planning.”
These assurances may have been cold comfort to the opponents of the proposed subdivisions near Saxapahaw. But they were a harbinger of things to come for Henry Vines, a one-time candidate for the board of commissioners as well as an outspoken supporter of countywide zoning.
During Monday’s comment period, Vines warned the current crop of commissioners that voters in Alamance County will have three things on their minds when they go to the polls this fall. He went on to identify this triad as “property taxes,” “landfills” like the Phillippie stump dump, and “developments” as in the two that have created so much commotion near Saxapahaw.
“I urge you when you move forward through the next six months that you take this into account,” the former candidate added, “because three of you are up for election, and there could be three new faces [on the board of commissioners.”
