No authority for residential building moratorium either
The state’s ongoing drought has offered residents in the Saxapahaw area yet another cause for concern about two massive residential developments that are on the drawing board in their part of the county.
A number of these anxious homeowners appeared before Alamance County’s commissioners this week to complain that these subdivisions could exhaust their community’s already hard-pressed supplies of ground water.
Yet, the immediate response of the county’s top brass was to throw cold water on the idea of a development moratorium, which these concerned constituents had sought to address their misgivings.
The demands for this proposed moratorium have, lately, become something of a battle cry for opponents of the Hunter’s Ridge and Morrow Mill subdivisions – which, if approved, could bring more than 900 new homes to the vicinity of the unincorporated community of Saxapahaw.
Under the county’s current development rules, each of these projects would automatically obtain a subdivision permit from the county’s planning staff provided that it meets certain criteria. Neither the county’s planning board nor the board of commissioners would have any say over these purely administrative procedures – although matters like water and septic services would come under further review from either the local health department or its state-level equivalent.
At this point, the developer of Morrow Mill has submitted a subdivision request to the county’s planning department that envisions some 541 single-family homes on 440 acres between Morrow Mill and Austin Quarter roads. Meanwhile, the planning department has received a rough sketch for Hunter’s Ridge that depicts another 400-plus homes on about 374 acres off of Austin Quarter Road. According to these submissions, both of these projects would depend on communal septic systems and wells to serve future residents – which has been a source of much consternation for people who already live in the area.
Over the past several months, opponents of the two proposed subdivisions have made repeated forays before Alamance County’s commissioners to demand stricter development rules outside the county’s cities and towns. Many have even suggested some form of zoning, which has traditionally been an utter nonstarter among people who live in unincorporated parts of the county.
In order to give the county the breathing space to fine tune these proposed regulations, a number of residents have also asked the commissioners to impose a moratorium on new residential development. Some of the latest calls for this halt to new growth emerged when the commissioners convened their latest regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.
The commissioners ultimately heard from four residents who objected to the proposed developments in Saxapahaw during a public comment period that kicked off that evening’s gathering. In this case, however, the now familiar pleas for a moratorium were colored by the heightened concerns about ground water that have surfaced in light of the state’s lingering drought.
Debbie Schaner, a resident of Thom Road in the county’s southeastern reaches, complained that she and her neighbors are already feeling the pinch from the abnormally dry weather in this part of the state.
“We are all conserving water,” she said, “and you want to give developers so much that they could decimate our water reserves?”
Landreth Freeman, another Thom Road resident, observed that state-level officials have deemed the dry spell in Alamance and three other counties to be “exceptional” – which is the most severe rating that they can impose in the event of a drought.
Meanwhile, Laura Streitfeld warned that the situation will only grow worse if more homes are allowed to tap into the local water table.
“If the developments that are being proposed are allowed in the unincorporated parts of the county,” she added, “they will devastate the already strained water supply.”
Streitfeld and Schaner urged the commissioners to put a temporary “pause” on new development so that the county can address the precarious state of Saxapahaw’s water supply. Schaner specifically called for a year-long moratorium, which has been previously suggested by other opponents of the proposed subdivisions.
Yet, this drought-driven push for a moratorium didn’t really hold water in the view of Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens.
At the behest of the commissioners, Stevens explained some of the legal obstacles that he believes would prevent the county from halting the approval of new subdivisions – even if temporarily.
“First as a matter of law, we can’t institute a moratorium to regulate residential growth,” he elaborated, “and even if we were to institute a moratorium on development in a certain area, there has to be a way for the county to address the issues that would be caused by that ongoing development.”
Stevens added that the county currently has no role in the provision of public water or sewer, which would be necessary for it to address the potential demand for these services. Moreover, he observed that, even if a moratorium were enacted to fine tune the county’s development rules, it wouldn’t do anything about projects like the Morrow Mill subdivision, which would be grandfathered in under the old rules.
“So, I don’t think that a moratorium is a tool that the board can use in this particular situation,” he went on to conclude.
By and large, the commissioners accepted Stevens’ pronouncement as the final word on the persistent requests they have heard for a moratorium on residential development.
Even so, the angst over the ongoing drought seemed to hit a nerve with commissioner Sam Powell. Powell went on to urge the county’s administrators to remain mindful of the effects that the dry weather has had on people in unincorporated parts of the county.
“I would like to ask our county manager to pay special attention to that,” he said. “And if there are things that we can do to make people aware of it or actions we can take to alleviate potential problems, we should look into that.”
