December 1998 January 1999 Stories
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by Becky Johnson This is the last of a 3-part series of articles by Becky Johnson on water and development in Orange County. In October, she focused on development's impact on the county's creeks, a vital part of the local life-cycle. In November, she examined pressures on the county's drinkable water supply. Here, she examines how development follows the extension of water and sewer lines by OWASA, the Orange County's for-profit water authority, and how county residents and government officials could staunch the flow... Sprawl. It's what every Triangle citizen has feared since Money magazine voted the area the best place in the country to live in 1995. And people have been pouring in by the thousands, meaning more schools, more roads, higher taxes, cookie-cutter subdivisions and the accompanying mini-malls. Livy Ludington unfolded a map of Orange County. In a broad sweep, she pointed out hundreds of red-colored grids stamped on top of almost every green-colored forest tract. The grids marked nearly a decade of building permits. Ludington is used to keeping a keen eye on the progress of these permits. A Carrboro resident, she is also coordinator of Stream Watch, a grass-roots group committed to monitoring and preserving the health of local streams. "Big tracts of land are being broken up. Smaller and smaller islands are left," she said. In environmental parlance, the term "island" refers to a piece of land which is left wild. "If you have water and sewer out there..." Ludington trailed off, allowing the implications to sink in. Sprawl and Water Water and development are closely connected to each other, forming a vicious circle. If water lines are extended to rural parts of the county, it won't be long until all of Orange County is covered with red grids, like the ones on Ludington's building permit map. The only thing holding back sprawl is the lack of water and sewer lines, said Gene Bell, Orange County's interim planning director. Without water and sewer lines, ground wells and septic tank systems can only support about one household per acre, and commercial development is very sparse, said Bell. "We define some areas in the county's jurisdiction as transition areas, areas currently in transition from rural to urban," he explained. "These are close to town, where water and sewer can be easily extended to service future development." Under this plan, as each rural plot turns urban, the next piece of land would become the transition area, then the next, and the nextuntil eventually, Orange County, North Carolina looks like Orange County, California. "Everywhere there are water and sewer lines, there is development," said Ludington. "If you run every bit of the county with water and sewer, every bit of it would be built up. There are going to be some big decisions to be made," Ludington said. The special role of OWASA While Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Orange County governments appoint nine members to form the Orange Water and Sewer Authority's 'advisory board,' OWASA itself is not legally bound to follow the board's suggestions. Many county residents and politicians feel that growth, rather than just being a matter left to business, is instead everybody's business. By this reckoning, if OWASA's actions lead to growthand there is every reason to believe they dothen town and county governments should have a strong voice in these matters. OWASA generally tries to comply with the town and county interests and work together, according to Ed Holland, planning director of OWASA. However, the recent decision to connect water lines between Orange and Chatham County was a decision made solely by OWASA. Chatham County is running a water line, parallel to highway 15-501, all the way to Orange County's border, where it will fuse with OWASA's systems. The $1.3 million project will be funded by tax money and a $400,000 grant from the US Department of Economic Development. And development is exactly what the extension of water lines leads to. In southeastern Chatham County, a second water line add-on will service a brick manufacturer, a proposed 100,000-square-foot shopping center, and one other development. While water and sewer can be magnets for development, OWASA's Holland sees effective zoning as the primary key to planning. In that case, the bottom line in stopping sprawl would be zoning laws which prevent the extension of water lines. Sprawl and Land Orange County is funding an on-going project to examine growth and planning issues. Ludington and two other researchers, who are sponsored by the Triangle Land Conservancy, have completed phase one of the project: mapping. A biologist specializing in GIS, who uses special computer software to look at how biological processes occur geographically, is conducting ground surveys to determine wildlife concentrations. Soon, the Triangle Land Conservancy will be able to make recommendations to the Orange County Board of Commissioners about which areas are vital to protection. "We can go to the county and say these are the sites that need protection, and these can be developed most easily," Ludington said. "This could be sometime in January." Ludington hopes the sites recommended for protection will be bought or donated, either as land trusts or as conservation easements. When a piece of land is placed in easement, the original owners agree never to cut or develop the land. Between 1988 and 1996, 9000 acres of prime hardwood forest, 10 percent of the county's total forests, were approved for building permits. At this rate, by 2050, we will have lost 60 percent of our currently forested tracts of land, and in one hundred years, there will be no forested areas in Orange County. Elements of a solution The creation of an Environmental and Natural Resources Department was approved by the Orange County Board of Commissioners last month. It will be instituted sometime next year. However, political support for the Department's formation was not unanimous. While Margaret Brown, Steven Halkiotis and Alice Gordon supported it, Moses Cary and Bill Crowther opposed it. Time will tell if those original divisions will affect the Department's activities. Cluster development is a good way to avoid cookie-cutter sub-divisions and preserve larger tracts of land, said Ludington. We can have growth, but we also want to enjoy living here in ten years, Ludington expressed. Inevitably, when water and sewer lines are extended to an area, development follows. By creating a growth-ring outside which water lines cannot be extendeda rural buffer which really holdsthe county could be spared from the cancerous forces of sprawl. Will Chapel Hill and Carrboro follow in the footsteps of other towns across the nation, where planning measures come along too late? Or will the elected officials of Orange County take bold steps toward a decent, sustainable future by funding land conservation projects and staying tough on zoning? In the end, it will be up to the county's residentsincluding readers of this paperto decide. With their expression, and more importantly, action, in support of controlled, more ecologically sensible growth, that more hopeful vision is possible. Becky Johnson is a senior journalism and anthropology student at UNC-CH. |
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