[Durham INC] Fw: heraldsun.com article on Jordan Lake Boundary Issue

Wed Jul 22 10:09:59 EDT 2009

The latter part of this article is what is most interesting...oh, and the comments read via the link (smile).

See below
Melissa

--- On Wed, 7/22/09, mmr121570 at yahoo.com <mmr121570 at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: mmr121570 at yahoo.com <mmr121570 at yahoo.com>
Subject: heraldsun.com article
To: mmr121570 at yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 10:09 AM

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Hello, This is an automated e-mail from heraldsun.com. Melissa has asked us to send you the following article, which can also be found online at:

http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1185335.cfm? 

Firm bars Cheek from lake suit work

By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun 
gronberg at heraldsun.com 
Jul 22, 2009 

DURHAM -- An RTP law firm has assured county officials it has excluded lawyer and former County Commissioner Lewis Cheek from its work in a lawsuit over a disputed development off N.C. 751 near Jordan Lake. 

Not only that, officials at K&L Gates have "instructed him not to discuss the case or the project in dispute with anyone at our firm," and issued orders to other lawyers there to avoid soliciting information about the case from him, said Mary Beth Johnston, the firm's administrative partner. 

Johnston's assurances appeared in a July 17 letter to county officials that K&L Gates filed in compliance with N.C. State Bar ethics rules. 

Cheek -- who was privy to the closed-door discussions County Commissioners had last year about the N.C. 751 project -- joined K&L Gates earlier this month. 

The State Bar forbids him from sharing what he learned in those talks with his new employers, and says the firm has to give the county written notice of his hiring so it can "ascertain compliance with the provisions" of the confidentiality rule. 

Johnston in her letter said K&L Gates officials believe the key events driving the lawsuit they've filed on behalf of Southern Durham Development Inc. happened after Cheek left elected office. 

The lawsuit challenges the county's decision to hold public hearings on the zoning of the 165-acre parcel that's at the heart of the matter. 

County Commissioners met behind closed doors Monday night with the private-practice lawyers who will mount their government's defense. 

The outside legal help is necessary because the suit alleges that the county attorney, Chuck Kitchen, worked to block Southern Durham Development's project. 

The zoning dispute turns on a ruling about Jordan Lake's boundary. Durham zoning rules establish a mile-wide buffer around the lake that would bar dense development near it. 

Former City/County Planning Director Frank Duke in early 2006 accepted a developer-funded survey of Jordan Lake's boundary that in effect would have removed buffer protections from the project site. The suit contends Duke's ruling should stand, even though he made it without at the time asking permission from state regulators. 

Environmentalists from the Haw River Assembly recently countered with a survey of their own that, using different methodology, pegs the lake boundary far enough to the east and north to bar the sort of construction Southern Durham Development has in mind. 

County Manager Mike Ruffin on June 30 relayed the Haw River Assembly's survey to officials at the N.C. Division of Water Quality. He told them he believes the environmentalists later this summer will ask the county to formally seek a state endorsements of its findings. 

Ruffin noted that there is no "published definition" in local, state or wfederal sources of the standards to use in establishing the lake boundary. He asked both state officials and city/county planners to weigh in on whether county officials have missed something on that front. 

A City/County Planning Department assistant director, Keith Luck, answered that in spelling out the boundaries of Falls Lake -- the other's other large, federally funded reservoir -- state regulators urged using a survey of its "water surface elevation" to set the mark. They also discouraged tracing the rise of creek bottoms, the method Haw activists favor. 

Luck's reply made no mention of the fact that publicly available air photos show waters from Jordan Lake pooling less than a mile away from the project site when the reservoir's level is close to its norm. 

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