[Durham INC] from the Herald Sun

[Melissa Rooney]

See below. The injustice for the sake of special interests in Durham continues... 

It's worth reading the comments too, since I have left more specific information regarding the non-gov't side of this issue.

LAST Public Hearing: 12 October 2009, 7 PM, County Admin Bldg.

If you can't make the hearing, at the very least please write your county commissioners about this issue TODAY:



commissioners at durhamcountync.gov

--MBR


Bid to force 4-votes majority on lake fails

By Ray Gronberg

gronberg at heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- An attempt by neighbors and environmentalists to force County Commissioners to muster four votes instead of the usual three to remove watershed-protection buffers from land near Jordan Lake has failed.

City/County Planning Director Steve Medlin ruled Friday that the protest petition opponents of the proposed rezoning had submitted fell short of speaking for enough of the bordering land to invoke the supermajority requirement.

Durham
 law allows the owners of 20 percent of the land within 100 feet of a side of parcel earmarked for new rezoning to protest, thus forcing commissioners to muster four votes instead of a simple majority.

Medlin said activists tied to the Haw River Assembly got close, mustering the owners of 17.7 percent of the property adjoining the land involved in the proposed rezoning on the west side of Jordan Lake. On the east side, they got 17.3 percent.

But close doesn't count. "It does not meet the letter of the ordinance, and therefore the petition is not valid," he said.

The protest attempt was sparked by the prospect of the county's removing the buffers to allow Southern Durham Development Inc. the possibility of siting a high-density, mixed-use real estate project on a 165-acre parcel along N.C. 751.

The company's claims in turn rest on two surveys that peg the lake's boundary far enough to the west of the parcel to justify removing
 the buffers.

City/county planners, however, in crafting the rezoning commissioners are scheduled to vote on Monday night didn't stop at including just Southern Durham Development's land. And that decision appeared key to the outcome of the protest petition.

The rezoning in addition would affect acreage off Stagecoach Road and Farrington Mill, and even draw part of Research Triangle Park into a less-restrictive buffer that affects property within five miles of the lake.

Haw River Assembly volunteers managed to get plenty of signatures from landowners near the lake, but they didn't get any from the area around RTP. That omission appears to have helped sink the petition.

But the group's lawyers, who work for the Southern Environmental Law Center, say they're still trying to figure out how Medlin and his staff did their calculations.

Haw assembly leaders thought they had signatures from people controlling 63 percent of the
 land to the west of the lake, and 23 percent of the land on the east side.

"We felt and still feel we met the burden," said D.J. Gerkan, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. "We're trying to understand why the county thinks differently."

Gerkan added that two Haw River Assembly volunteers, Melissa Rooney and Carol Young, had talked to Medlin about the petition process. At least one was told planners "had not determined how to calculate" the petition threshold, which is unusually complex because the tracts involved are scattered across several miles of countryside.

Medlin, however, told County Commissioners the group had never asked about the "established methodology" for determining what constitutes the side of a rezoning for protest purposes.

The assembly does have appeal rights. County Attorney Lowell Siler said he and other officials were still trying as of Friday to determine whether an appeal would
 go first to Durham's Board of Adjustment, or straight to the court system.

Meanwhile, other players prepared for Monday's zoning hearing.

Members of the Durham Planning Commission, which in August voted unanimously to advise elected officials to keep the buffers in place and obtain an impartial survey, turned in written comments defending their stance.

The most detailed came from county delegate Wendy Jacobs, who said moving the buffers would violate basic city and county land-use policies elected officials confirmed in 2005.

Those, she said, dictate "maintaining low-intensity uses on land near water supply reservoirs," to lower the risk of pollution from waste spills and other causes.

Elected officials in nearby Chatham County also weighed in, sending a letter to Durham Commissioners Chairman Michael Page to urge that he and his colleagues keep the buffer where it is, lest they expose the lake to greater
 pollution-bearing stormwater runoff.

But the Chatham County Commissioners stopped of saying that unless Durham maintains the buffers, they'd stop working with it on new water intakes and other treatment facilities necessary to take full advantage of Jordan's water-supply potential.

Chatham Commissioners Chairman George Lucier said his board would not link what he described as "separate issues."

"Unfortunately sometimes in politics things do spread over, but we're going to try not to do that," he said.





      


      
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