Shirley Price grew up on Delaware’s Inland Bays. Raised in the Cedar Neck area, the daughter of a bait-and-tackle-shop-owner, her family’s livelihood depended at least in part on the recreational value of the water.
Coastal Point • RUSLANA LAMBERT:
These homes in South Bethany are on the canal, which connects to the Little Assawoman Bay. The area has changed much in recent years as development has grown exponentially.
But, remembering boat trips on the Rehoboth, Indian River and Little Assawoman bays in the 1960s and 1970s, Price likely pictures a scene a bit more pristine than the one boaters see there today.
In the decades since her childhood, development has enveloped the bays and, by most accounts, put a strain on the natural environment. Bayfront development is undeniable and hard to miss when traveling on back roads outside Ocean View and Millville, and even while speeding down Route 1.
So it’s likely not surprising that when Price recalls childhood memories, she does so with a hint of disappointment and company in wondering whether the area could lose the natural charm its residents have proudly enjoyed for decades.
“It’s a very special place,” said Price, who represented the area in the state House of Representatives from 1996 to 2002. “It’s just sometimes I look at things that are happening and I have to do it with a little sadness. I think people do a little head-shaking. Things have changed so quickly. We all wonder, ‘Where’s the plan for this?’”
Residential land use around Delaware’s Inland Bays increased by 35 percent from 1992 to 2002, according to the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Urban uses have increased by 20 percent since, DNREC’s Pollution Control Stratgey for Delaware’s Inland Bays states.
Thousands more homes are planned for the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Developing Area around the bays, with more than 1,000 planned in two separate communities alone.
State reports recognize the Inland Bays as an “important ecological, economic and recreational resource” deserving of special protection. That same report noted, though, that the bays “are becoming increasingly urbanized and degraded by encroaching development” and deemed intervention critical.
Such development, next to agriculture, is the largest nutrient polluter to the “highly-enriched” Inland Bays, according to experts and state reports. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous enter the bays through groundwater pollution and runoff — increased by replacing isolated wetlands with streets and sidewalks and forested areas with homes — resulting in low oxygen levels, troubled underwater habitats and fish kills. (The Army Corps of Engineers is currently awaiting federal clarification on the limits of their wetland protection jurisdiction in this area and across the country.)
“Improving the water quality,” now degraded partly by such development, is essential to saving the tourism and recreational value, and some sense of purity, of Delaware’s Inland Bays, state officials wrote in DNREC’s August version of the bays’ Pollution Control Strategy. The strategy, which would limit nutrient inputs in the bays through regulations on agriculture, residential development and wastewater systems, has been left unapproved for months, amid controversy.
“There is always the risk of losing that which brought us here in the first place,” said John Hughes, DNREC secretary, former Rehoboth Beach mayor and coastal Sussex resident. “In spite of the magnificent natural setting of eastern Sussex, all of us have seen the great development, essentially a squandering of the natural assets of the area.”
ESDA an ‘oxymoron’
State Planning Director Constance Holland recently called the “Environmentally Sensitive Developing Area” an “oxymoron.” Sussex County Council created the ironic overlay district through an ordinance approved in December 2003 to “protect and enhance the water quality” of the Inland Bays. It has since morphed into the county’s largest continuous growth zone, subject to clear-cutting and where higher density is directed.
DNREC’s pollution control strategy proposal calls the area around the bays the “fastest-growing” and, despite market pressures, development has not seemed to slow. Freeman builders have already begun work on the 1,600-home Bayside community, on the water, off Route 54 outside of Fenwick. At least 1,700 more homes have been approved for development in the environmental overlay, locally, in just the last seven months.
Councilman Vance Phillips said the overlay was birthed in part to facilitate such development where it was inevitable — an opinion supported by consensus in Georgetown but not by wording in the document.
“The practical realization is that is where the people want to live,” said Phillips, author of an ordinance allowing extra density in AR-1, the dominant zone in the ESDA. “Government’s job isn’t meant to circumvent the will of the people.”
Underlying zoning regulations apply to development applications in the environmentally sensitive district, but county officials require developers to perform a “rigorous” environmental study before presenting plans to develop there. That study, though, is rarely, if ever, a deciding factor in approving or disapproving the application, according to county planning director Lawrence Lank.
A Center for the Inland Bays subcommittee met with county land-use consultants in January and recommended that additional development restrictions be placed on environmentally sensitive areas through this year’s comprehensive plan update. Consultant Paul Driscoll said Tuesday that the question of whether or not changes are “warranted” in the overlay zone will be addressed in the first draft of that update, expected later this month.
Carol Bason, who has a background in public policy and led the January presentation, echoed those sentiments, saying this week that the ESDA is “not really a protected area.”
Forests removed, ESDA exploited
In September, county officials approved The Estuary, a controversial 1,052-lot development tucked beside the Assawoman Wildlife Refuge that represents what Hughes considers poor planning. Although developers will conserve more than 50 percent of the land as “open space” — which does not yet have a firm definition in Sussex — the plan calls for the removal of 75 acres of forested land.
“That’s the sort of shortsighted development that I just loathe,” Hughes said of removing large swathes of forests, which serve as natural buffers. “I happen to live on wooded property. I don’t think you have to clear-cut. I think you’re devaluing your development. I think it’s always a mistake. I’m not buying there, I can tell you that.”
(The county has recently taken steps to preserve large forested areas. Preservation efforts will be studied in the continuation of the Coastal Point’s Development Series next week.)
The Estuary’s situation was not unique. Some 30 acres of forest — out of 50 on the entire property — are planned to be removed for The Lakelyns, a mixed-use 265-unit development on environmentally sensitive land outside of Millville. That plan exceeded density requirements of its AR-1 zone, a single-family zone, but was granted a change of zone late last year.
Phillips, who supports requiring developers to pay for higher density, voted to approve the project, without the county receiving any money. In a May 2005 state review of the project, officials wrote that the vast removal of forest there might “reduce the possibility” of meeting state mandated nutrient-reduction regulations and denounced plans to replace forested land with stormwater ponds, writing that the plan did not “make sense.”
Local experts call forests the “cleanest” land available, perhaps excluding wetlands themselves, many of which are also left unprotected and exploited. According to estimations from the late-1990s, about four times more nitrogen enters the bays from developed land than from forests, a direct impact of replacing natural landscape with streets, sidewalks and fertilized lawns.
State records show that more than 5,000 acres of forested land statewide has been lost since 1990. “Forest fragmentation separates wildlife populations” and puts “greater pressure on nearby public lands,” officials wrote in the Lakelyns review.
Lyle Jones, a DNREC soil scientist, said applied best management practices, such as advancements in stormwater retention, will reduce pollution rates but added that replacing forest with urban development has negative environmental consequences.
Drinking water also suffers when forests — and other natural buffers, such as wetlands — are removed. Such buffer areas serve as a net for groundwater nutrient pollution and airborne pollution from energy generation and cars, keeping it out of the water and air.
Jones said no specific trends yet show an increase or decrease in pollution due to development, but he said that negative or positive impacts on the watershed could take years to surface.
“I have a concern because I know how effective forests can be for removing nutrients and improving habitat,” Jones said. “We lose the ability to be able to mitigate nutrients over time. We’ve (also) lost a considerable amount of wetlands. The wetlands we have left are having a more difficult time handling nutrients.”
Agreeing with Jones, Center for the Inland Bays scientist Chris Bason stressed impacts on animals’ habitats in the forests and bays, and the need for responsible development.
“The nearer you develop to a water body, the greater impact you’re going to have on the habitat in the water and out,” Bason said. “There’s a huge amount of information out now. (Development) can be done right. It’s up to the readers to decide if it’s being done right here.”
Sewer touted as environmentally-friendly
Councilman George Cole (R-4th) said after a council meeting Tuesday that most legislators in the area do not care to protect the natural environment. He denounced, among other measures, Phillips’ calls for increased density, though they come with open-space requirements and potentially with funds for open-space preservation.
“There’s no protection,” Cole said. “They’re just piling it on.”
Others disagree and have dismissed Cole’s vocal opinions and regular Georgetown rants supporting environmental protection as mere political jargon. They argue that vigilant central-sewer expansion around the Inland Bays and Sussex-wide has helped protect Sussex’s surrounding environment, as it replaces individual septic systems.
Around the bays, officials have replaced nearly 14,000 individual septic systems since 1990 with more closely-monitored and environmentally-friendly county-operated central sewer systems, according to state and county records.
The county’s replacement of polluting, failing and outdated onsite septic systems has been lauded by DNREC. Such moves have reduced the amount of nitrogen entering the bays, locally, by up to 89 pounds daily, according to the pollution strategy.
“I think we’ve done a good job in protecting what’s there,” said Council President Dale Dukes (D-1st).
Some, though, are still skeptical. Hughes said that sewer expansion is not justification for environmental insensitivity.
“I think that you’d have to say that it has not succeeded,” in protecting the environment, Hughes said of the overlay zone. “There are successes within it (but) it’s the sheer momentum of construction that seems to have defeated it.”
State stuck in the middle
The Lakelyns and The Estuary both fall in the state’s Level 4 area, according to state strategies under Gov. Ruth Ann Minner’s Livable Delaware plan — an area where officials normally oppose plans and do not support infrastructure improvements.
State records show that most development plans submitted in Level 4 areas are directly opposed by one or more state agencies, including the Office of State Planning Coordination. Plans submitted for the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Developing Area are a glaring exception, where ones such as the Lakelyns are denounced by state agencies but not formally opposed, because they are proposed for a county “growth zone.”
“The state would be very cognizant and aware of local jurisdictions,” Holland said. “If their comp plan delineates it as a growth area … then we concede that that place is going to grow.”
Holland’s office wrote in The Lakelyns’ review that the proposed plan seemed “too intense” for its surrounding area. “A site plan that preserves forested areas and buffers wetlands onsite would be more respectful,” the office’s summary reads. But, despite the denouncements, Holland’s Office of State Planning did not “oppose” the project, as is normal in Level 4 areas outside of county growth zones.
The Estuary, despite criticism, was also not opposed by state agencies, though nearby towns expressed opposition on environmental and infrastructure grounds. State officials in their review called the 75 acres of forest to be cut down “extremely beneficial” to wildlife there and water quality in surrounding waterways. Much of the land approved for development drains directly into Dirickson Creek and the Little Assawoman Bay, the report shows.
The Delaware Department of Transportation, unusually, commented on both of the aforementioned plans – not normal practice in Level 4 areas. DelDOT spokesman Darrel Cole addressed the issue last fall during The Estuary’s approval process. Cole called The Estuary a “unique” situation because of the conflict between a state preservation zone and a county growth zone.