When two top-level state officials pay a visit to a grassroots political group in Sussex County, there’s probably something important on the agenda.
In fact, Delaware’s top state official was originally slated to attend the Oct. 26 Citizens for a Better Sussex (CBS) meeting at the Cottage Café near Bethany Beach. But Gov. Ruth Ann Minner was reportedly under the weather, or she might have spoken in support of the Livable Delaware anti-sprawl initiative herself.
In her absence, Department of Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse carried the message. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Secretary John Hughes provided backup support.
Scuse, a farmer from Smyrna, gave a little personal history to place his support for Livable Delaware in context.
“My brother and I currently farm about 1,400 acres,” he said, noting it was leased land. “It was a bit more than that, but we lost some of it to development.”
He entered public service in the 1980s, serving first as Kent County Recorder of Deeds, then as a member of the state Farm Service Agency. He also served as a Planning Commission member, and then commission chair.
“So I have a little bit of a feel for what the councilmen and the Sussex County Planning (and Zoning) Commission goes through on a fairly regular basis,” he noted, speaking especially to local Sussex County Council Member George Cole, seated nearby.
Scuse characterized grassroots political groups like CBS as vital communicators of the opinions shared by average citizens, to leaders at the county and state.
“Gov. Minner’s administration needs your help,” he said. “We need you to be an advocate for water quality in our Inland Bays, to help ensure the Pollution Control Strategies (PCSs) are strong — and meaningful. Not everyone is as interested as Gov. Minner in working hard to clean up our bays.
“The governor needs you to understand that sprawl is a burden,” he continued. “It’s a burden on our roads, our emergency responders, the agricultural industry and state taxpayers. The spread of pavement and development means more flooding and more pollution, as well as the destruction of natural habitat throughout our state.
“Gov. Minner also wants you to understand that a community with a higher density can be more livable if it is well planned, and well designed,” he said. “If it values open space, if the infrastructure is in place, and if it looks and feels like a close-knit neighborhood.
“These kinds of communities are being built all over the country — they’re very attractive and very successful,” Scuse pointed out. “Sussex County is expected to grow by almost 80,000 people between today and 2030. It’s still an attractive and inexpensive place to live.”
And so he entered the crux of Livable Delaware, as it seeks to preserve quality of life in light of continued development and population growth. Scuse noted accomplishments to date, such as nearly 26,000 acres of farmland around Sussex County in which the state has purchased permanent conservation easements.
Through the state’s Agricultural Lands Preservation Program, farmers who own and operate at least 200 acres of contiguous farmland (or smaller parcels nearby, as a District Expansion) can “lease” development rights to the state for 10 years. After that, they have the opportunity to, as noted, sell their ability to develop their lands outright.
Minner has achieved a permanent $10 million a year funding stream for farmland preservation, Scuse said.
Also noted: the new Forestlands Preservation Program to protect working forestlands, “most of which are located right here in Sussex County,” he added. (Local Sen. George Howard Bunting, 20th District, was lead sponsor on that legislation.)
On the home front, 36 out of the 57 municipalities around the state had certified-comprehensive plans, per Livable Delaware legislation, and another 12 were being prepared, he said.
Scuse called those plans a first step, toward “thoughtful, manageable growth,” and said the new Preliminary Land Use Service (PLUS) system gave state agencies the chance to weigh in on proposed developments much earlier in the process.
“In some cases, the developers have actually walked away after hearing the comments on proposals,” he said. “But we’re still seeing too many large projects — projects here in Sussex County, projects that are outside the growth zone.
“In rural areas, conservation and agri-business are our only planned investments in taxpayer dollars,” Scuse said. “Then, a town-sized development is proposed, and it’s often next to farmland that the taxpayers have invested millions of dollars to protect and preserve — and, it’s far away from the infrastructure needed to support such large-scale development.”
He referenced the recent Isaac’s Glen project, nearly 1,600 homes (plus 200 hotel-style efficiencies), which recently came before Sussex County Council. It was outside the growth zone and council denied it, but Scuse said the project would likely reappear soon, in slightly modified form.
(Late in the meeting, Scuse referenced the Bayside community, now under construction on Route 54, as another local project that had ventured outside the areas the state had planned for growth. But, on the other side, one resident from the eastern county suggested the Environmentally Sensitive Development District had seen enough growth. “How can we get un-designated as a growth area?” she asked.)
“By creating such an inefficient checkerboard of development, sprawl disrupts our agriculture industry,” Scuse continued. “Traffic starts growing on the county roads, neighbors start complaining about crop dust and the smells from the nearby poultry house.
“And suddenly, Sussex County doesn’t look like Sussex County anymore,” he stated.
“That’s why I went to Gov. Minner and asked for a bill that would ban community septic (systems) in ‘Level 4’ investment areas,” he said, referring to areas of rural land, far from town centers, where the state has no plans to improve infrastructure. “And the governor enthusiastically agreed to make it a part of her Livable Delaware agenda.”
This is House Bill (HB) 280, introduced in June of this year and still in House committee.
In addition to no community septic in Level 4, HB 280 would require 4-acre zoning for five-unit or larger subdivisions, if the developer plans to install individual, onsite septic systems.
“New Castle County does not allow community wastewater systems and requires a minimum lot size of 5 acres in its rural areas. It has effectively curbed development,” Scuse said. “There’s been some criticism, but 4 acres is very modest compared to the minimums of 10, 20 and 30 acres when you just cross the state line into Maryland.”
Some of that criticism has come from Sussex County Farm Bureau President Burton Messick. In fact, according to Messick (reached for comment several days later), Scuse’s support for this bill had the Farm Bureau calling for his resignation.
First, Messick suggested HB 280 wouldn’t prevent sprawl.
“Which would you rather have: 1,000 homes on a little more than 500 acres, or 1,000 homes on 4,000 acres?” he asked. “If people are going to buy a house, they’re going to buy a house. So you’re just going to eat up 4,000 acres of farmland.”
Second, he said, farmers rate sprawl rather lower on their list of concerns than perhaps Scuse does.
“Sprawl is really is not that big a deal over here (in the western county),” Messick said. “Maybe, five or 10 years from now, it might be — but the farmers’ concerns are for their property value.
“What I think Michael Scuse is doing is trying to force farmers to stay on their land,” he said. “What he really wants is open space — I don’t think preserving agriculture is really what he’s after.”
Messick noted agriculture as a tough business and suggested farmers should have the right to capitalize on their property when they reach retirement age or want to lend their parents extra assistance in their own retirement.
This year’s August-September drought struck the area’s soybeans just as they reached what should have been the peak of their growing cycle, he said — but watching the weather wreak havoc wasn’t anything surprising. Farmers need enough business sense to spread their risk, expect to break even on one crop a year — but margins are always slender, he said.
Looking around at farm bureau meetings, Messick said he didn’t see many young people coming in and choosing careers in agriculture. The Secretary of Agriculture should try to help farmers find ways to boost their profits, not take away their property rights and the value of their land, he said.
And he said the development boom seems to be slowing a little anyway.
“The economy will determine how the housing market goes for the next five years, and I’m of the mindset — let the free market work,” Messick stated.
(On a side note: all 13 of the state legislators either sponsoring or co-sponsoring SB 280 represent districts in New Castle County. Five are Republicans, eight are Democrats.)
Returning to the CBS meeting, Scuse called on everyone in attendance to get involved in the political process, especially with the Sussex County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, which is soon due for another update.
He encouraged CBS members to attend the meetings associated with that update — “This is how you make a difference,” Scuse said.
“Gov. Minner still believes zoning should be a local matter,” he said. “Sussex County legislators also agree with that. But Gov. Minner still has to protect the taxpayers’ investment in infrastructure, as well as services. She also has to protect our unique natural resources. And she has to protect the long-term viability of our state’s agricultural industry, which is in jeopardy today.”
Lewes resident Charles Barrett offered a different perspective, as a recent arrival from New Jersey.
“I didn’t come to Sussex County to live next to a farm,” he said. “I don’t care about a farm.”
In fact, Barrett was more concerned about pollution from agricultural operations than from new residential developments. He asked several questions about farmers’ Nutrient Management Plans (NMPs) and public disclosure.
Hughes weighed in, as the issue was closely related to DNREC’s efforts to enact several Pollution Control Strategies (PCSs) around the county. (There’s a specific PCS for each watershed, and the regulations will reduce nitrogen and phosphorus overloads in their waterways.)
According to Hughes, the NMPs are indeed private, because the farmers feel their methods are trade secrets — proprietary. However, he said, they were all reviewed, and approved, by DNREC staff.
Regarding Livable Delaware, he commended Scuse for his courage and his loyalty to the governor, but also for his long-range vision.
And like Scuse, Hughes recommended action – and soon. He recalled a visit to San Diego 20 years earlier and that city’s environmental consciousness — the little “vest pocket” parks, the careful notations at east storm drain, warning would-be polluters what waterway their contaminants were likely to end up in.
“Every environmental rule you could think of, they had it,” he said. “But land use had consumed the environment.
“They’d lost the environmental battle, not on air quality, not on water quality, but on land use,” Hughes continued. “And I want to tell you, that is the ultimate battle.
“You can regulate and formulate rules forever, but if you don’t ultimately win the battle for land use, you have no environment for the regulations to act upon,” he said.
He applauded Minner for entering the fray, saying she was the first governor in the history of the state to do so.
Traditionally, land use was the county’s domain, Hughes admitted — but added, “Look around, here. If you brought some family members to Delaware for the first time, would you take them out on Route 1 and say, ‘Look at the great job we’ve done.’?”
Clarksville resident Lee Dogoloff admitted he’d moved to the area only in recent years, and qualified his remarks as a newcomer.
“I’m not one to say, ‘I got mine, now you can’t have yours,” he said. “But with the infrastructure we have in place — God forbid we should ever have a hurricane.”
Fenwick Island resident (and Town Council Member) Harry Haon asked Hughes what he recommended citizens do to help promote solid land-use planning.
“We’re ready, but we need help from the state,” he said, “from cabinet-level people at the state.
“The last time around (the last county Comprehensive Plan update), people attended hearing after hearing, and their ideas received a good response,” Haon said. “But when the plan came out, there was little recognition of those ideas — and little recognition of the comments from the various state agencies.
“And then it was approved by the state with an ‘It could have been worse,’ and with 26 ordinances the county was supposed to enact,” Haon finished. “George (Council Member Cole), have we passed 10 of them?”
Cole said council was still working its way through the list.
With the next Comprehensive Plan update due by late 2007, it may still be a little early for hearings on the topic. However, Martha Keller (another Fenwick Islander and council member) invited anyone interested in the future of Sussex County to stop by Fenwick Town Hall on Friday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m.
A recent, three-day “Your Town” seminar in Lewes generated some committee involvement, and locals who attended the seminar are following up with a two-hour mini-workshop of their own in Fenwick Island. All county residents and officials are being encouraged to attend and provide their input on the present and future of the county.