PART FIVE OF A FIVE-PART SERIES
Russell Banks’ family owned farmland off Central Avenue for at least three generations. That land was, in fact, his father’s and grandfather’s workplace, their source of livelihood.
Banks and his brother no longer own that land, though. And it no longer bears crops in season or sits at rest through the winter. Instead, it is now home to one of the most modern local sites, a symbol of recent times: The Village of Bear Trap Dunes, a 700-home community that was the initiation of an age of dramatic real estate takeover.
“We have sold some (land) to developers,” said Banks, who also sold land to developers of Dove Landing, a Millville development that has been approved but not yet built. “You could farm it for 100 years and never get that kind of money.”
Banks still farms land he leases from local property owners. And his situation is not unique. In a time when agricultural acres as far inland as Dagsboro go for more than $30,000 — and, by some estimates, as much as $75,000 locally — many former land workers have cashed in for a more lucrative lifestyle than the one farming could provide.
Despite preservation efforts, state agricultural officials recognize that some 5,000 to 10,000 acres of farmland is lost statewide each year. State records also show that 5,000 acres of Delaware forestland has been lost since 1990, while urban uses locally have become more prevalent.
And according to census statistics, Delaware lost 70,000 acres of farmland from 1996 to 2005. In the Inland Bays watershed alone, from 1992 to 2002, according to state records, more than 4,000 acres of farmland was lost, while urban land use grew 35 percent.
Harold Marvel, a Clarksville resident and farmer, also sold some of his land for development, including to developers of Dove Landing. The logic was simple, Marvel said.
“They just offered us some money for it, and we just let it go,” he said. “We had a lot of bills to pay.”
Despite such trends — which can clearly be tied directly to development pressures in an area where more than 6,000 building permits have been issued since 2000 — officials are making valiant efforts to preserve what they consider precious county land.
Through the state farmland preservation program — an intergovernmental operation — officials have permanently protected more than 129,000 acres of farmland statewide, including more than 45,000 in Sussex.
County officials have spent millions on such conservation and have gone further, protecting environmentally-important forested blocks and wetland areas.
Sussex County preservation efforts
Sussex County in 2002 entered into a public-private partnership with the Sussex County Land Trust — a non-profit Rehoboth Beach-based preservation organization — and has taken strides to preserve county land since that partnership was formed.
County officials have spent $6.5 million in those five years to preserve roughly 2,600 acres of county land.
Through the open space program, county officials have shielded wetlands along Pepper Creek from development, recently added more than 300 acres to Redden Forrest and helped preserve 1,400 acres of farmland through purchases and easements since July of 2002.
Working with the Delaware Department of Agriculture, Sussex County helped preserve nearly 500 acres of farmland in the 2006 fiscal year alone and has budgeted $300,000 for farmland preservation this year. While substantial, that number is only roughly 20 percent of the total number budgeted for open space this year: $1.48 million.
The Nature Conservancy’s Delaware chapter has also worked with the county on preservation — specifically in the Great Marsh, a 17,000-acre preserve on the Delaware Bay near Lewes. County monies contributed to the preservation of 43 acres in an area called “the Oyster Rocks” along the Great Marsh. The national non-profit organization, with the help of area property owners, also protected more than 550 acres of land in southeastern Sussex County, across the Indian River Bay in the Bullseye-Ferry Landing Preserve.
Above and beyond those preservation measures taken in recent years, state officials are mandating further county efforts to protect county land — including large forest blocks, important wetland habitats and small tracks of farmland designated as important in state resource-area maps.
State maps draw lawsuit
The resource maps have been controversial. One property owner in each Delaware county, flanked by 3,000 smaller land owners, filed a class action lawsuit against governmental officials at the state and county levels late last year, calling the state’s move to protect private land “unconstitutional.”
State maps re-drawn in September identified more than 38,000 acres of unprotected environmentally sensitive lands in Sussex alone. They included large blocks of forests, rare-species habitats and wetlands.
More than 15 years after Delaware approved legislation requiring protection of this land — roughly two-thirds of which is already preserved — state officials have turned to county officials to shield environmentally-important lands from obtrusive development.
The state has “asked” county officials to add extra layers of protection there and officials have continually confirmed that they will not support this year’s county comprehensive land-use plan update if it does not include such protective measures.
“A comprehensive plan that doesn’t address an added layer of protection for our most valuable areas would not be supported by the state,” said Secretary John Hughes of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “We believe these are important environmentally. I believe that good environment is an elemental aspect to the quality of life to Sussex County. It’s important as hell. It’s a big deal.”
Hughes, a defendant in the Chancery Court case over the resource-area maps, has made such assertions in recent months, despite the complaint that deems state calls to protect more than 7,000 privately-owned parcels “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
The suit is one that pits individual property owners’ rights against government controls. But county attorney Jim Griffin, who is representing Sussex in the suit, questioned the case’s validity Tuesday.
“I don’t think it’s going to play,” said Griffin, who noted that a trial is scheduled for Tuesday on the issue. “Nobody’s land is actually going to be taken.”
Griffin called the state’s problem a public relations one, with residents questioning why officials waited more than a decade to enforce the legislation.
Impact on Sussex County
Sussex County Councilman George Cole (R-4th) has supported extra layers of protection for the valuable lands, saying that council has the ability to change the land-use laws of the county — a point touted by many others recently, as they seek changes at the county level that would control development and protect some areas.
Other county officials, though — including County Administrator Dave Baker and Councilman Vance Phillips (R-5th) — remained wary about implementing protective measures.
“It’s funny, with the state, that when they can’t get something passed in the General Assembly, their agencies try to force it down here to create a regulation that was otherwise unpopular,” Phillips said. “That’s typical. I have no problem creating maps when people voluntarily put their land in designation.”
Phillips added, though, that mandatory action to restrict development in those areas would serve to “strip equity” out of formerly valuable land. The first draft of the updated land-use plan is expected later this month or in early May and will likely address the state resource-area maps. It is yet unclear, however, what impact the suit or popular opinion will have on the issue.
Baker said that property owners are “up in the air about (the maps), kind of like we were. But it’s their property.”
Ron Vickers, the DNREC official who helped draft the most recent maps, said he has received mixed reactions recently from property owners.
“We’re still getting calls in and we’re still responding to folks from the past as well,” Vickers said. “It kind of runs the gamut from some folks (who) are interested in doing some preservation and protection work with us, to folks who are completely against the idea and want to get out of it.”
TDR’s and Republican county councilmen
Baker said this week that the county’s land-use consultants are promoting a “broad” transfer of development rights (TDR) ordinance that could be proposed with the unveiling of the comprehensive plan’s first draft, which is expected soon. Similar measures have been approved in Kent County.
A potential TDR ordinance would allow developers to develop at higher density levels by paying other county property owners (farmers) to preserve their land.
“The growth is going to be there,” said Michael McGrath, state agricultural planner and head of the farmland preservation program with the Delaware Department of Agriculture. “The question is where do you want the growth to occur? A TDR (program) would allow some recovery of equity for landowners in the rural parts of the county.”
It is yet unclear whether a TDR program will surface with this year’s comprehensive plan update.
Councilmen have discussed two density trade ordinances promoted by Phillips recently, which call for developers to pay the county for additional density in its AR-1 agricultural-residential district. (A as-yet unsuccessful density trade ordinance was approved last April.)
The agricultural zone is dominant in the county’s environmentally sensitive developing area. Money raised from the ordinances, which would implement strengthened open space and buffer requirements, and allow density up to four units per acre, would ideally be used to pay to preserve other open space in Sussex.
“Had we had this ordinance in place 10 years ago, we could have a fully-funded parks and recreation program on the backs of the developers’ increased density. Now, we’re just giving away density with no consideration,” said Phillips, who has recently voted to allow extra density in AR-1 locally without the county receiving any funds in exchange for that increased density.
Cole has denounced Phillips’ ideas and called himself “strongly opposed” to transfer of development rights ordinances.
“It’s a disaster,” Cole said, adding that he believes a program would only work in a smaller area, not county-wide. “For a TDR to be truly effective, it would have to be in a watershed.”
Instead, the self-proclaimed environmentally-friendly councilman has recently called for the implementation of a “true” agricultural zone. One example of such a zone can be found in Baltimore County, Md. — where officials are familiar with urban and rural development, which became prevalent there in the 1990s, according to the county’s zoning code.
Parcels of 100 acres or more are subject to 50-acre lot requirements. A Kent County agricultural conservation district allows only one unit per 10 acres but, in an overlay within the district, allows three units per acre. Sussex County’s AR-1 zone allows three-quarter acre lots — two homes to the acre with central sewer and four units to the acre under the cluster density trade ordinance, which allows smaller lots with more concentrated open space as a trade-off.
While saying he supports stricter zoning regulations, Cole has not introduced such measures, citing a lack of consensus on the council.
“We could change it,” Cole said.