Last Thursday night, amid a crowded agenda for the town commissioner’s monthly work session, Wake Forest Planning Director Courtney Tanner introduced a new topic, zoning for the Wake Forest Reservoir watershed. The reservoir is no longer a source of drinking water since Raleigh Water provides all the town’s water, which comes from Falls Lake.
The planning department’s proposal is to zone the watershed as Conventional Residential, which includes zoning at GR3 (three houses per acre) to GR10. Tanner said that the uses would only include GR3 zoning with the encouragement for conservation principles with pedestrian and bicycle connections to “enhance access to the reservoir.” Later, she added: “Additionally, the conservation design principles would not be applicable for the larger tracts of land.”
Those “larger tracts” include the 250 acres that Andy Ammons owns, almost half of the 584 total acres. In 2007 Ammons was proposing a conservation-style development for the watershed, and a Gazette article at the time said this: “. . . There Ammons plans between 65 and 70 homes on large lots which leave the streams and valleys untouched. The lots, as he has planned, do not reach to the reservoir edge. It has some aspects of the plan for a conservation subdivision Ammons and Chuck Flink of Greenways Inc. presented to the Wake Forest Planning Board in July of 2003. Town officials said, according to Ammons, that the town’s zoning code did not allow such a plan with its long, narrow cul-de-sacs, grassed swales rather than curb and gutter, and tight clustering of homes.”
Ammons’ vision might not be possible, but Wake Forest can have a conservation district among its zoning possibilities. And it could be applied to the four large land parcels still undeveloped: the Joyner/country club, the two large tracts on Harris Road owned by Jane Harris Pate and the reservoir watershed.
We need something more than zoning that restricts uses to something that is built — a house or 300 houses, a factory or commercial building. Some spaces should be left untouched. Some spaces should be protected.
And you know that if they are zoned as residential, even at GR3, an owner and his/her developer will haggle and dig in their feet and keep “revising” by changing nothing until they get their denser label.
There is no need to rush into labelling the watershed land. There will not be any mad rush to apply for water and sewer. The town as a collective whole needs to look at the land, see what is there, discuss and decide what seems best for the land itself and the people who make up the town.
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4 Responses
The above comments are well stated ! WF will not benefit from Andy developing another Heritage.
I don’t know who wrote the editorial, but I agree 100%. Watershed lands need to be preserved. The push to remove lower density zoning designations from the UDO is the wrong move. Some places should remain lower density. The push for “only” increased zoning density R40W>GR3>GR is not a benefit to the town but only to the developers. R40W no longer exists in the UDO (1 house per acre) and based on that GR3 was assigned to the Joyner property (tripling the zoning density without a hearing). The new UDO zoning would seem to be GR (which is really GR10 without a label). Anyone can build fewer houses than a zoning limit, but logically why would they? Great closing statement from the author “The town as a collective whole needs to look at the land, see what is there, discuss and decide what seems best for the land itself and the people who make up the town.”
When Raleigh and Wake Forest were discussing the merger of water systems eons ago the Wake Forest Reservoir was judged to contain the best drinking water in Wake County. Can’t wait to see how all of the fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides ‘enhance’ it’s health, and all the habitats downstream.
I have long struggled against the onslaught of water quality degradation in the Neuse River and Falls Lake watersheds. In the early 90s, when Wake County removed watershed protection zoning for much of the land around a much smaller Wake Forest and changed stream classification from “A” (fish can thrive and people can drink) to “C” (people can wade and paddle but don’t drink it), I objected. And to every degradation since. The thing about water is that once you dirty it up, it’s near impossible to get clean again. And as clean water gets less abundant, we’ll soon be at war over it. Owens Valley, California. The current fight in the western states over the diminished Colorado River. No water, no life. Wake up people!