The following was a letter sent by the Gazette editor to Wake Forest Planning Department Director Courtney Tanner, Wake Forest Engineering Department Director Joe Guckavan and Wake Forest Attorney Hasan Kingsberry on Monday.
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I do not understand how the Town of Wake Forest could decide that 126.5 acres of land is not part of a watershed for Falls Lake and declare the watershed rules do not apply. It was done by omitting the watershed rules and zoning in the Unified Development Ordinance.
I know you were not with the town in 2016 when that happened, and most people in the town were not aware that it happened either, but the UDO was changed and the watershed protections, the Falls Lake Rules, disappeared. Did that change affect just the former country club property or does it affect the land to the north on both sides of Harris Road and Purnell Road? Is Franklin County still using the Falls Lake Rules? Does Wake Forest still participate in the watershed governing body?
What entity has authority over the enforcement of the falls lake rules? What power does it have to require the affected governments to continue to enforce them? What if other participating governments decide to take the same stance Wake Forest has? A stance that is very clear was undertaken just to enable one man to make money from land he bought in the town knowing it had watershed restrictions.
A UDO can be changed but topography cannot. Horse Creek is the last contributing water source on the north side of the lake and very near the intake for the Raleigh Water system intake for all of Wake County.
Without the watershed restrictions, the development of the Joyner property, the former Wake Forest Country Club land, will result in millions of gallons of rain-soaked topsoil, which may have radioactive particles, running into the lake near that water intake followed by the subsequent years and decades of increased runoff poisoned with diesel and gasoline, a brew of chemicals and the trash that gets picked up and carried off.
People’s lives were torn apart, communities lost their critical ties, cemeteries had to be moved and few people living near Wake Forest thought they benefitted from the lake. Still do.
If a town can begin to destroy the fabric of the reasonable rules that govern the water running into Falls Lake and other governments follow suit, we start the faster death of that lake. How irresponsible can a government be?
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The following is the response the Gazette received Wednesday afternoon from Director Tanner.
The Town has not declared any land as not part of a watershed nor has the Town declared that watershed rules do not apply. Here is the map (available on the Town website) illustrating the Falls Lake Watershed Management Area District (FL-WMA) is still in place, and here is a link to the watershed standards in the UDO that correspond with that map.
The UDO was updated in July 2013. The overlay district map I provided in the 1st paragraph as well as a new base zoning district map were adopted concurrently with the 2013 UDO. Both the base zoning map and the overlay map were for the entire Town, so all parcels, including the former country club, were affected. You will have to ask Franklin County if they are using the Falls Lake Rules. There are state requirements that must be met in the Neuse River Basin and each jurisdiction is responsible for adopting those regulations. If you want more specific information, Engineering will have to answer those questions.
Once regulations are adopted by a jurisdiction, that jurisdiction is responsible for compliance and enforcement. Hopefully, this helps to clarify that the Town has not removed any watershed regulations.
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In the most recent planning board meeting, town planning staff proposed CPA-23-03, a community plan amendment, which would effect a zoning change to GR3 rather than R-80W for 70 properties identified by PIN numbers, 584 acres, of the Smith Creek Watershed upstream of the Wake Forest Reservoir.
I believe the Joyner watershed property should never have become zoned GR3. Something smells rotten! How many properties became designated zoning code GR3 via CPA’s, without proper notifications? Was the Joyner property zoned GR3 as a result of a “community plan amendment” similar to what the town planning staff is now trying to initiate at the Smith Creek watershed?
People will never get it through their heads WF is predominantly in a watershed. It was never intended to be as densely populated as it is now. They keep lowering the federal guidelines hoping places like Falls Lake will pass. Guess what it still fails. It has been known for a while that PFAS (aka forever chemicals) were in our drinking water. Common sense tells us we need to build smarter. Not encourage plans to be built that not only will negatively impact our watershed but blantantly violate our UDO, Community Plan, go against the recommendation of town staff, & planning board.
Good luck to anyone trying to get up with the engineering department . They do not respond to emails.
What is not clearly stated by Ms Tanner is that this rezoning by UDO is initiated by the Town the community plan that they contract for someone to write to their specifications and then hold a single approval hearing where this new land use/rezoning map affecting multiple parcels is heard–instead of a single hearing for each parcel are group of parcels offered by the owner for rezoning. Also not clearly stated is the elimination of from low density zoning from the UDO as if the residents asked for it. The old Wake Forest Golf Course was rezoned by the Town from R40W (which they eliminated from the UDO) to GR3 that is a change from 1 house per acre to 3 houses per acre without the owner even requesting it. Neat. The next change to the UDO replaces GR3, GR5 and GR10 with GR. So the cap on GR is 10 houses per acre. That means that any owner would either be a civic minded conservationist or a fool to build fewer than 10 dwelling unites per acre. Who and what is pushing the Town to constantly remove low density zoning? Please show us the public outcry that has caused this.