Your writings do a great job of capturing the emotions involved. I too am distressed by the land use practices we see in our area.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Growth, development or progress (take your pick) doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Several Virginia localities have enacted strong ordinances that find the middle ground, and they’ve also have built strong enforcement efforts (code compliance) to vigorously enforce them. It takes both.
So long as ordinances allow developers to do things like strip and sell topsoil, without requiring real zero-loss replacement, the faux-effective zoning, subdivision and Design Standards manuals that are being pawned off on the public are just empty artifices.
We need environmental advocates to be drafting and revising our local ordinances, not developer attorneys and engineers (which typically is the case). They all “look pretty” when they’re printed out, but it’s the guts of these ordinances that matter.
In Spotsylvania, developers have gotten away with stripping all vegetation including top soil. The DSM and ordinances may require sodding but they do not require topsoil replenishment under the sod (or, if they do, code compliance is still allowing insufficient amounts of topsoil). The end result is dead sod, which leads the HOA to cite the homeowner, which essentially leads the homeowner to install irrigation. The result is a neighborhood where hundreds of homes have to irrigate 3 -plus times a week ($150 per month in additional water fees).
Tens of Thousands of gallons of water are wasted every day all growing season long, just because of poor ordinance drafting and/or slack code compliance enforcement.
Thanks for your note. I couldn't agree more! The topsoil issue is especially vexing. I'm no scientist, but the removal of native topsoil has always seemed gratuitously damaging, given the nutrients, bacteria, fungi, etc., involved. It reminds me of the old Roman "salt the earth" strategy used to ensure an enemy would never recover from defeat. Now, with data centers stripping away everything to bare clay and on a truly massive scale, the choices left for future generations simply seem to vanish. I wish we had representatives who saw it this way.
There's a broader picture here, with competing goals of minimizing impact to the environment and ensuring human beings have shelter. These competing goals dictate that that farm, so near a mass transit station, should have been converted into high-rise apartments to maximize human shelter per acre, minimizing toxic traffic and reducing sprawl that preserves more natural environment elsewhere. The sprawling, ill-considered Leeland Station neighborhood and other single family homes near the train station have been a huge waste of acreage.
We have seen the horror of tree removal in our neighborhood with the development of "Mary's Landing". We tried to save the trees to no avail. Both the city government and the developers moved ahead -- without any shame. It is a shame to the neighbors though on these hot summer days.
Your writings do a great job of capturing the emotions involved. I too am distressed by the land use practices we see in our area.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Growth, development or progress (take your pick) doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Several Virginia localities have enacted strong ordinances that find the middle ground, and they’ve also have built strong enforcement efforts (code compliance) to vigorously enforce them. It takes both.
So long as ordinances allow developers to do things like strip and sell topsoil, without requiring real zero-loss replacement, the faux-effective zoning, subdivision and Design Standards manuals that are being pawned off on the public are just empty artifices.
We need environmental advocates to be drafting and revising our local ordinances, not developer attorneys and engineers (which typically is the case). They all “look pretty” when they’re printed out, but it’s the guts of these ordinances that matter.
In Spotsylvania, developers have gotten away with stripping all vegetation including top soil. The DSM and ordinances may require sodding but they do not require topsoil replenishment under the sod (or, if they do, code compliance is still allowing insufficient amounts of topsoil). The end result is dead sod, which leads the HOA to cite the homeowner, which essentially leads the homeowner to install irrigation. The result is a neighborhood where hundreds of homes have to irrigate 3 -plus times a week ($150 per month in additional water fees).
Tens of Thousands of gallons of water are wasted every day all growing season long, just because of poor ordinance drafting and/or slack code compliance enforcement.
Thanks for your note. I couldn't agree more! The topsoil issue is especially vexing. I'm no scientist, but the removal of native topsoil has always seemed gratuitously damaging, given the nutrients, bacteria, fungi, etc., involved. It reminds me of the old Roman "salt the earth" strategy used to ensure an enemy would never recover from defeat. Now, with data centers stripping away everything to bare clay and on a truly massive scale, the choices left for future generations simply seem to vanish. I wish we had representatives who saw it this way.
There's a broader picture here, with competing goals of minimizing impact to the environment and ensuring human beings have shelter. These competing goals dictate that that farm, so near a mass transit station, should have been converted into high-rise apartments to maximize human shelter per acre, minimizing toxic traffic and reducing sprawl that preserves more natural environment elsewhere. The sprawling, ill-considered Leeland Station neighborhood and other single family homes near the train station have been a huge waste of acreage.
We have seen the horror of tree removal in our neighborhood with the development of "Mary's Landing". We tried to save the trees to no avail. Both the city government and the developers moved ahead -- without any shame. It is a shame to the neighbors though on these hot summer days.