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A citizens committee tasked with developing a county ordinance to protect Sussex County’s source water has been meeting for months, but it has so far failed to agree on a draft of the ordinance.
The most recent meeting, Jan. 24 in Georgetown, ended with little progress, prompting exasperated committee member Mable Granke of Rehoboth Beach to say, “We’ve been replowing ground here till the furrows have to be 10 feet deep.”
The ordinance, which county and municipal governments must develop in response to federal law, would establish protections for public drinking water by controlling use of the land that surrounds public well heads and areas that have been designated as excellent recharge areas.
State officials say such regulations are particularly important in Sussex County, where residents rely exclusively on groundwater as their source of drinking water.
While committee members have agreed on many aspects of the ordinance, several major issues are unresolved:
• Not all wells would require land-use restrictions. How should the ordinance define a well that would trigger regulation?
• How much land should be included in the area where uses would be restricted?
• Land-use restrictions take the form of the percentage of land that may be covered by an impermeable surface. But what percentage of the land can be covered while still protecting the water resource?
Such questions are not theoretical if you own land near an existing well or a likely well head. For committee member Sam Wilson, restricting land use amounts to taking private land for public use.
“The state’s trying to take our land without paying a nickel for it,” he said. “ They don’t want to pay a fair price for our property. There’s all kinds of ways to take our property – we’re trying to keep our rights.”
Wilson said state regulations require farmers to adopt best management practices to reduce water and air pollution. Wilson said these practices already limit how he can use his property. “We could change the word “management” to control,” he said.
Wayne Baker agreed. “If you’re going to restrict development on my land, you should have to acquire it,” he said.
When it comes to maps showing the county’s excellent recharge areas, where development is likely to be restricted by the ordinance, committee member Don Kramer said, “This is the government telling a private property owner what he can do. Not one person has had a chance to defend whether his land is in or out [of the excellent recharge area].”
On the other side of the issue sits Granke. “What they’re not wanting to recognize is that we can have all the water in the world in Sussex County, but if it’s not drinkable, we have nothing,” she said in an interview after the meeting.
In the face of rapid development that increases the demand for water while also paving over land needed to recharge groundwater, Granke says everyone should be concerned about protecting well heads and excellent water recharge areas.
She calls for basing the ordinance on studies provided to the committee by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and environmental engineers. The county ordinance must meet federal standards, she said. “What I want is a working ordinance, not one filled with flaws and holes,” she said.
But Marty Ross said some of the regulations relied upon by state and federal agencies have been superceded by practices in place today.
“We’re conforming to 1950s laws and we’re in 2007,” he said. “We’ve put in rules to ensure water quality.”
Ross said rules designed to prevent such problems as TCE contamination that occurred in Millsboro in 2005 are not necessary because disposal of the chemicals blamed in that incident are now carefully regulated. “I don’t think it makes sense to roll the time back,” he said. “Those circumstances in Millsboro will never ever again exist.”
Other issues that must still be worked out concern the accuracy of maps that define wellhead protection areas and excellent recharge areas and how often they must be updated when new wells are drilled. Still another issue facing the committee concerns existing municipal water sources that are built in areas where there is no longer any room for expansion.
But despite the roadblocks that remain, Granke said, “This is an ordinance for the future. Anything that already exists won’t be affected. It will only affect new uses.”
She also said the ordinance should be in place as the county begins updating its comprehensive land-use plan, so that concepts outlined in the plan become part of the land-use plan.
Granke agrees that people want to protect their property rights, but she also said clean water is critical to everyone. “You have no right to damage your neighbor in the process” of protecting your property rights, she said.
Messick re-elected
Before beginning work on the ordinance, the committee addressed a recent finding by the Attorney General’s Office that the committee failed to properly advertise two meetings.
As a result, the committee was required to hold another election for chairman, re-electing Burt Messick, also president of Sussex County Farm Bureau.
The committee voted a second time on all other actions taken during the meetings, but none of the committee’s earlier actions was overturned.
Several committee members said they wanted to meet at least one more time so that they Hal Godwin, assistant Sussex County administrator, said the committee is not authorized to continue meeting, but that he would seek an extension.
Contacted after the meeting, Godwin said he had not yet sought reauthorization for the committee.
Contact Laura Ritter at lritter@capegazette.com
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