Sussex County Council members, please deny the Conditional Use application for a 7-Eleven at Route 24 and Angola Road. Others in the community have described the many compelling reasons that this CU is not an appropriate use of this property. Here’s one more: gas stations are soon to be obsolete. They are popping up everywhere in Sussex County now. Interestingly, they are disappearing in other areas of the country.
According to the New York Times (July, 2012), the number of gas stations reached a high of about 200,000 in the early 1990s. Up to 50,000 gas stations have closed since that time, some to be replaced by the gas/convenience store model. Google tells me that there are now about 168,000 retail operations that sell fuel in the U.S.
Reasons for the decrease include increased competition, environmental concerns, alternative fuels, and the fact that selling gas isn’t profitable. Convenience items and food bring in the dollars. Not surprisingly, the most vulnerable are the small mom and pop operations.
These statistics surprised me. I see Royal Farms and WaWa everywhere. Apparently as markets shrink or are overbuilt in other ares, Sussex County has become very popular. 7-Eleven apparently wants to muscle in with the largest offering in the area as I understand it: 16 gas pumps, four separate diesel pumps, and 34 parking spaces at the intersection of Route 24 and Angola Road.
These large fuel/convenience stores are in fierce competition now but they will be selling much less gas in the future as electric cars come on line and gas efficiency increases. According to last Sunday’s Washington Post, the first gas station to convert to total electric charging stations opens this week in Tacoma, Md. This is an experiment with the state of Maryland, but it is a sign of the future.
The 7-Eleven developers anticipate major growth in the area and promise that they have planned for environmental and traffic concerns. However, they have not planned with the future of automobiles in mind. We as citizens and our local government have the responsibility to look ahead more than 10 years or so, when gas pumps that we install now will sit idle most of the time. The stations can convert to charging stations, although many consumers will charge up at home. What happens to the underground tanks that supply those 20 pumps when most cars and trucks are fueled by more efficient means?
Karen Beck
Lewes
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