Without the Cape Gazette’s frequent factual coverage about a planned Angola-area 7-Eleven and gas station project (CU 2176), so close to the major drinking water well pumps supplying a large area here in Sussex, the council’s public hearing Sept. 17 would not have been so crowded.
The evening’s WBOC-TV news had even picked up my suggestion that a better name for a “convenience” store on this - so unsuitable - AR-1 residential-area site, would be “inconvenience” store.
Whenever such council or planning & zoning hearings are poorly attended, because residents don’t even know about the hearing’s date and agenda, almost all projects making developers and lawyers rich or richer are voted approved right away, no matter how detrimental to Sussex’s residents.
While we did not yet get a vote denied, only a deferral, there is real hope - based on the very pertinent questions council members asked this time. In any case, council must have heard loud and clear: this huge 7-Eleven and gas/diesel station, that would make the already bad traffic delays at the Route 24-Angola and Robinsonville roads intersection even worse, is unwanted and unnecessary and an abuse of the conditional-use zoning law’s intent, and would set a serious precedent in Sussex.
Let’s hope that DelDOT, DNREC, Tidewater and especially our Soil Conservation District and others wake up and send a loud and clear message to this council now: Please ask the applicant to put such gas station and 7-Eleven elsewhere, on a properly commercially zoned C-3 lot, far away from our area’s drinking water wells.
Jens Wegscheider
Lewes
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