Sussex County was, by all standards, a beautiful, safe, relaxing beach area. Really nice people, nice restaurants, outlets, reasonable taxes, good schools. The transition over the past three years is frightening to watch and difficult to understand. Why would anyone believe we need thousands of new houses? Not exaggerating, thousands!!
No road improvements beforehand, no real plan. No articles about how the county believes adding a few developments will give a boost to home sales. Nothing. And the silence remains while the For Sale signs go up, the public hearing signs are posted.
Developers appear to be running Sussex County Council and the planning and zoning board. Backroom deals with DelDOT and developers are happening with no option for public concerns to be reviewed.
For this reason we must fight for an APFO, Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. The APFO establishes a process for analyzing a proposed development’s impacts on public infrastructure, including water and sewer line capacity, roads, schools, and water and sewer basin treatment capacity. The APFO establishes the standards for adequacy for each of these facilities, and through the testing process, inadequate infrastructure is identified.
Mitigation measures for failing infrastructure are identified and time frames for their completion are established in order for construction on a project to begin. This is a fancy name for making sure a county is not in gridlock as developers and investors absorb more and more land for homes with total disregard to the impact we are already feeling here in Sussex County.
Did you know that our elected officials on both the planning board and county council admitted to not knowing this ordinance existed, yet New Castle and Kent County and the counties in Maryland already have this ordinance in place? How could they not know?
Skeptical of the problem? Look around as you drive down Route 24 into Long Neck. Notice the sold signs, the posted hearing notices, the mud holes. Come down Conley’s Chapel Road and see how many trees have been leveled for developments and more pending signs on near by cornfields. Come down Beaver Dam toward Route 9 and see more grinding up of farmland. Ride down Stockley and see more for sale.
Take a ride down 24 toward Long Neck and make a left onto Banks. Imagine another 600-plus homes after the wooded area is ground up. Come on down Angola Road (note that there is a plan to put a convenience store on that corner!) and see the gigantic mud hole created by Ryan Homes after hundreds of trees were mowed down.
Continue out to Camp Arrowhead Road and see Marsh Farm Estates, aptly named for the increasingly large retention pond with inadequate aeration. Across the road, another mud hole will turn into homes, as well as farther up the road more acreage planned for housing.
Get the facts, take a ride and look around. Imagine the damage to environment, wildlife, and the stressors on all of our infrastructure.
I see and hear many, many voices of concern from groups, from neighborhoods, from longtime residents, from people who retired here for a quiet existence from the mess of other neighboring states. So many discussion sites are dedicated to trying to find words to stop the insane growth. It is time to put the concerns into action.
Write, call, show up to meetings, engage in conversations, start thinking about elections and find candidates who are for making sense, not friendships with developers and wealthy businesses with special interests. If anyone tells you to move if you don’t like the new Sussex County, ask them why they think it is fine to cause this much damage?
Get the facts, take a ride, and look around. Imagine the damage to environment and infrastructure. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. And we are not small!
Rosemary Mirocco
Lewes
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