Development moratorium: Do we need one?

We talked here yesterday briefly about the New Hope for Durham citizen's group and its interest in trying to persuade Durham leaders to slow or stop growth in the Bull City until local leaders can "organize plans for the schools, traffic and water" demanded by growth.

(Their concerns are coming to a head around a planned multi-unit development near Mark Jacobson Toyota on Garrett Rd. (map) A correction from yesterday: today's Council meeting is a work session, not the public hearing on the necessary re-zoning, so New Hope for Durham won't be presenting at today's meeting, though they may be in attendance.)

The New Hope folks point out that other communities in the area have implemented growth-slowing or growth-halting provisions in some cases. Notably, Chatham County recently took some steps in this direction. Does the same approach make sense for Durham?

I'm not sure it does. First, let's start with some of the circumstances that led Chatham Co. to its decision, as summed up in this excellent Daily Tar Heel article:

• Chatham's population has grown by 55% since 1990, far outpacing Durham Co.'s roughly 35% growth in the same period.
• Chatham lacks a sewage/wastewater system, relying on septic tanks and, in turn, creating possible environmental problems for Jordan Lake, which of course serves as a major source of drinking water for the region.
• The county's schools are bursting at the seams and aren't ready for the influx of as many as 15,000 new houses that could be pending construction, according to one estimate.

Still, Chatham's development pause only applies to subdivisions over 25 houses, and is just a one-year pause.

Chatham's concerns are in many ways perfectly understandable; this is a recently-rural county facing the shock of waves and waves of growth coming in, without the municipal services infrastructure to support so many new residents. And with the this week's defeat of the transfer tax option in Chatham as a funding source for schools, there's more reason than ever to go slowly with growth.

Durham, on the other hand, has the infrastructure necessary to be capable, at a base level, of supporting some growth. Which leads to the second question: are Durham's roads, water and school infrastructure so taxed as to require a constriction of growth?

Water, of course, is an immediate-term concern with the extraordinary drought under which much of our state finds itself. Restrictions on growth are therefore a natural immediate reaction to water supply challenges, but in many ways, the timing doesn't match up. Development plans approved today lead to new residential units one to two years down the road; frankly, if we don't have the drought broken by then, it won't really matter if those new houses are there or not, as the incremental change in water units from whatever growth could happen in that period of time wouldn't make any real, significant difference in water resource availability.

Assuming something approaching normal rainfall, as we've discussed here, Durham has been relatively forward-thinking in creating extra water reservoirs for growth -- and is in the midst of planning for the addition of Teer Quarry, which will add up to 2 billion gallons of water storage in a few years' time.

On to the roads perspective: This is one of the tougher ones for me to come on board as a concern. The entire CMSA (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary) has seen traffic congestion grow as the region has gotten bigger, though average congestion still runs about one-third to one-half the level in major cities like Atlanta and L.A.

The first reaction to that comparison from most readers is naturally, "Well, of course we don't want to be come another Atlanta!" And I agree, wholeheartedly. But let's look at the points of traffic congestion in Durham. Frankly, there are few -- North Durham-bound traffic on Roxboro Rd. in the evenings, the Duke/VA complex at shift changes, and parts of 15-501 at rush hour or, even worse, basketball game nights excepted.

The congestion challenges in the Triangle are, to this observer, largely due to the fact that most residential growth is happening in Wake Co., while so much of the employment base is disproportionately housed in Durham. The people who struggle with the most significant traffic issues are our friends and neighbors to our southeast, jamming the freeways to get to RTP, Duke and so forth each day.

To that extent, future residential growth in Durham is actually a beneficial thing from a regional perspective, reducing the average commute length, cutting down on gas use and relieving pressures on roads. There'll always be some nutjob who really wants to commute from Zebulon to their job at RTP (perhaps because they can't abide the idea of living in a diverse, progressive city), but as Durham's reality and image both continue to improve, we should be seeing more individuals wanting to live in the Bull City, not fewer.

It's also worth keeping in mind that road congestion is literally out of the City and County's hands in many ways, since NCDOT controls a huge road network and is responsible for funding and maintaining it; this is in clear contrast to most states, where counties are responsible for most roads. Frankly, it would make a lot of sense to revert both the responsibility and much of the funding for roads back to the county level (from which they were absorbed in the 1930s), creating a real incentive for counties to either grow in a smart way or pay the price (literally) of new road construction and road widening.

As for schools, it's clear from the recent bond issue that there are investment needs in our schools -- and that those needs are well-met through ongoing support of school bonds, which the County government has generally done a good job managing prudently.

Are our schools exploding? No. In 2006-07, the Durham public school system grew by 400 students. To put that in perspective, for every new student enrolled in the DPS system, 19 new students enrolled in Wake County. Unlike our Wake neighbors, we're not struggling with massive school growth, portable classrooms, and year-round school fights. There are pockets of the DPS system (as in some of South Durham) that have faced enrollment challenges, but it's by no means a ubiquitous issue.

To a great extent, Durham schools suffer from a reputational issue that, frankly, deters many families from enrolling their students in the system, due to lower aggregate test scores. We've discussed that here until we're blue in the face -- Durham's students perform as well or better than our neighboring counties' do within their demographic group, but Durham has a very different balance of population than Wake and Orange do, which makes averages skewed. This is a national embarrassment, not a Durham one... but in an age of No Child Left Behind and omnipresent helicopter parents anxious to make sure their little ones enjoy every advantage, parents are shopping for schools like they'd find a hotel room on Orbitz, and they're not digging beyond the bottom line to learn more.

To the extent that thoughtful residential growth adds a diverse middle-class population to the city -- something we're seeing in South Durham, for instance -- we help restore a balance in the school system and eliminate the source of much of the misconception about the Bull City.

. . .

Just because a moratorium on growth might not be the right answer, does that mean Durham should emulate Wake County's free-form growth and encourage more cul de sac-oriented subdivisions? Hardly.

The kind of residential growth I'd like to see more of in the Bull City takes the form you're seeing down at Davis Park at the corner of Davis & Hopson Rds. -- a model of how growth can be more sustainable. Davis Park consists of row houses, lofts and condos on the very edge of RTP. And, according to a broker there, sales have been extremely robust even in a down real estate market in the region. The idea is simple: Build residential units in denser concentrations close to an employment site, limiting automobile distances traveled or encouraging bike access to work; create mixed-use to cut down on car trips via services within the community.

Similarly, this ability to have positive growth through denser growth is one of the most exciting things to me about downtown Durham's potential. When West Village phase II comes online and with additions at American Tobacco and Greenfire properties, we'll be approaching 1,000 residential units in the downtown area. Many of these residents will work at twin ends of the Durham Freeway, Duke and RTP, giving them short commutes in the day that are easily
transit-accessible if desired.

And to be sure, we need to encourage development and redevelopment, of both affordable and market-rate housing, in the parts of Durham's urban core that have not experienced revitalization in the wake of the Bull City's renaissance. If you want to talk about sustainable growth opportunities, take a look at the renewal in Greensboro we discussed here recently -- and ask our newly re-elected mayor and councilfolk why we don't have property receivership programs, or a Neighborhood Improvement Services department committed to innovative solutions to breathe new life into decaying homes and blocks, not simply subcontracting the work out to bulldozer companies to leave vacant lots behind.

We should be demanding smart growth. But it makes no sense to demand a halt to growth -- to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. Durham is a great place to live, and the Triangle is a great region in which to live. Those of us who've moved to the area have done so because we see the potential of so much good in this place.

I'm actually disheartened by the example in Cary, where well-meaning concerns over that "Town's" rapid growth have found their greatest impact not in slowing poorly-planned single-family home subdivisions, but in a mistrust of bringing in more mixed-use developments, or the disdain over the discussions last year by town leaders of increasing density and following an Arlington, Va. model of growth. It's fine to want to put a halt on growth, but as the Cary example has shown, so much of that opposition there has focused on stopping precisely those kinds of growth that are most compatible with a more sustainable, more urban development pattern.

We should keep in mind that Durham's relative urbanity is, as we've looked at before with in-migration trends, an apparent factor in what leads people to choose the Bull City over the more suburban Wake County. We should make sure that Durham continues to welcome new residents who are seeking a progressive and diverse community to call home. If Durham continues to attract new residents seeking a more urban lifestyle, we continue in turn to build a market and demand for smarter growth options.

And it's always worth remembering that, in a state where impact fees are widely verboten to help pay for growth, increasing the local tax base is one of the few avenues to meeting increased demands for governmental services. Durham has a tremendous number of properties that don't help pay for such services -- from the large, and largely tax-exempt, universities and hospitals, to tax-advantaged RTP, to urban core neighborhoods containing distressed, low-value properties. Durham's tax rates are higher as a result, though many residents don't immediately make the connection. Done right, growth moves us into a more financially sustainable position as well.

In short, we should insist our elected leaders find ways to support smart growth. But halting all residential growth seems to be the wrong solution.

Comments

[barry]

Kevin writes:
"Assuming something approaching normal rainfall, as we've discussed here, Durham has been relatively forward-thinking in creating extra water reservoirs for growth -- and is in the midst of planning for the addition of Teer Quarry, which will add up to 2 billion gallons of water storage in a few years' time."

i just want to point out that, at our current, drought induced conservation minded levels of consumption, the Teer Quarry only brings an additional 30 days of storage capacity online. And as i noted at my place, Lim wise points out that 30 years ago, water levels at Lake Michie were significantly lower than they are today. What this tells me, couple with the fact that we've been in drought conditions about 3 other times over the past decade, is that the rainfall patterns we've been experiencing this year are not freaks, but something that recurs on a fairly regular basis.

A moratorium on new development may not be called for, but we'd be foolish not to be talking about it as one option. Faced with that alternative, perhaps the development community, the environmental community, the economic development community, and our political leadership would be able to come up with a plan that avoids the Atlanta outcome.

[Bull City Rising]

Barry -- If the rainfall patterns truly are shifting in ways that are changing the recharge we can expect in our reservoirs, etc., then there absolutely will need to be a state-level or regional-level issue that will involve creative solutions like desalination, massive change to the green-grass obsession, etc.

However, from a moratorium perspective, looking at that from a Durham-only perspective doesn't make sense because we're the least growth-impacted part of the Triangle. A regional or state approach is really the right solution.

In terms of water, something worth remembering. Before the call for conservation, Durham was using in the order of 30 MGD (million gallons per day). Total current capacity is 37 MGD in the two current reservoirs. However, Durham can also pull 10 MGD from Jordan Lake by right, and capital improvement plans call for Lake Michie expansion and the Teer Quarry to together add 33 MGD more capacity.

That brings us, after a decade-plus investment period, to capacity of 80 MGD. Projected 2025 water usage is 48.5 MGD for Durham.

Heck, perhaps we can figure out a way to sell our extra water to Wake County in lieu of tax hikes.

[Michael Bacon]

In truth, we're already selling our water to Wake County. How much of Falls Lake is in Durham County?

I think we're a long way from desalinization here. We say we have water problems, but they're really nothing at all compared to what they face out west. Our biggest problem is that years of ridiculous surpluses of water mean that we do an awful lot of things that much dryer areas wouldn't dream of doing. For instance, we're just now getting wastewater reuse systems in place. We still have people with enormous lawns of the most water-intensive grasses out there who are just now realizing they can't water them whenever they want in a drought. Heck, if we could just hook up all the golf courses, college campuses, and artificial turf fields (I still can't believe that one) to treated wastewater, we'd make quite a big dent in our demand.

But on the subject of roads, the reason why Durham doesn't have the traffic problems of Wake, but why we still need to think carefully about growth, is that our road network is ridiculously overbuilt. Because of the Great Leap South I've talked about before, we extended tons of high capacity roads through areas where no one was living. South Durham is only now starting to fill all of that in. The flip side, of course, is that our road maintenance budget has gone through the roof.

The biggest moratorium we need is on any new city road that will have a net increase in vehicle miles traveled (VMT). There are a bunch of holes in the grid that still need to be plugged, like the long lost S. Roxboro Rd. connector, but other than that, we need to quit building and get busy resurfacing.

[barry]

Kevin - i'm not saying our rainfall patterns are changing. in fact, just the opposite. That a drought year every few years is probably normal for the region. Our demand for water has changed, and more than our ability to store surplus water.

Agreed that the solution is regional, and not municipal. The solution may even be statewide, or multi-state. Capturing much more of the rainfall (and snowmelt) in the mountains than we currently do, and realeasing it more efficiently. The western states may currently be in worse shape than us 9i don't actually think that's the case in a big picutre sense), but they are serving a larger population with less rainfall because they'v ebeen forced to bemore efficient at capturing, storing, and releasing what water does fall.

[B.C.Visitor]

>> A moratorium on new development may not be called
>> for, but we'd be foolish not to be talking about
>> it as one option. Faced with that alternative,
>> perhaps the development community, the
>> environmental community, the economic development
>> community, and our political leadership would be
>> able to come up with a plan that avoids the
>> Atlanta outcome.

Completely agree. More importantly, we must now be assessing the city resources currently available to us and figure out how much more growth can be sustained so that there is more of a planned moratorium once we begin to exceed our sustainable threshold (taking, also, into account planned depletion or improvement of those resources).

>> However, from a moratorium perspective, looking
>> at that from a Durham-only perspective doesn't
>> make sense because we're the least growth-impacted
>> part of the Triangle. A regional or state approach
>> is really the right solution.

Though I would add that being the least growth-impacted doesn't necessarily mean that we haven't already exceeded our ability to sustain new development. Certainly the city must look into it's infrastructure and see how well it's supporting the status quo. Then look at how development can help improve Durham's financial situation while balancing that against sustainability. If Durham is not managing their current resources well enough now, how are they going to manage it with more development demands?

>> ...We should make sure that Durham continues to
>> welcome new residents who are seeking a
>> progressive and diverse community to call home. If
>> Durham continues to attract new residents seeking
>> a more urban lifestyle, we continue in turn to
>> build a market and demand for smarter growth
>> options.

>> ...Durham has a tremendous number of properties
>> that don't help pay for such services....

>> ...Durham's tax rates are higher as a result,
>> though many residents don't immediately make the
>> connection. Done right, growth moves us into a
>> more financially sustainable position as well.

>> ...In short, we should insist our elected leaders
>> find ways to support smart growth. But halting all
>> residential growth seems to be the wrong solution.

So well said and spot on! I applaud your analysis.

[seth vidal]

I liked some of the policies I've read about out in portland, or. housing development outside of the city are required to have > 2 acres per single family home. So you don't end up with large suburban tracts in .5 or smaller lots.

It force people to build up around the city and encourages the things that higher density in a city brings.

-sv

[B.C.Visitor]

Seth, interesting that you point out Portland. They're making some great efforts there regarding revitalization, mixed used development and implementing some terrific housing programs. I'd like to see some of what they are doing implemented here in Durham.

[bk]

Appreciate this blog and, in particular, this thread. I live in SE Durham County near the Wake county line and within a 1/2 mile of a (voluntary) agricultural district. In the last 5 years I've definitely seen a tremendous explosion of growth in this area of the county, particularly with the Brier Creek spillover. Recently I called the Zoning office about a posted sign along Leesville Road and learned that MacGregor Development Group (yes, of Cary) has bought land and has plans (zoning approved) to build 1,000 single family homes. No doubt given the large swaths of land in this area and its proximity to RTP there is more to come (Brighleaf got a good foothold along Hwy. 70). My biggest concern, especially in light of the current water crisis, is whether or not the county and city can sustain this level of development without having adequate infrastructure, or plans in place to support this kind of growt? How many projects are out there that we know little to nothing about (yet) that will challenge the infrastructure? Are schools in South Durham ready for an influx of kids from 1000+ units? And lets not get started about the serious lack of attention paid to this area by TTA, DATA etc., despite the high number of RTP commuters. I don't think Durham County is ready for this...so, yes, I think we need a moratorium or some kind of policy to allow for smarter, more managed growth, particularly in the southeastern part of the county.

[claire Jentsch]

About the Water situation in Durham, and all areas that rely on Jordan Lake Reservoir: the reservoir has been on the EPA's impaired water list for over three years. It is estimated that it will cost 1.2 billion dollars from Durham alone to purify the water to standard over the next 25 years. If we do not have increase in building and population, that is. Then the price goes up.
We should be concerned about further polluting the waters that flow into the Reservoir. Roads, parking lots, buildings create the impervious surfaces that further endanger the supply. Right now the Cape Fear Standards for Water Quality are being discussed - there are not up to date guidelines. Shouldn't development wait for the new rules?
I do not consider myself an alarmist, but even without this drought we are in trouble. With the drought we are given further reason to use Planning to prepare for the future and to take care of the present.
So for our precious but not protected resource, water, we ought to slow down development.

[claire Jentsch]

To All,
This Forum of BullCityRising is very special. So many ideas and viewpoints are given the opportunity to be shared.
Reading and contributing to the topic of Development in Durham and its water situation, more than ever I think it is time for citizens and elected officials to step back and figure out what is going on. We know Jordan Lake is on EPA's Impaired Water List, we know we are in a drought, we know we sold water to Wake, we know we have had lead in our water, we know we need to restrict our water use, we know many counties need Jordan Lake Reservoir, we know impervious waters surfaces further pollute water. We know that new roads and complexes are in the works. Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?
On MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19 at 7 p.m. the City Council will be voting on a Rezoning Request. Many citizens will attend to seek denial of this Rezoning which is asking to build 308 units on property currently zoned for 135.
The effects of such an increase certainly has large consequences on a wide area, beyond Durham.
Please attend on November 19. Sign up to speak if you wish. Numbers are drastically important. Please help to set a Precedent for the City to slow down, if not stop for awhile, making Plans before the whole picture(schools, water, greenery, etc)is evaluated. It is empowering and responsible and fun to join a citizen group making its voice heard for the good of the Community.
Any questions can be emailed to newhopefordurham@yahoo.com. Also emailing the Council Members with your opinion is great - bill.bell@durhamnc.gov.