LAND USE IN CHADDS FORD
The current Township Comprehensive Plan (1973!!!) includes in its preamble the following statements:
· The Township is an area poorly suited for intensive development of any type but well suited for preservation of open space
· The natural scenic and historic values of the Township should be respected
· Commercial development should be strictly regulated to avoid the sort of “strip sprawl” now springing up on Route 202. Large deep lots, well screened with ample parking should be required. Curb cuts on 202 should be discouraged. Automotive and highway oriented uses generally should be avoided in favor of standard office and laboratory use
One wonders how many members of the current Township administration have actually read this document (see more extensive excerpts below). The current Toll Brothers project and its associated “socialized” sewer system is a good example of the Township eating its own seed corn by gobbling up “Protected Open Space” for a short term solution. Toll Brothers is not subsidizing the sewer Plan [they will never start a project unless they are assured of their desired return on investment]. What is happening is that the Township’s residents, such as myself, who pay for their own sewage disposal, are subsidizing the minority by bartering loss of open space, runaway development and a lowered quality of life for limited financial help.
Since the vast majority of us pay for all our own sewer charges, it is reasonable that the users of the new sewer system pay for theirs. The problem with the current Ridings Plant is that there is no mechanism for the future users to pay their fair share (or, alternatively, that the plant is too big). In a properly planned community the full set of sewer users required to absorb the capacity would be known and a fiscally responsible Township would set up a fund, paid down over time, such that ALL users of the system (now and in the future) paid their fair share.
The fact that direct Township taxes are the lowest in the area is not a badge of courage; it is a mark of fiscal irresponsibility (while at the same time we are subject to exorbitant School and County taxes). As a result the Township has no significant funds to manage its business and has to go begging to people like Toll Brothers. As a famous diarist said, in a different context, what we are dealing with here is the “costliness of poverty”. There is a welcoming flag to outside interests on the Township Building saying “Our Township is Open for Fiscal and Environmental Desecration”. One has only to listen to some of the hypocritical speeches at Township meetings along the lines of “Well, reform was attempted before but it was rejected by the residents”. Of course the vast majority of residents were quite unaware of what was going on and the proposals were in fact largely defeated by people who are members of the current Township administration. It is highly likely that this will happen again with the present belated and anemic attempts at reform. The stock answer the administration gives to this kind of criticism is that people should attend Township meetings (3000 people in a room that holds 50?). If one were really interested in the finding out what the residents want, the idea of a survey would seem to be obvious. However, it does not take a rocket scientist to predict what the results would be – for those who are not about to sell their property or who are not tied into the local business community (i. e. most of the residents of the Township) the top issue would be preservation of open space and the character of the Township (just as it has been shown to be in Kennett and Pennsbury).
People in the Township administration who want genuine reform to preserve open space, streams and well water are essentially being taken for a ride by the Toll Brothers/Sewer proposal, a proposal that will end up with a developer’s free for all on Route 1. Once the sewer is in, it is only a matter of time before Route 1 is turned into a strip mall like Route 202. We already hear the whining at the Planning Committee meetings concerning the Route 1 Corridor Plan – “We can’t possibly defend this in court”. There is a systematic attempt underway to gut even the current modest proposals
The Township should enlist knowledgeable and appropriately aggressive legal and land management help to defend our environment and not simply sit there wringing their hands and caving in. These experts should be from independent organizations such as trusts and/or from outside the Township. Currently there are too many foxes guarding the chicken coupe. Of course, the response will be “We do not have the money to pay for outside professional help”, which gets us back to the “costliness of poverty” – the fiscal starvation of the Township government, Texas style, to prevent it from doing anything.
Growth until recently has been relatively well managed; the situation of the last few years is a radical change for the worse. It is clear what the five bedroom McMansions and the Condominiums will do to the local scene. Toll Brothers may add a huge 10 – 15% to the Township population, but that is only the beginning. The land giveaway program that the Supervisors are presiding over will result, eventually, in doubling or tripling of the number of Township residents. Atwater Road, a small secluded community, is well on its way to tripling its population while its infrastructure is being destroyed. If the Township were reasonably taxed and/or developed creative approaches to land acquisition, as appears to have been the case in the Kennett acquisition of the Arnold property, it could have purchased the Camp Sunset property itself.
To illustrate the hole that we have dug ourselves into, we only have to look in more detail at the Comprehensive Plan mentioned in my introduction. Relative to our current situation it reads like something written by a visitor from outer space (the italics are mine):
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INTRODUCTION
Chadds Ford Township, long protected by its remote location in the extreme western corner of Delaware County, is no longer safe from the intense developmental pressures that have already been experienced in most of the County. Some years of quiet yet remain. But it is the tense calm before the storm. Partially due to the rugged nature of the terrain and partially due to the current national economic outlook, Chadds Ford has now a last breathing space. If intelligent, forceful action is not started immediately, much of that which is worthy of preservation in Chadds Ford will inevitably be lost. Left to itself, Chadds Ford will develop in the following way:
Baltimore Pike will become a swath of strip commercial use similar to that along sections of Route 202. The highway will become unsafe, unbeautiful and traffic‑logged. Subdivisions will spring up in haphazard fashion throughout the Township. These developments will be expensive to service and will require excessive automobile usage. As taxes go up and the beauty and convenience of living in the area diminishes, large land holdings, often viewed as a permanent, quasi‑public resources, will be sold by their owners to persons whose goal is profitable development. But this need not happen. Much has been learned in the past decade or two about what not to do in developing a township and fortunately, development pressures in Chadds Ford, though increasing, are still gentle enough to be contained and guided in hopeful new directions. This plan suggests such directions.
PARKS RECREATION
There are several public and semi‑public facilities located in the Township. Among these are the Brandywine Battlefield State Park, Camp Sunset Hill, and the Brandywine River Museum. Consideration should be given to acquiring additional areas while land prices remain relatively low.
STREAM VALLEY PROTECTION
Township building regulations should so restrain development on the steep slopes of stream valleys as to prevent erosion and siltation and preserve the natural beauty of the land
Ultimately such a system of preserved flood plains and valley walls can act to connect various other open spaces in the Township providing a valuable public recreational resource. It will, in addition, forestall those losses to life and property that occur when these critical areas are misused.
EXISTING, ZONING, LAND USE
Approximately 61% of Chadds Ford's land is at present unused for any purpose. Of this vacant area (3440 acres), only a portion is suited for development, due to the many areas of excessively steep slope, poor subsoil conditions and lack of potential for utility expansion. The major area suitable for development lies along the eastern edge of the Township. These lands generally border Route 202 and drain into the Chester Creek watershed. The remainder of the Township, which drains into Brandywine Creek, is so completely cut with excessive slopes and underlain with poor sub‑soil structure as well as so rich in historic and scenic value as to relegate intensive development to the status of a carefully planned and secondary use of the land
UTILITIES
The pattern of the County's sewer extension has been largely determined by the County Sewerage Facilities Plan of 1971. With the exception of areas within the Chester Creek watershed, no additional County facilities for Chadds Ford Township are foreseen in the next 15 years. The Township is itself exploring the possibility of a package treatment plant. This plant would be located in the Chadds Ford area, where some pollution has already occurred. Intensive development outside this area would require additional package plants, since the capacity of Chadds Ford's soils to accept untreated waste is limited. The range of suitable sites for such plants is constrained, however, by the need for a strong stream to act as a dilution resource for the treated effluent discharged by the plant. Thus, care should be taken that land development not be of a pattern that either will needlessly increase the installation cost of these future utilities or precipitate their premature and uneconomic installation.
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Outstanding, well meaning individuals, who understand the problem, serve the Township now and have done so in the past. They represent, however, a very small minority. Typically, in a situation of this type, there are many others who are well meaning but do not understand the problem and there are still other reactionary vandals who wish to exacerbate the problem and who tend to be the most active, vocal and unprincipled. A history that proceeds from the 1973 Comprehensive Plan to the present situation can only be explained by basically the same kind of administration at all times, watching out for business and not listening to the residents – what one is looking at is a “tyranny of custom”. State Law requires that the Comprehensive Plan be re-visited every ten years. Of course, if you’re not paying any attention to the Plan you already have, why bother to re-visit it; that, however, appears to be in violation of the law.
The new people who are attracted to Chadds Ford buy here because of the cachet of its address and because of its reputation as a little piece of rural heaven on the edge of the wasteland of northern Wilmington. The 1973 Comprehensive Plan describes Camp Sunset as Protected Open Space. To paraphrase Churchill: Some Protection! Some Open Space! What is currently happening is that the Supervisors are encouraging the selling of our heritage in a manner that assures Chadds Ford of becoming just another piece of urban sprawl, while developers are getting top dollar by pretending that Chadds Ford is still the same historic rural village that it has always been.
Peter Jesson