Proposed development riles residents
Subdivision, water treatment plant on Mainland Planning Commission's agenda

May 3, 2005
By DAVID ROYER
The Brunswick News

Homeowners in a Brookman neighborhood are fighting to fend off a proposed development that could put a water treatment plant in their front yards and hundreds of homes on a soggy stand of pines and marsh grass.

"We're drawing the line right here," said James Holland, leader of the Altamaha Riverkeeper, a regional environmental organization. "This is the line in the sand."

Holland is joining more than 40 neighbors on an isolated stretch of Ratcliffe Road next to Ratcliffe Creek opposing a proposed development on 123 acres of pine-forested bottomland.

Plans by developers with Wis-A-Wis Partners call for a 120 single-family lots on the site, with a package water treatment plant 12 feet tall and 36 feet long built to serve the subdivision.

The plant would allow developers to reduce lot sizes and pack more houses onto the property, which will not be served by county sewers for several years.

A boat storage facility may also front Ratcliffe Road under the site plan proposal.

Developers hope to get the site rezoned from Forest-Agriculture to Planned Development by the Mainland Planning Commission today.

But neighbors and environmental groups are speaking up, and some county staff members say they have some serious concerns about the site.

Planners with the county's Community Development Department recommended against approval in a recent staff report, citing concerns over the adverse effect the development might have on the surrounding neighborhood.

According to the report, the relatively dense residential component, along with the water treatment plant and boat storage facility, may be considered "too intense and premature, given the limitations of the area."

The recommendation gives hope to worried neighbors, most of whom live on lots of several acres around the proposed subdivision.

Gary Cross lives on a waterfront lot across a small gravel road from the proposed water treatment plant. He knew development was coming, he said, but he did not know it would look like this.

"If we wanted to live in the city, we would have been in the city," Cross said.

Barbara Miller lives on the west side of the development. A stream connects the two properties; Miller said she fears the homes and roads will push floodwaters onto her low-lying homestead.
Holland said the whole area is too low-lying to support high-density home sites, and its soils too porous to hold run-off and prevent flooding.

Though site plans show mostly isolated pockets of wetland on the site, Holland said aerial photos and county maps make it clear that much of the site is swampy and unsuitable for development.

"It's all flood land, it's all swamp," he said. "Just because they've got a pine tree on them doesn't mean they aren't wetlands."

Perry Fields, a former planning commissioner who is acting as the agent for the developers, said the property's owners are within their rights to build the development under current zoning codes.

Since water and sewer lines will not be installed by the county for several years, a centralized community system is the best way to go for the development.

"The neighbors are concerned, and I appreciate their concern," Fields said. "Nobody likes the future when they don't have any control over it."

But whether or not the current plans are approved, neighbors will have to get used to the sight of new houses along the lonesome back road, more than a mile from busy U.S. Highway 82.

"Some project will be approved," Fields said. "Whether or not it will be this one, I don't know."