Forum: Commissioners want sustainable future

By BEN EMANUEL | Athens Banner-Herald

Raleigh, Austin, New Haven, and most notably New York - these are just a few of the cities that have employed intelligent land planning to protect the watersheds that supply their citizens with drinking water. Why? Because land use practices often affect water quality in a more lasting, thorough way than nearly anything else we do.

If we want good water quality, we must protect the land. Communities all over the country have recognized this in recent decades, and fortunately so has Athens-Clarke County - hence the wide corridor of preserved greenspace along Cook's Trail following Sandy Creek northward from its mouth at the North Oconee River toward Sandy Creek Park and the Jackson County line.

This is one reason that the Banner-Herald's May 20 and May 23 editorials on the topic of sewer infrastructure planning, while logical in a literal sense, struck me as being out of touch with this community's goals and values ("Sewer decision runs counter to A-C charter," "Commissioners need long view on development"). In those editorials, the Banner-Herald's editorial board wrote that the language of the Athens-Clarke County charter should take precedence over the important, widely shared objectives described above.

District 9 Commissioner Kelly Girtz has responded publicly to the newspaper to the effect that he's willing to explore amending the charter to reach consistency on this point. That's a helpful note on Girtz's part in the present debate over the future of the Sandy Creek/ Noketchee Creek basin, and another fact is worth pointing out here too: The service delivery plan update initially presented to Athens-Clarke County commissioners this spring did not attempt literally to "provide water and sewer services to all residents of the county," as the newspaper's editorial board quoted the Athens-Clarke County charter on the topic. Instead, the staff-developed plan sensibly aimed to provide sewer service to areas whose zoning and future land-use designations warrant it.

In other words, this discussion doesn't have to be literally about providing sewer, specifically, to all. It is absolutely about providing services to all - few would say otherwise - and about doing so with many critical goals and an overarching sense of sustainability in mind. It is not clear that all residents in the Sandy/Noketchee basin, currently using septic tanks, would pay to tie in to sewer lines if the lines were extended there - or that they desire the increased traffic, density and property taxes that would come sooner or later with the existence of sewer lines in their neighborhood. As everyone at City Hall has acknowledged, infrastructure almost always determines the face of future development more powerfully than zoning, which is changeable, ever can. This is why the mayor and commission have been commendably cautious about assenting to long-range plans to extend sewer lines into certain areas of the county.

The Sandy Creek basin is home to some of the most extensive and important wetlands in this county. The entire area drains to the North Oconee River just above our primary drinking water intake, and the natural water cleansing that happens in these wetlands is literally of inestimable value to us.

This is about more than just polluted runoff: typical urban or suburban land use wrecks natural hydrology, harming the ability of wetlands to filter and clean water. In addition, the impacts of sewer line construction and maintenance - not to mention eventual leaks and spills from those lines - would cause harm to water bodies, preserved lands and recreational trails. The county has already invested in a green infrastructure of conserved lands in the Sandy Creek basin; it should build on that prior investment rather than undermining it.

The Banner-Herald has accused commissioners of covertly working to limit development in the area under discussion. This has simply not been the case. A majority of commissioners have made very clear that they seek to adjust zoning and future land use designations as a key in sustainable planning for the area. They seek to use appropriate land use planning to protect water resources.

There are other pieces to this puzzle: development of septic tank maintenance regulations to improve the sustainability of those systems; consideration of selectively using public lift stations to serve existing development via the Trail Creek sewer line, and broadening conversation to at least consider other technological options. Past development of dense residential property on septic tanks was certainly a mistake, but the mayor and commission are smart to realize those missteps can't tie their hands in seeking the most sustainable way forward. A multifaceted, flexible approach can most likely determine the best methods of smart planning to protect water supplies while in fact providing services to all.

• Ben Emanuel is coordinator of the Oconee River Project for Altamaha Riverkeeper Inc.