Local regulations, county regulations. The counties are doing it because
[of] the fact that you have drinking water there. As we keep perceiving
that we need to get a good quality drinking water,
[unclear] . If you go and you drive through Carrboro, you see
a lot of multifamily housing. But as soon as you get into the University
Lake watershed, it becomes rural because [the regulations are]
protecting our watershed. It becomes an obligation to the public.
Also, it is important to keep in mind that there have been many court
cases, and the court cases have all demonstrated that any local, state,
or federal organization has responsibility [to protect the watershed].
Whenever they have made a regulation about the use of watershed lands,
to restrict development, they've been sued. This has happened
everywhere. Developers
Page 13 have got a lot of land, and
all of a sudden the county says you can't build what you want. You can't
build a condominium. So they sue. “What you mean we can't? We bought the
land.” Well, if the county wants to restrict the development, the courts
will protect them. They have the right, the powers of the local
government and the powers of the state—these are police powers, the
health and safety powers. This is protecting the health and they're
entitled to do it. We had a big case that's just been decided in
Virginia where they took a watershed area, in northern Virginia, and
rezoned it from two acres to five acres, to protect the water quality.
They were sued, and they won. I had another case in Connecticut where a
water company wanted to sell their land. They owned the land, and they
wanted to sell it for development, and the state wouldn't let them. It
was their obligation. [They were] not allowed to use development because
the health of the people required that it be protected. In other words,
if the county commissioners want to do anything on that watershed that
can be justified as protecting the water quality, they can do it.
If there were no Cane Creek Reservoir, if there was not a drinking water
supply, you could have developments like you have all over. Agriculture
would disappear. With [a reservoir at] Cane Creek, we can preserve
agriculture indefinitely. If agriculture can be preserved, if
agriculture's economically viable, then the reservoir will help preserve
the agricultural nature of that community. If there were no Cane Creek
reservoir, in ten, or fifteen, or twenty years there'd be no agriculture
Page 14 there. They'd all have sold because that land
would become so valuable, and the taxes on it would be so high that the
people would say, “Look,” farming isn't that
[unclear] , “people are leaving the farms.” So they'd sell
the land off to some developer, and you'd have no agriculture at all.
What you'd have is a sprawl. As you go west on 54, it'd be one
continuous development. The development of Cane Creek is protecting the
western entrance to Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. And it will be rural
and agricultural forever. So that if you're concerned with the quality
of community life, with sustaining a farm community and the practices
that go on in that community—whether it's making cheese or butter, or
clog dancing, or whatever it is—it will survive now. If [a reservoir at]
Cane Creek were not built, it would not have survived.
I'll say this. I wouldn't say that in a public meeting but I don't mind,
you may as well know it—some of the people most vociferous against the
Cane Creek reservoir are those who had an economic stake. They owned the
land, and the Cane Creek reservoir is going to keep them from making a
killing of it. I'm not saying that the opposition of the most of the
people wasn't real. They wanted to preserve their community.
I'm really the most troubled of all by the Stanford family. They're the
ones on the site. They had to give up, they were the ones that were
completely displaced. What bothered them—they were willing to sell right
at the beginning—what bothered them was extending this battle, not
knowing which way it would go. They couldn't make an investment in their
farm because they
Page 15 didn't know whether they would
have it long. So they went through 10-12 years of uncertainty. Well, for
them that was unbearable, but that wasn't the fault of the project. If
the project had gone ahead, if there hadn't been all of these questions,
they'd know right off the bat. There would have been no problem for
them. But so far as that community is concerned, if that community wants
to be sustained, it'll still have every reason to be sustained. It'll
still be attractive for development, but not nearly the intensity. And
it won't be of the high value, so that those who want to keep it can
still keep it.
I live right out here, not far, not on the watershed. There are some
farms between Chapel Hill and where I live. I live about a mile south of
town, not yet in Chatham County. The farmer there is keeping it as a
farm. But one of these days he's going to sell it to a developer, and
we're going to have intensive development. That farmer's not going to be
able to last, and I don't expect it to last. The only way you can get it
to last is to have the activities reinforce each other. The agriculture
reinforces. . . .