Sussex County has been a booming area for development. But now there is pushback from local residents. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz has this look at the conflict that is now arising and the recommendations of a working group. The full version of the story can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: Anyone driving from the bay to the Delaware beaches can see that Sussex County has become a victim of its own success. Once a picture of forest farms, wetlands and beaches, Delaware's fastest growing county is rapidly developing into a tableau of suburban housing developments, malls, and the traffic that goes with them. Urban sprawl and the loss of open space had become a hot political topic. Delmarva Public Media's, Kevin Diaz has this report.
DIAZ: When Jill Hicks and her husband Bill moved into a house outside Lewes 10 years ago, it backed up against 150 acres of woods and wetlands, an idyllic place to retire. But three years later, a developer purchased the land for a large housing development. The Hicks fought the development, but lost. The tract is now at the site of 304 new houses.
HICKS: At that point, that's when I realized it's the land use codes that are really inadequate. If we want clean air and we want clean water, these land use codes are not going to give that, [and are not] going to provide those protections.
DIAZ: So Hicks has joined with other like-minded residents to raise the alarm about what they see as runaway development, especially on the eastern side of the county, and that's how the Sussex Preservation Coalition came to be. Amid growing concerns about overdevelopment, traffic, and loss of open space, three new members were elected to the five member County council last year on a stop sprawl platform. There was even talk about a temporary moratorium on building. It didn't succeed, but the new council felt the pressure. The result was a working group of stakeholders, including conservationists, farmers, and yes: developers. Their task was to look at ways to better regulate growth. Hicks represented the coalition on the working group.
HICKS: All of that contributed to county council saying: You know what? Let's get the stakeholders together and see if we can come up with some recommendations on how to proceed with land use reform.
DIAZ: After nearly a year of meetings, the working group released a set of 20 recommendations in September to check sprawl. There should be better boundaries on growth in conservation areas, clear zoning standards, incentives to preserve open space and forests and smarter, more sustainable development aligned with transportation investments. But the pressure is coming from all sides, including from a vast migration of retirees and others attracted to Delaware's beaches, proximity to cities, and low taxes.
FUQUA: In 2022, 78% of all residential growth in the state of Delaware was in Sussex County. More than 33,000 people have moved to Sussex County from other states over the past four years, and this migration is expected to keep rising for the next three decades.
DIAZ: That's Jim Fuqua, an attorney for the contested Cool Springs Crossing development, which would cite 1,922 residential units and a commercial center on 637 acres of farm and Forestland west of Lewes on Route nine.
FUQUA: So the question that you're already dealing with is how are the county and developers going to address these issues?
DIAZ: Fuqua spoke at a hearing earlier this month that was attended by more than 130 residents, many in opposition to the proposed development. Among them was Alison White, a resident of Lewes, who has studied the county's housing data.
WHITE: The overriding takeaway is the magnitude of population growth that these developments already in the pipeline represent. 14,010 new homes using the standard Sussex County multiplier of 2.38 people per home gives 33,344 new residents; a 12.3% increase in the current Sussex population.
DIAZ: Like others in Sussex County, White questioned whether the current rate of growth is sustainable.
WHITE: We're already in crisis mode on an ongoing basis. Population growth brought by unchecked development in Sussex is exceeding available capacity of finite, natural, and municipal resources. The freight train headed for Sussex is already roaring through and it's not just bringing traffic and it's not just on Route nine. The longer we wait to apply the brakes, the worse the effects of resource overuse will get. We don't want to stop the train, but we need to get control of it.
DIAZ: With the county now embarking on a new comprehensive plan, there's guarded hope that Sussex County can get development under control. But it remains to be seen how the council will respond to the working group's land reform ideas. For Delmarva Republic Media, this is Kevin Diaz in Georgetown, Delaware.
