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Show Volume XIV Issue XIII The Ogden Valley news Page 3 April 1, 2007 Guest Commentaries The Case for a Building Moratorium Calling All Residents Who Love This Valley! lots) assuming that such upzoning would This is a belated reply to the lengthy article in the February 15, 2007 edition of The Ogden Valley news, entitled “Another Inconvenient Truth—The Case for TDR’s.” I have re-read the article many times, hoping each time that I would discover something that I had missed previously that would make both the article and what is happening in this Valley make good sense. It’s not there, and very little makes sense any more. I accept at face value each of the factual assertions in the article, save the estimates in the “primer” at the article’s end, which should be relatively easy to fix and verify one way or the other. If anyone has facts that controvert any of those set forth in the article, I would love to hear or see them— although the stony silence from the developer/builder contingent since publication of the article leads me to believe that the facts are accurate and incontrovertible, and that from the developer point of view, the less said about the article, the better. In that almost a month has elapsed since the article came out, let me reiterate its most salient point, which I suspect either escaped notice, or has been forgotten, or both: the 1998 Carrying Capacity Analysis which is a part of the Ogden Valley General Plan concluded that this Valley will become “saturated” with respect to traffic, water, and waste water at a buildout of about 6,200 dwelling units. Although air was not a part of that analysis, it is easy, for anyone who has seen and breathed the noxious grey-brown clouds that already afflict the Valley between storms, to include air pollution as well. So what did our elected county officials do in 1998 in response to these dire predictions? They wisely “upzoned” from one acre lots to three acre lots (although with very significant numbers of grandfathered more or less cap development in the Valley at the 6,200 dwelling units the Valley could support short of saturation. But they were wrong; they made a mistake. County officials were misinformed or misled about the true number of buildable lots in the Valley—even at three acres. Three acre zoning led not to about 6,200 dwelling units, but to 16,660 dwelling units, even without bonus units routinely granted to developers, which will bring the total well over 17,500—almost THREE TIMES the density correctly calculated to result in gridlock, water pollution, water shortages, and, quite likely, air pollution. The conclusion to all of this, as set forth in the article and as currently underway at all levels of County government, is NOT to rectify the mistake and come back to and work with the 6,200 dwelling unit number, but somehow to accommodate the 17,500 number as if it were the correct one, perpetuate the mistake, and develop and build, and build and develop as fast as we can—through TDR’s or otherwise—to get the Valley to three times its capacity as soon as we can. That’s the part of the article, and of our current “business as usual,” in the Valley that doesn’t make sense. And yet, it’s happening! Our county “planners” and their advisors, whose job it is, at least in part, to make sure things like this don’t happen, appear either blind to or ignorant of the problem. Despite the inescapable conclusion that this Valley is on its way to three times more dwelling units than it can handle—more dwelling units than are in the entirety of Summit County unless something changes—the bureaucratic small minds in Ogden simply say, “Well, mistakes and erroneous assumptions notwithstanding, the rules are MORATORIUM cont. on page 7 There is a time to sit and watch the of 46 homes, and another development up clouds roll by, and there is a time to fight. the old Trapper’s Loop Road. A sewage That time is now! I’m not talking about processing plant was given preliminary physical blows; I’m referring to the fight to approved for these subdivisions at the keep our Valley a rural and beautiful com- last Ogden Valley Planning Commission munity. meeting held earlier in March, but instead If it were proposed to have a toxic of building it for just the proposed Bison waste dump in the center of Ogden Valley, Creek development, Weber County wants everyone would be up in arms to stop the plant to be built to accommodate it, and it would be 750 homes! Since when is stopped. Well, in Weber County in the sewer a sense, it is hapbusiness, and what impact pening right under is a plant of that size really our noses. Slowly going to have? at first, but like a We know that growth steam engine gainis inevitable, and landowning momentum, ers have rights, but they development is also have a responsibility exploding beyond to the environment and to what we thought the current residents. In was possible. It is an effort to make the big becoming toxic to bucks, many developers many Valley resiare exploiting our home, dents and the wildand the very characteristics life that also resides of this valley that are now here. attracting new home buyMany developers; but soon there charers have a vision of acteristics will be nonexthe Valley becomistent—all for the sake of ing the next Park Sandhill cranes feeding in proposed making money. But money City, but most Rivers development in Huntsville. won’t make people happy! locals don’t share I don’t know from my own that vision. As an area grows, uncontrolled experience, but people with money have spread of development can have disastrous told me so. I do know what makes me effects on the environment. We need to happy though: evening walks on quiet minimize urbanization, and ensure preser- streets, chirping birds and rushing streams, vation of our natural resources and open fields of green grass with grazing horses, space. the sights and sounds of cranes flying There are countless developments all overhead, raising my children in the same over the Valley being built, and/or in the peaceful Valley where I grew up. process of becoming approved. On the I am concerned that not enough is being East Huntsville side where I reside, there is done to protect the environment and the the Bison Creek subdivision of a proposed VALLEY cont. on page 7 150 homes, the Rivers cluster subdivision |