Small Town News

All is fair in love and war and politics

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They say that all is fair in love and war. Obviously it can be taken one step beyond that as well. Add politics to the list. Last week a letter came into the office. It was a copy of a letter sent from Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Chief of Planning Lee Ann Walling to Sussex County Council President Vance Phillips. The letter focused primarily on concerns about the proposed Village Centre project relative to the City of Lewes well field. There were many problems witii the letter. It came in well after the official record on the project was closed and raised a number of issues that had already been addressed by the applicants during the course of the lengthy and exhaustive public hearings. In fact, anyone listening closely at the public hearings - including state officials, had they attended - could have easily concluded tiiat Lewes's well field and total water supply would actually be improved by the project. The applicants testified that an irrigation system currently serving the proposed site uses, annually, about 30 million gallons of water drawn from the same source as Lewes's water. Lewes, they said, uses about four million gallons each year. If the Village Centre were built, the irrigation system would be removed - thus making all that water available for human consumption. Also removed would be the nutrients, herbicides and pesticides normally used in grain production

Walling's letter was also misinformed on the amounts of impervious surface planned in the project and use of green technologies to protect the environment.

The state's credibility took a serious hit with the composition and mailing of the letter. If anything, the state should have sent a letter applauding the applicants for the many green and best management practices incorporated in the proposed project. The good news is tiiat the applicants responded to concerns raised during the Preliminary Land Use Survey process. The bad news is that the PLUS process included an original "no objection" comment on the project when it should have remained neutral while awaiting responses to the many traffic and environmental issues raised during the original review. DNREC should not have allowed itself to be drawn into this political battle at this late hour and especially with such weak material. If any state agency should have sent a letter expressing concerns it should have been DelDOT because of the legitimate concerns about the adequacy of Kings Highway to handle the greatly increased traffic load projected by the proposal.

Politics and another letter

Everything's connected and everything, therefore, is political. At Wednesday's annual Today and Tomorrow Conference hosted and sponsored by Del Tech, former Sussex County Administrator Joe Conaway, as politically well connected as anyone in Sussex County, approached me during a break. He started the conversation with full disclosure about his relationship with the Village Centre. "I am working with LT Associates as a consultant," said Conaway. He went on to ask about our policy on running letters to the editor. I assured him that we run all legitimate letters on subjects such as the Village Centre, pro and con, as long as we think the letters are fair opinion, are authentic in terms of authorship and don't violate our sense of mean-spiritedness. Ideally, all of the letters we publish advance the discussion, though that isn't always the case. Somewant my children to have the opportunity to find gainful employment in the place we call home as opposed to leaving after high school and never returning such as so many college-bound Sussex Countians do.

Casey Kenton Rehoboth Beach





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