COMMENTARY
Northampton Zoning’s ‘Man Behind the Curtain’

By KEN DUFTY

July 28, 2014

Thank you to the Cape Charles Wave for keeping us all ahead ot the curve regarding the zoning dispute in Northampton County. The complete rezoning of the county into a what several developers hope to be a Disney-like resort retirement destination deserves to be scrutinized, and readers are well-served by the Wave’s reporting.

The million dollar question of who is the “man behind the curtain” orchestrating the plan to completely rezone Northampton County into an industrial, commercial, and resort-style mecca looms ominously heavy on the horizon. And the Board of Supervisors’ “we need to be business friendly” mantra makes us wonder what businesses our protective Comprehensive Plan drove out of the county, and prompts us to wonder what it would be like if the curtain of resource and environmental protection was drawn fully open.

In our quest to answer these questions, we had to do a little digging. And we unearthed a plan in 1992 by PEMSCO to bring 60,000 tons/month of contaminated soil to a 65 acre tract in Cheriton, formerly home of the KMC Food Processing Plant. There the petroleum-soaked soil would be “cleansed” by incineration and “biological processes” so that it could be spread throughout Northampton County and beyond, used in landscaping and road building. But because it required a Special Use Permit, county residents had the chance to learn about it, research it, and oppose it en masse for obvious reasons. It was defeated.

But under the new “business friendly” zoning crafted by Economic Development Director Charles McSwain, this type of use will be allowed “by right” in any agricultural zone. The public will not be notified and no public hearings will be necessary.

In the same year, it was discovered that a local industrial contractor was importing and remediating “contaminated soil” and adding it to his asphalt product, using it in repaving and road projects. Again, once the act was discovered, it was deemed a violation of the county zoning ordinance, and the zoning department issued a “cease and desist” order, giving the owner 90 days to meet “binding contracts” already in place.

Again, under the proposed “business friendly” zoning ordinance, this process would be allowed “by right,” and residents would not know what was happening until they smelled the stinking fumes from the incinerators.

CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE

Around the same time, a so-called “Super Max Prison” was proposed for the then very poor African-American community of Bayview. While the county supervisors were initially supportive of the proposal, through the special use permit process and public hearings, information was brought out by the citizenry that exposed the project as having the potential to be economically and socially devastating for the lower Eastern Shore. In the end, once so enlightened, the supervisors unanimously opposed it.

But the new proposed ordinance allows prisons in agricultural zones, a designation that is proposed to replace “Town Edge Districts” in the current zoning regs.

A more recent example of a business that was discouraged under the current zoning ordinance but will be welcomed by McSwain’s revisions was the 2008 proposal to build a large biodiesel refinery in Exmore. Initially the town thought it was a good idea, as they were only given one side of the equation by the developer. But once the town was educated by informed citizens, it was agreed that the project could fatally harm the business district. The state DEQ was called in, and the project was abandoned.

But Mr. McSwain has crafted an end run on that abandonment, and now “biomass conversion to alternative fuel” is to be allowed “by right” in EVERY zoning district — including residential!

Mr. McSwain bills himself on his personal website and Linkedin as an “industrial and commercial” real estate adviser, and, according to his website makes himself available for “brief outside consultations,” even though we pay him well over $2,000/week. It is time we throw back the curtain, click our heels together, and all work to bring Northampton County “back home” to the protections and transparency that we all worked so hard to put in place.

Submissions to COMMENTARY are welcome on any subject relevant to Cape Charles. Opinions expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily of this publication.