Monday, July 9, 2018

Shrinking the Rural Crescent

Prince William County is engaged in revising the sections of the Comprehensive Plan that pertain to the Rural Preservation Study and the Infrastructure and Facilities plan. According to the Kim Hosen Executive Director of the Prince William Conservation Alliance under consideration is changing the boundaries of the Rural Crescent to reduce its size in response to the Rural Preservation Study prepared  for the county in 2014 .

It is often believed that when you own land you can do what you want with the land, but that is not true. We have zoning and the county has a comprehensive plan to guide land use and development decisions. It is not in the public interest to allow anyone to put a hazardous waste dump in their backyard, build a manufacturing plant along the Occoquan or other publically undesirable activities.

As a matter of fact, Virginia law requires every governing body to adopt a comprehensive plan for the development of the lands within its jurisdiction. So each county and city has a comprehensive plan. By law these plans are reviewed every five years, to ensure that they continue to be responsive to current circumstances and that the citizens of the county continue to support the goals of the plan. The Rural Preservation Study and the Infrastructure and Facilities plan are two of the five sections being updated in Prince William County in 2018.

In 2012 while considering requests for exceptions to the comprehensive plan, Supervisor Martin Nohe supported by the other county Supervisors felt that it was time to reconsider some of the planning and development decisions that had been made in the past and asked for an analysis of the usefulness of the Rural Crescent in protecting rural character and open space, and whether policy adjustments or new policies would do a better job.

Preservation of the rural nature of the county has a long history in Prince William going back to a 1964 planning study that identified a significant portion of the County as "Large Estate and Agricultural." The preservation goals for this area became  formalized through designation of the Rural Area in the 1998 Comprehensive Plan that created the Rural Crescent. Since that time the Rural Crescent has been chipped away with exception requests each year.

According to official County records the Rural Crescent, encompasses almost 116,000 acres, but little of that total is still agricultural land. The Rural Crescent includes about 23,000 acres of federal land in the forest and Manassas Battlefield, 55,100 acres that are already developed including Quantico and existing developments (including all the homes built on 10 acres allowed under the A-1 zoning), about 2,600 acres that are permanently protected*(though permanently protected land can be seized for public use by eminent domain), 8,200 acres that have development plans already approved and almost 28,000 acres that are undeveloped and unprotected and could be preserved as open space and farmland.

The basic zoning that exists now in the Rural Crescent is A1- one house per 10 acres, much more money could be made by land owners and developers building at higher density on the land, but more dense suburban developments could damage the ecology of the region, increase the need for more tax revenues to provide infrastructure, utilities, and schools; and impact the quality of life of all county residents who enjoy the recreation opportunities of the Rural Crescent. In the survey that hundreds of Prince William residents took five years ago when the Rural Preservation Study was done, there was strong support for maintaining the open rural nature of the Rural Crescent.

Learn more about the issue, and have your voice heard. Join Prince William Conservation Alliance on Monday, July 16th 2018 at 7 pm at Giuseppe's Restaurant in Haymarket for a tCommunity Conversation featuring Elena Schlossberg of the Coalition to Protect PW County, Gil Trenum a member of the PW County School Board, Martin Jeter of the Mid-County Civic Association, Tim Hugo Delegate for the 40th House District and Kim Hosen of the PW Conservation Alliance as the moderator.

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