Meeting on Development Areas

The Spotsylvania County Planning Department will hold a meeting Monday night to talk about proposed Urban Development Areas. A state law requires most Virginia localities to designate a high density area (or more) by July 1. This is the first time localities have had to designate the areas. Spotsylvania’s Planning Department has narrowed down its planned UDAs. Now, the county is looking at one area, between Cosners Corner and New Post. There is also a proposal to designate a “redevelopment UDA” in the Four Mile Fork area and one to expand the other UDA toward the proposed VRE station.

To share your opinion on these proposals, come to a public meeting Monday, 6:30 p.m. at the Spotsylvania Community Development Conference Room on the 3rd floor of 9019 Old Battlefield Boulevard. Click here for a flier.

Here is a recent story Jonas Beals wrote about Stafford’s Comprehension Plan and UDAs, with an infobox looking at Spotsylvania’s process.

Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/spotsygovt/2010/11/19/meeting-on-development-areas/

LarryG

Does anyone know where a map of the current and planned water and sewer infrastructure is located?

Are these UDAs already in the existing areas served by water/sewer – or in the planned expansions?

The water & sewer an the transportation infrastructure are the two biggies that need to be addressed in my view and so far.. I’ve not seen those two addressed.

this map seems to show that the targeted (new) UDAs are mostly in the Mattaponi/Thornburg drainage – not the Massaponx drainage.

http://www.spotsylvania.va.us/filestorage/2614/147/2744/223/FIG6.pdf

It was my understanding that the Thormburg sewage treatment plan did not have a lot of capacity not the potential to have a lot of capacity.

Anyone know what the plan would be for the UDAs that are geographically in the Mattaponi drainage ?
bhaas

Larry’s first question sent me off searching for some water/sewer maps (current and planned), but the latest versions I found were from the County web site and were dated 2002! Is that really the latest info available?

I found them in the Utilities section of the site listed under Water/Sewer Master Plan.
http://MAVRICKinc7@msn.com Martin (Marty) Work

Nice distraction, but this part of developing the MASSAPONAX CORRIDOR was cast in concrete quite some time ago. If you want current details on water/sewer, go down and have the Dept. of Utilities and their engineers pull up/out the plan for you to read it for yourselves, rather than take us all over the internet looking for something that’s not there.

There are those occassions when you’ll have to get out from behind your computers and do some hands-on research. The web doesn’t have all the answers and neither do we.

This should not come to you as any surprise. You’ve been making this kind of goose-chase, distraction and detour for years, and then come around later and tell us you’re sorry you could not find nor obtain critical information even from your elected officials or County government.

When TRICORD sold their New Post property to FASA (soccer complex) and orchestrated the construction and extension of water/sewer to the Rt 2 New Post site, with UDAs already identified along the entire stretch of Rt 17 for hook up by development buildout on the Massaponax Corridor by Cosner, Silver, Johnson, Tricord and other major landowners found on either side of Rt 17. Massaponax Church Road is where water/sewer currently ends but the the Spotsylvania County BOS have already agreed, from behind closed doors to bear the cost of building water/sewer to the Rt 2 corridor and with the Bowman museum being at the other end of Rt2 and at the Fredericksburg City limits, water/sewer will be extended from the New Post site, past Tricord’s Mallard Landing to the Lee’s Hill District county line.

Again, this is a conversation we have had on numerous occassions over the past 3 years, and I’m still amazed at how your pretended naivety continues to play out to your viewing audience, and still claim to be the go to guys on all things under the Spotsylvania County umbrella.

Based on your blogging comments so far, over the past 10 months, about the hazards and constraints of UDAs coming to town, on both the Stafford and Sptosylvania County lines, you’re not doing your County constituents any favors by playing to the bleachers or dummy-down your interpretations of what’s what behind County closed doors.

Simply said, your position paper on these matters should be as consistent as you have demanded of others. It’s only fair.

You and Bill have been the guardians of the County gates for years. You are the quintessential “company men” and will always be, even if called on to talk out of both sides of your mouth.

If you can’t be any more forthright than you’ve been hear, within the framework of this blog site, may I suggest you seriously consider hanging up your spurs or join up with the Committee of 500 again and see what they have to offer to this conversation.

OR, better still, show up at the Couty Planning Commission meeting on MONDAY and add to the protest with your own take on what “Smart Growth” really entails.
LarryG

I did a little more checking and it turns out that the Thornburg/Mattaponi drainage that is south of Route 17 appears to be pumped over the height of land back into the Massaoponax Sewer system (so much for interbasin transfer of water eh?)

But the other thing is that in one of the docs there is a pretty interesting discussion of the build-out capacity of the water/sewer with respect to the Primary Settlement Area – AND what density scenarios are in play.

That was written long before UDAs were a concept and the discussion about density for at about 3du and less as opposed to 4du and up for UDAs.

Also.. the county uses 200 gallons a day to commute residential use (300 for sewer) so you can look at how many gallons a day that they designed into the Thornburg drainage south of Route 17 and from that compute how many housing units their system is designed to carry at a max (without retrofitting bigger pipes..)

this is the discussion:

http://www.spotsylvania.va.us/filestorage/2614/147/2744/223/7WaterDistribution.pdf

here’s the water/sewer map … look at the area SOUTH of Route 17:

http://www.spotsylvania.va.us/filestorage/2614/147/2744/223/FIG6.pdf
bhaas

Larry, your water sewer map is the one I found dated 2002. Is this really the latest info?

The “discussion” you referred to is also from that 2002 plan. I am bothered that this info is almost 9 years old.

I am surprised that our utility records are not updated more frequently.
LarryG

I don’t know. It could be that they’ve updated info but do not show the dates. One of the things done fairly recently was the replacement of much of the main interceptor for the Massaponax zone and that report (though separate from the master plan) is 2009.

water/sewer for the average person is pretty esoteric stuff even though water/sewer plays a big role if where dense development can occur (and not) and just drawing density pods on a map doesn’t mean that there is existing water/sewer capacity for them and if there is not then just like with roads – funding will be needed to exstend/expand.

The 2002 plan was premised on a particular build-out scenario that did not include UDAs.

There are other issues in play – one of them called TMDL – Total Daily Maximum Load – which is changing the wastewater game.

It used to be that a locality could build as many sewer plants as they wanted or expand them as much as they wanted as long as they met the discharge permit – which specified a concentration per liter for nitrogen and phosphorous so a county like Spotsy could expand as much as they wanted as long as they paid for the plant and treatment facilities.

That game has changed and now counties like Spotsylvania are given total daily limits in pounds of nitrogen and phosphorous – no matter how many plants or how big the plants.

I don’t know what that limit is – that info – like much other info is not easy to find…. but there is LOTS of info talking about the TMDL and how it works – just not specific data easily found for the localities. (some is still in process I believe).

Marty seems to think they have a more up to date map and other data at their offices.
http://MAVRICKinc7@msn.com Martin (Marty) Work

Larryg: so why would the Spotsylvania BOS agree (in 2010) to finance the expansion,extention and construction of water and sewer lines from the Massaponacs Church Road and Rt 17 intersection, all the way to FASA’s (soccer complex) at Rt 2 location WITHOUT ALREADY HAVING THE NUMBERS, COST, AND ENGINEERED CONSTRUCTION MODELS IN PLACE? Or, is a “SWAG” now part of the county’s development design protocols and memorandums of agreement that only the Spotsylvania County BOS know anything about, since their decision was made well outside the public domain and behind closed doors?

Why are you futzing around with 2002 maps when the current 2010 UDA development agenda is already on the County’s drawing board and has been for the past three (3) years?

Where do you expect to lead your audience when you start out with “I don’t know?”

Is this the part where you keep making more and convoluted circles that only lead back to the same point you started from? Is this all that Spotsylvania County has to offer its citizens and allowing room enough to make informed decisions about their future prospects for quality of life issues with not even half of the necessary information to know which way to turn?

If this constitutes your three (3) minutes at the podium, I must question your rationale on what you have to offer by way of insight or solutions to the problems of growth that will confront Spotsylvania citizens, BEFORE THE YEAR IS OUT.

Why can’t you share with US what YOU know, NOT what you DON’T KNOW or is that too much to ask for?

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