January 19, 2024 | By Jaycee Georgiev
As a child, I remember visiting my grandparents’ house and enjoying the interactions with neighbors. They all lived in their same home for over 60 years and were as close as family. They lived in a neighborhood built in the late 1950’s located outside three small cities. Over time, the cities built up around them, sandwiching them into what seems today like one large city.
It was through my late grandfather Cal Jewell’s frustration with lack of city planning for water 30 years ago, that I learned the importance of water conservation and future planning. My grandparents’ community has now resorted to selling its residents on a “Toilet to Tap” concept, because of the lack of proper residential water planning.
Many of us moved to South Granville County because of the rural appeal, all having similar stories. Community is as important as a strong family. Through strong community we learn who our neighbors are. We can lean on each other’s strengths, voice our concerns, and most importantly, come together as a large body utilizing our strengths to make a positive impact for the betterment of our county.
We have learned that many cities/municipalities around us are developing fast. Unfortunately, they are developing without infrastructure to support that growth. Much in the same way as my grandparents’ community, there is little foresight into infrastructure and future planning.
Our country setting stands to diminish with the sale of large parcels being developed into major subdivisions, without the thought of a water study to determine if there is enough ground water to support the number of wells.
This situation concerned a neighbor of mine, who wanted to know why there were surveyors in his backyard. What started as a simple call to planning and zoning led us into a two-year process of learning current zoning, municipal codes, and hours of research into the jobs of different departments and developers.
With the help of other concerned citizens, a call-to-action plan was created through a 6-part petition. Citizens started attending Granville County Commissioner meetings to speak during public sessions. While others attended planning and zoning meetings to ask for an increase in lot size to reflect what was initially stated in the 2018 Comprehensive Plan, amended in 2020 allowing smaller lot sizes in a cluster subdivision (aka: Conservation Neighborhood).
A conservation/cluster subdivision allows higher density of homes on smaller lots to allow for the natural areas around the blue line rivers to be left out of private ownership. The blue line rivers are the streams and waterways that lead to Falls Lake. A large part of Southern Granville County is located in the Falls Lake watershed. The concern with this design is that it makes it difficult for a developer to install private wells on each lot. Instead, developers may be forced to use community wells due to restrictive lot sizes.
There is nothing wrong with community wells in a subdivision unless you are on a private well that happens to draw from the same fractured vein underground that the community well draws from. The community well will dominate water withdrawal because it has a larger draw. Pulling a large volume of water creates a coned depression. Community wells, depending on size, can draw several thousand gallons per day to store in tanks for the community that feeds off them. In the case of a nearby community going on community wells, they may drill as many as 10 separate wells depending on community size, and the available drilling area.
There is a different state of mind from someone who pays for water because they tend not to think about where their water comes from and if it will fail. They tend to believe that as long as they pay for that water, when they turn the faucet on, the water had better flow. Anyone who owns and maintains a private well knows what happens when you over-water the grass and tend not to waste the water after having run dry.
Citizens have started to ask officials tough questions, and our representatives acknowledge there is a need for action. In November 2023 Granville County Commissioners passed a text amendment increasing the lot size of cluster/conservation subdivisions to 40,000 sq. ft. with a minimum of 80’ frontage. This was a small victory thanks to the Planning and Zoning Department seeing the need for an amendment and presenting it to the Commissioners. This wave of action has been initiated, and as long as county residents keep the pressure on, we should see a positive future for our community, the wildlife, and the natural resources of Granville County.