Rule violations put council between rock and hard place and developer wins again. Is this a level playing field?

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Please click on images to enlarge view of West Fork of the White River after rain slowed on March 4, 2008.


Gary Combs offered the city a choice: Do the right thing or protect a stand of magnificent timber that already would be protected if the US Corps of Engineers actually followed federal rules or if the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality followed state rules or if the council dared follow its own resolution protecting riparian zones.

Combs offered a parcel of land along the edge of the West Fork of the White River to make up for violating numerous city rules — the grading ordinance, the tree ordinance, the stormwater regulations — you name it. The developer got away with flauting the ordinances by HINTING that those trees might be destroyed if they didn't accept them as mitigation for his violation of the regulations.

It was Tuesday night, March 4, 2008. Meeting night for the city council of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Endless discussion of several other issues preceded consideration of the Stonebridge Square project's request to accept a stand of timber that was completely surrounded Monday by floodwater to make up for destroying hundreds of trees deemed "dead and dying" by the recently resigned tree administrator.

The right thing would have been to send Combs' project through the PZD process again (cruel duty for the planning staff but only a minor irritation to the developer).

In theory, doing the right thing would require removing all the "well-compacted" red dirt and counting the trees in the old aerial photos of the area being developed and having the developer replace every one, and then dig out the pond site again, restock fish of all all appropriate species, plus the frogs and snakes and turtles and wait five years before resubmitting a proposal. And bring in some giant trees from some other ill-conceived and toally unnecessary development site and set them in place around the pond. That would punish all more than it would serve to convince the developer that the intent of the ordinances must be followed. More dust would fly, more diesel fumes would rise to the atmosphere. More fuel would be wasted. The environmental harm would be doubled.

The council had no choice. The guy could go bulldoze those trees in the riparian zone and frequent overflow area of the West Fork today and they still wouldn't have had a way to punish him. So they voted to accept his small penance. Don't blame them. If they hadn't, someone would have blamed the council for letting those trees be destroyed.

Fayetteville simply doesn't have any way to enforce its well-intended, relatively progressive rules.