Austin disagrees with Fran's column

False environmentalism strikes again

As a professional engineer and active community planner, I always find it interesting to read articles like Fran Alexander's "What Lies Beneath. "I have to admire the heartfelt sincerity and concern expressed by Ms. Alexander, but I am left dumbfounded by her ignorance and lack of knowledge or objective research on the topic of development in low areas.

This article is merely the musings of a sentimental emotionalist. Ms. Alexander attempts to assign human qualities to water; this could not be further from fact. Water is not "sneaky"; it obeys set laws from which it cannot deviate. Water has no motives, no personality, no malice, no love, no feelings; nothing but hydrogen and oxygen bound together and imprisoned by the laws of physics. The end result is completely predictable.

Lay people like Fran Alexander don't know the rules; lack of knowledge results in fear of the unknown. She claims that the area of the Hill Place development (formerly Aspen Ridge ) used to be a "sponge"and that the area recharged groundwater. However, it is well documented that the area is (and was prior to the Aspen Ridge debacle ) low-permeability clay and silt soil with shallow shale bedrock. These are very poor conditions for the benefits described in her article. The biggest problem with the area is not the current development (or even Aspen Ridge, for that matter ). It is the past development; the homes built in the past 100 years that are too close to College Branch and / or too low relative to the flood elevation.

Sadly, many of these property owners did not account for stream bank erosion, a natural process that existed eons before the first developer turned the first golden shovel. That is a fact; it is cold, harsh and insensitive, but a fact nonetheless.

Additionally, there are laws that must be followed to build in floodplain areas; Hill Place will be built in accordance with those laws and as such, will not impact downstream properties that are also built in accordance with the laws, both of the city of Fayetteville and of common sense. It's always easy to blame the developer because he's the new kid on the block. It's very sad to see the true motives of anti-growth sentiment get camouflaged by a false environmentalism.
Austin E. Rowser
Fayetteville