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To my friends on the school board:
Word is rapidly spreading through Brown Twp that you have
chosen a site on Walker Rd behind Brown Elementary for the next high
school. If that is the case, then I fear you have succumbed to the wishes
of the true enemy to the health of our community -- the residential
developers.
A great deal of time has been spent by various citizen
planning groups in political jurisdictions all over the county to develop
land use plans for the Big Darby watershed that create a balance between
environmental, economic, and aesthetic goals. Some versions of those plans
have called for additional public facilities, including schools, to be built
exactly where you propose. As a participant in this planning effort, I can
support the placement of a high school on the Walker/Roberts Rd location, in
spite of the fact that would be practically in my front yard -- but ONLY in
the context of the WHOLE land use plan, which calls for the
land immediately west of Alton-Darby Rd to be set aside as conservation
areas and parkland.
Please understand that you are being manipulated. If you
place a high school at the Walker/Roberts location, you will need water and
sewer services extended from the current water/sewer frontier at Alton-Darby
Rd. If you extend the water/sewer services on your own, it would be pretty
expensive. How convenient it is that there is a parcel of land in that path
which is owned by Homewood, who would undoubtedly offer to participate in
the cost of building a new sewer/water extension through their property in
exchange for being allowed to build hundreds of homes on that land?
But why is that good for anyone other than Homewood? When
all those homes gets built, there will be hundreds of new kids that come
along with them. And if Homewood gets development rights, there are
thousands of acres between Alton-Darby Rd west to the limits of the Hilliard
water/sewer contract with Columbus that will also be sold to developers who
will expect to get the same development approvals. We're talking thousands
of homes and thousands of kids. While you're picking out property to buy,
you might as well select a spot for the fourth high school.
There is a very practical reason why those of us who live in
Brown Township want to protect the Darby watershed -- the land along streams
like Hamilton Run are essential to providing storm water drainage to our
properties. A few years ago, Homewood illegally raised the elevation of the
field at the northwest corner of Alton-Darby and Roberts Rds with several
feet of dirt that was taken from the Amsil development (not from the
Alton-Darby Rd improvement project as some would have us believe). That
field was part of the flood plain, meaning that when we had strong rains,
Hamilton Run would overflow into the field, reducing both the volume and the
velocity of the water flowing down the stream.
Since that field was filled, my front yard now floods during
hard rains to the point that a section of my driveway becomes a stream I
have a field tile than runs through my front yard to the county drainage
line that follows Roberts Rd and empties into Hamilton Run. Last spring,
there were times when that line's cleanout port was gushing water up in the
air like a fountain. I asked the county engineering dept to check their line
to see if it was plugged. They ran a camera down the length of the line and
found that it was not plugged, and that instead the problem was that the
level of the creek was now high enough that the drainage from Roberts Rd had
no place to go except into my front yard. The new flood plain in my
neighborhood is MY FRONT YARD. If Homewood and the other developers are
allowed to build on their land, they're going to fill it with enough soil to
prevent flooding in the new developments. They'll replace fields that used
to absorb water with hard surfaces like roofs and streets, and the
water that runs off these will be added to the creek flow. All that water
will need to go somewhere, and the answer is that it will go onto the land
of everyone downstream.
I do understand that a new high school is needed. As I said,
I'm okay if you decide to put it at the corner of Walker and Roberts Rds --
this is not a NIMBY argument. But please don't allow yourselves to be used
as pawns to unleash uncontrolled development. I know you all well enough
to trust you, but you have been backed into a corner by people who are not
so trustworthy. Do not allow these people to screw up our community.
Paul Lambert
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