Reluctant Planning Board OKs rural subdivision

SMITHFIELD — Ultimately, a Johnston County Planning Board majority said yes to 11 homes on 16 acres near Benson.

By a 5-2 vote, board members said state and county rules would address their concerns, which were mostly about drainage.

Gary Lovering said he was confident the project’s engineer would follow state rules, which require development to maintain existing drainage patterns. “There’s a lot of water coming across there,” he said of the tract. “I know it’s got to get handled.”

Still,  Lovering admitted that he was conflicted about the landowner’s plans for his small parcel on Strickland Crossroads Road near Hannah Creek Road. “I’m back and forth with this in my mind,” he said.

On the one hand, Lovering wanted to see the engineer’s calculations for stormwater runoff. “But you know, that’s not my job,” he said. “The county is going to look at that when he makes his submittal.”

Though he voted for the subdivision request, Will Letchworth, the board’s chairman, was conflicted too. Google Earth images from three decades ago clearly show where stormwater water has washed away topsoil, he said.

“That hand has been wet for a long, long time,” Letchworth said. “It’s hard for me to feel like that land is going to be dry and suitable for a home site well into the future.”

This was the subdivision’s second time before the Planning Board, which had tabled the request in March over worries about drainage.

“We felt like we had a pretty good project the last time,” said Jerry Dalton of Dalton Engineering & Associates, a Clayton firm.

But the developer heard the concerns of neighbors and planning board members, the engineer said. “We’ve come down from 18 to 11 lots, we changed the drainage patterns,” he said. “We’ve added a lot of things that will improve the drainage and actually decrease the runoff.”

Planning Board member Brooke Holmes wanted more certainty. “I have a concern that a proper review has not been done,” she said.

At their meeting in March, board members had told the developer they wanted to see stormwater calculations and other drainage details. None were forthcoming at the latest board meeting.

And that was OK, said Braston Newton, the county’s planning director. “That level of detail is not required at this stage,” he said.

But the developer will have to produce detailed stormwater plans before the county can issue building permits, Newton said. “The burden is on the applicant to produce those engineering designs and have done a study of the site,” he said. “And it’s got to be sufficient to conform to county stormwater ordinances.”

Like Lovering, Letchworth said the board had to trust the process. “We’ve got an engineer who’s done quite a bit of development plans in the county testifying that the design will accommodate the surface and subsurface drainage,” he said.

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