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IN FAUQUIER, THE ARGUMENT is that without sewers, single family houses are popping up along every roadside, in an unplanned stream of construction that violates good planning precepts. So they are, in many areas.
But when an area is “sewered,” as they say, automatically increased land costs dictate a proliferation of high density housing types—apartments, townhouses and condiminiums. So the result is a large influx of housing types that the county doesn’t have to cope with now, AND the single family residences continue to pop up along country roads, because that’s the only land that builders of this type of house can afford.
You don’t stop the “strip” development with sewers, you just get a lot of other types of building that you don’t have now.
THE POINT WE WOULD MAKE is that not all of these regional sewer proposals are as innocent and purely procedural as some planners and other public officials would sometimes have us believe.
“Oh, it’s just so we can qualify for state and federal grants later on, if we want them,” is a familiar response to questions raised. Well, not always, and we hope Rappahannock’s regional representatives continue to press for pollutionabatement, rather than growth-stimulation.
Unless we misinterpret the mood of many Rappahannock citizens, that’s what the county wants. □
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