EHWA focuses on planning, reaches consensus on plan draft

Wednesday April 29, 2009
EHWA focuses on planning, reaches consensus on plan draft
Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer

The Elk Headwaters Watershed Association wrapped up its initial round of stakeholder meetings with a round table discussion featuring Meghan Dorsett, certified community planner.

Dorsett, who is currently working on the Greenbrier County comprehensive plan, is well versed in water resources and uses a grass roots approach to create a plan, facilitator Evan Hansen explained.

“The watershed resources are a finite resource; it is going to last forever,” Dorsett said. “Water tends to be the basis of all planning. Whether you are doing a watershed plan or you’re doing a larger community plan or a larger comprehensive plan, you’re starting with the same base element, which is water.”

Dorsett informed the organization that in order to create a successful watershed plan, they should include the community and the county in the plan.

“In terms of where you want to be as your organization, how you want to be perceived in five years, what you want to be doing in five years, you need to think about what your role is between your organization and the larger population,” she said.

Beginning at the ground and building up is the best approach to creating a plan, according to Dorsett.

“You’re more likely to have support for the plan, you’re more likely to see large portions of the plan implemented if, in fact, it starts at the ground level, at the grass roots,” she explained. “Often comp plans end up being top down documents and watershed plans are not that much different in this case. They may look wonderful, with the graphs, photographs, and pretty elements, but they’re not worth the paper they are written on because they never get implemented.”

Dorsett addressed a concern of several members who left messages on the forum about community planning versus watershed planning.

“You really can’t separate the two because what happens up slope, whether you’re talking about residential development, or commercial development, or community development, it’s going to effect what’s at the bottom of the hill and, what’s at the bottom of the hill? Your stream,” she said.

In context with residential development, Dorsett said the area could be targeted for second home development.

“Last year, a survey found that 25 percent of the baby boomer generation will move somewhere else after they retire,” she explained. “They’ve decided with all the hurricanes, the focus has gone away from areas near the coastlines to areas that have streams, have mountains, are within five to seven hours of major cities and have ideal four seasons of weather. Sound familiar? West Virginia fits most of the ideal criteria for where they want to relocate to.”

The focus of the plan, Dorsett said, should be on a balance between environmental protection and cooperation with development.

“Generally, the plans that are most successful, watershed plans or community plans, are those that find the common ground,” she said. “A lot of times that is as simple as saying, ‘if you’re going to develop, please use low impact development techniques, please put in swells, use other methods that will clean your run off, don’t go in and wholesale grade the entire site.’ Those kind of recommendations are the things that can be put in a watershed plan. Guide development, don’t stop it.”

Putting guidelines for development into the watershed plan will help in having the right types of businesses in the community and watershed, Dorsett explained.

“We would like any development in the county to fit into the plan and the community,” she said. “It would be like building a WalMart in Renick. That just doesn’t fit into the community, or putting a WalMart in Cass, it would go over like a lead balloon.

“What a plan is, is a community vision, it’s a policy document, it’s a guide,” she continued. “It’s not ordinance language, it is not law, it is a guide. It says if you’re going to have this area of resources that’s primarily farms and resorts, these are the common sense things we want to see you do. You don’t want a Bridgestone factory in the middle of a farm where the roads may not support it, or the water system does not support it, or there’s not enough housing for employees near by.”

Dorsett reiterated that the most successful plans involve the community and having the input of all involved.

“Get people involved, get people talking. You want to get as many people and as many voices as you can in the process and you want to listen,” she said.

The organization hopes to implement several of Dorsett’s ideas in their continued efforts of creating a comprehensive watershed plan.

Hansen provided the group with rough draft copies of the watershed vision document for discussion. After a review of the areas covered by the document, the gathering met a consensus to revise the draft and condense some ideas before submitting it for review. The group decided to take time to edit the document and have another meeting to discuss changes.

The next meeting will be Tuesday, June 2, at 7 p.m. at the Slaty Fork Community Building.