Should Developers Be Given The Choice Not To Protect Charlestown’s Environment?
The following letter was printed in local newspapers and is shared with us here by the author Bonnie Van Slyke. Bonnie Van Slyke was a member of the Charlestown Town Council from 2014 to 2022.
For over 23 years the developers of large parcels of land in Charlestown have been required to “cluster” homes away from environmentally sensitive areas in order to protect our groundwater, forests, and coastal and inland water bodies. It is widely agreed that, since the ordinance was adopted in 1988 (it was made mandatory in 2000), placing new homes away from sensitive wetlands and out of wetland buffers and avoiding large-scale clearing of forests has been effective in protecting our groundwater (and thus our drinking water) from pollution.
The new Town Council majority has, suddenly, proposed drastically changing this long-standing, well-tested ordinance that protects the environment in order to provide “choice” for developers. In addition, the choice that will be provided to developers by the proposed changes will also greatly reduce developers’ costs by allowing them to design their subdivisions essentially as they please.
Making changes to this ordinance was authorized quietly by the Town Council majority, and the rewrite was done in private by one Town Councilor with no public input.
Councilor Stephen Stokes’s new ordinance was unveiled at the Town Council meeting on May 22. However, no substantive discussion by the public of the proposed changes was allowed at the meeting. Instead, a date for a special meeting of the Town Council was set.
The public was then informed that discussion of the rewritten ordinance at the special meeting would be among members of the Town Council, exclusively. The Town Council majority, over the objection of Councilor Susan Cooper, explicitly excluded Charlestown’s elected Planning Commission and the town’s professional Town Planner from inclusion in the meeting.
The special meeting date is June 1 at 7 pm at the Town Hall. According to the agenda, the public will be allowed to be present and watch, but public comment will be allowed only at the end of the meeting, after “discussion and potential action” by the Town Council.
One word for this new and highly unusual process for changing, fundamentally, how new residential development in Charlestown will happen is “outrageous.”
Further, the environmental damage that inevitably will result won’t happen immediately, but, in due course, Charlestown’s taxpayers will be left with NO CHOICE but to pay high taxes for the expensive infrastructure that will be needed to clean up the mess.
Bonnie Van Slyke
June 1, 2023 @ 11:10 am
Are people surprised at this? After voting in a pro-development council and voting out the CCA sponsored conservation candidates of the type that we have enjoyed for the last 10-12 years …. what did they expect?
May 31, 2023 @ 9:38 pm
What is the problem here? Developers are not making enough money developing here in Charlestown under the current regulations? Why mess with something that is working? Short term thinking and ease is not the answer when it comes to development. Potential long term negative impacts need to be considered first and foremost because those will become the burden of the taxpayer eventually. The developers will be long gone. This is not rocket science and the town council should be ashamed of themselves for even proposing these changes.
May 31, 2023 @ 8:28 pm
WTAF. Welcome to warwick, cranston, providence. Farewell to everything we hold dear in this town….including dark skies.
May 31, 2023 @ 6:57 pm
I suggest residents participate in the public meeting and/or contact the councilors who support this change before the public meeting on June 1. It is rational and addresses unreasonable changes instituted by the Town Council in 2022 over objectionss of almost all who spoke at that public meeting.
May 31, 2023 @ 9:18 pm
The proposed changes allow more negative environmental impacts than any cluster ordinance in Charlestown since such an ordinance was first introduced in 1988. Neither of these new options provides any mitigation of the negative effects of development. In addition, the natural resource protection achievements of clustering are now listed simply as suggestions in the new ordinance.
The new regulations seem to provide a choice between two types of clustering. In fact, they allow a choice between what is essentially a conventional subdivision (regardless of what it is called) and a form of clustering that is quite different from what has been in effect and has protected our groundwater for 23 years.
In the new ordinance, there is still a requirement that a minimum amount of land is set aside as open space, but these are allowed to be satisfied with wetlands, floodplains, waterbodies, streets, stormwater treatment structures, drainage basins, utility rights-of-way, power line easements, ledge, cemeteries and any other land that can’t be developed. These are already either protected by state law or are otherwise undevelopable.
For over 23 years, major subdivisions in Charlestown have been required to set aside upland areas (developable areas) while clustering the lots. The number of lots is not reduced by this, but the negative environmental impact of the subdivisions is significantly reduced. Without requiring that some of the upland areas be protected from development, developers will be able to clear forests and reduce the quality of the town’s groundwater drinking water sources and the environmental quality of surface waters. Where there is upland protected as open space, it is allowed to be paved or made entirely impervious.
What were previously listed as the natural resource protection achievements of the ordinance are now listed as suggestions to the developer. These are merely suggestions, are not regulatory, and have no enforcement mechanism. Developers are now given the option to voluntarily protect sensitive natural resources, but it is not required.
Link to proposed ordinance at https://charlestowncitizens.org/wp-content/uploads/Draft-218-v1.1-Color-Full-Edit-Cluster-Subdivi.pdf
May 31, 2023 @ 6:14 pm
Please provide a link to the document with proposed changes.
Also, please everyone, let’s contact our council members to make our voices heard. Town Council – Charlestown, RI
https://charlestownri.gov/town_council
May 31, 2023 @ 9:24 pm
Link and explanation of changes in my response above.
May 31, 2023 @ 5:32 pm
Where can I see a copy of this new legislation?
May 31, 2023 @ 9:25 pm
Link and explanation of changes in my response above.
May 31, 2023 @ 2:30 pm
If we in charlestown can not keep our word about protecting the environment , where in the world will it be safe to live.