A tool to protect our homes

A few years ago a group of towns in the Upper Delaware River Valley, alarmed by an incident in which a large and visible swath of land was denuded by a developer in Callicoon, obtained grants to have a model ridge-top zoning ordinance drawn up. The resulting document provides a template for zoning provisions that the townships could adopt to establish overlay areas; that is, zones in the river corridor that would govern development, in such a way as to preserve our most precious natural assets.

Of the towns—Tusten, Highland, Lumberland and Shohola—only Shohola has adopted a version of the ordinance. The Town of Highland recently declined to vote on adoption, arguing simultaneously that the ordinance was not clear enough and that it represented an intrusion on the freedom of property owners.

We have read the model zoning provisions in question and they do not seem unclear to us. There is not room in the space of an editorial to argue this point, but those readers who wish to make their own judgment can view the model by clicking here.

On the second point, however, the argument is brief. The contentions that the rights of all property owners can best be preserved by letting each one do whatever he or she feels like doing is bogus. Far from being a bludgeon to beat us with, zoning is the tool we can use to protect the value of our homes and neighborhoods.

The first part of our argument pertains to appearances. Probably the chief thing that attracts people to this area is its physical beauty. That’s why people want to build houses on the ridgeline and chop down the trees—so they can look out at all that beauty. There’s only one problem. Once everybody has built a house (or business or factory or whatever pleases them) and chopped down the trees, there will be no beauty any more. There are already plenty of places you can see overdeveloped ugliness. People come here now to get away from that.

For those who think natural beauty is for the birds, there’s the issue of money, which is closely related. At a conference held in March of 2003, Ann Hutchinson of Natural Lands Trust cited a study showing that the appreciation of home values in conservation subdivisions (where housing is clustered and large swaths of open land set apart and preserved) rises at a rate three percent per year higher than in densely populated communities. For those who think that doesn’t sound like much, think again. Over ten years, the compounded difference in the change in home values would be about 35 percent.

The third issue to consider is the ecosystem. For those who think that the ecosystem is for the birds, it should be remembered that the health of the ecosystem affects the amount of flooding, the quality of the drinking water and the wildlife populations in the area. And wildlife populations, especially those of the bald eagle and the fish in the river, in turn, connect back to dollars.

The more trees are cut down, the more properties will be flooded, and the more fish populations will decline. The more native vegetation is cut down, the more animal species will die, and the more animals higher up in the food chain—like eagles—will become extinct in this area.

The irony is that, by saying that “property rights” means “do whatever you want and the devil take the hindmost,” we create a situation in which everybody’s rights are threatened. As development speeds up in the river valley, we confront the possibility that speculative developers, who do not live here or care about our neighborhood, will buy up land, subdivide it, and overbuild, cutting down the vegetation that makes this area a natural paradise. They will walk away with their profits and we will be left behind paying higher taxes with a degraded environment.

But, there is one tool that stands between this possibility and us, and that’s protective zoning.

We would like to encourage the river valley townships to give serious consideration to the model ridge-top ordinance and, if it is indeed not clear enough, to make it clearer and then pass it. The alternative is to see the destruction and degradation of the natural beauty, the ecological soundness and the monetary value of the land of each and every property owner in the river valley.

Dr. Punnybone

Natural Selection