MINERAL SPRINGS

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FROM THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER.  THIS IS A PROJECT I’VE BEEN HELPING TO WORK ON FOR A YEAR NOW.  THIS IS WHY I LIKE REAL WORLD APPLICATION PROJECTS… IT MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR DOING SOMETHING WORTH DOING!!!  I MUST SAY MARY NEWSOM HAS AN EXCELLENT WAY WITH WORDS AS WELL – LET’S JUST HOPE THE RIGHT PEOPLE READ WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY.

URBAN OUTLOOK / MARY NEWSOM
In the path of Union County's growth volcano
Can a rural hamlet hold on to its vision, as subdivisions sprout?
MARY NEWSOM
MINERAL SPRINGS - I'm standing in a grassy field near the crossroads at the heart of Mineral Springs. A possum trundles past, untroubled by visitors to its country home.
I'm with Mineral Springs Town Council member Peggy Neill; her husband, Bob, who chairs the town's planning board; and Mayor Rick Becker, all of whom worry about what growth will do to their Union County hamlet. Becker points to an abandoned, rock building he hopes will someday be town hall.
"Who owns this land?" I ask.
Harris Teeter.
A casual visitor to Mineral Springs -- 8 square miles, population 2,500 -- sees cows and horses, pastures, crops, woods and the 260-acre site of the Queen's Cup Steeplechase.
Developers and retailers know better. They already know what a Census Bureau estimate released Thursday confirms: Union is North Carolina's fastest-growing county.
The result is that developers are strip-mining Union County, building subdivisions and shopping centers. They're felling trees, filling floodplains, leveling hilltops and choking creeks with sediment and -- later -- runoff from parking lots and other pavement. They're not building towns or villages or anything that looks like a part of a community. Union County's fate is sealed. It will mirror suburban Mecklenburg: Clogged roads, jammed schools, polluted waterways and ever-higher taxes.
You might say that Mineral Springs' location, in terms of growth, is about like Pompeii's location, in terms of Vesuvius -- except unlike Pompeii, Mineral Springs knows what's coming.
Inside the town hall, really just a tiny back room at the Volunteer Fire Department, I study a Union County map with all 14 municipalities colored in. A solid mass of color has buried western and northwestern Union. Mineral Springs sits at the southern edge of that lava flow. For now.
Becker moved here in the '80s, and the Neills 14 years ago. They and others on the Town Council want to keep Mineral Springs from being buried by the eruption of development.
To that end, they've slapped a moratorium on new subdivisions. They are working with a UNC Charlotte graduate planning class to devise and adopt a land plan and ordinances that might, if they are very smart and very, very lucky, give them what they want.
Becker and the UNCC plan envision a village core on the Harris Teeter site, with bungalows -- "something that looks like it was built in the '20s," Becker says -- and a much more rural, lower-density area near the edges of town.
But stopping, controlling or even just managing the flood of development pouring toward town will be extraordinarily difficult. Mineral Springs can't even control where sewer lines go -- an enormous frustration to Becker, who knows once sewer lines are laid, development pressure is relentless. He has asked Union County commissioners to let municipalities say "yes" or "no" to sewer lines. He says they haven't even bothered to respond.
Becker and Neill give me a driving tour. "You'll know where the town limits are," they warn, as we head past the historic Pleasant Grove Methodist Campground, dating to 1829.
We round a curve. Spreading in front of us are wave after wave of treeless, red clay hills dotted with large, unfinished houses. "Briarcrest, The Enclave," a sign tells us. "This is served by a sewer line I actively opposed," Becker says. Across the road, more trees are falling for Tuscany, a 390-home subdivision.
Elsewhere, perched on N.C. 75 on the town's west border, 1,200 acres are posted with a sign reading "Robert Pittenger Co." Pittenger, a Mecklenburg state senator, is a speculator who buys land, then sells to developers. The site, though it abuts Mineral Springs and the county land use plan called for industrial use, was annexed into Waxhaw at Pittenger's request in 2003 and zoned residential, doubling the number of houses it can hold.
Mineral Springs wants a future other than obliteration by subdivisions. But it's getting little help from its neighbors. Union County government suffers from an unrelenting leadership vacuum. With only a few exceptions, its elected officials resemble those residents of ancient Pompeii: They have no clue.
But Neill can foresee "the total destruction and devastation of this county." She senses the peril.
"It's like a loaded gun," she says, "and we're waiting for someone to pull the trigger."
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