To the Editor: Restor’n Station and Yancey Mills Business Park Opposition

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Letters reflect the opinions of their authors and not necessarily those of the Crozet Gazette.

Dear Editor,

Thanks for your comprehensive position on growth issues in the January issue of Crozet Gazette. We wish to comment on the two large issues facing Crozet right now: the proposed SHEETZ-size Restore n’Station and its near neighbor, the proposed Yancey Mills million-plus sq. ft. Light Industry Park.

Both proposals would have disastrous impact on Crozet and western Albemarle county, and we STRONGLY oppose them. Here is why:

1 – The inordinate water usage by both of these proposed huge projects may be illegal. It will have definite negative impact on hundreds of residents in Freetown and Yancey Mills communities, whose wells will probably run dry, given the amount of additional water-supply needed by the massive Sprouse and Yancey projects.

2 – Quality of life in these locales as well as our own, which is nearby, will be severely diminished by large increase of vehicle traffic, especially trucks. It will relocate the center of our community to a series of concrete strip malls far away from downtown that have little relationship to life on our existing and human scale.

3 – The Yancey project is outside the Crozet growth area, an area clearly defined by county planners, an area which has large amounts of existing and potential sites already zoned for light industrial use. The Barnes Lumber Company facility is on the market to supplement these existing sites. The Yancey project is simply an unnecessary white elephant, and will lead to “ghost town” development syndrome.

4 – Crozet has been left hanging on the Jarmans Gap Road widening project, the library project, and we have, essentially, been lied to by county planners with regard to the final population size of our existing growth area. Approval of either of these new projects will seriously erode the social contracts our community has with the Board of Supervisors. If we keep getting blindsided, citizen outrage and incivility will be the result.

5 – Both projects threaten the water quality of the Stockton-Mechums watershed. These were poisoned once already by Greenwood Chemical company (which left Stockton Creek waters lifeless for over a decade). Industrial and “asphaltification” runoffs from the two new projects will convey oil sludge and other toxins into the Rivanna reservoir, directly reducing water quality for over half the county’s population.

6 – Brownsville market, the Exxon and the Joy America gas stations offer ample refueling resources to the Rt. 250 west corridor. A dozen more gas-pumps at the Sprouse project are totally superfluous.

We urge our fellow citizens to contact ALL supervisors and ask that they deny permits to the Sprouse and Yancey projects.

Richard Freeman Allan
Joyce L. Allan
Crozet