Beware centralized water service to Town of Awendaw

As one who is interested in seeing that sprawl does not encroach on the Francis Marion National Forest, I am concerned that the Town of Awendaw has asked Mount Pleasant Waterworks (MPW) to run their community water system.

I am in favor of MPW providing Awendaw help with their water needs as long as Awendaw pays its fair share for this assistance. Mount Pleasant Waterworks customers should not subsidize the Town of Awendaw. More importantly, however, I do not want to see what is likely to be the next logical step: MPW providing sewer service to Awendaw.

If this happens, developers would have a free hand to build major developments beyond the urban growth boundary. No developer is going to start this now under current economic conditions. But developers are already planning for an economic turnaround, whether it is in one year, two years, or five years.

Their best friend seems to be the Town of Awendaw, which has agreed to annex large tracts and rezone them for a density 30 times higher than their current zoning of one house per 10 acres, under Charleston County's Comprehensive Plan, to three houses per acre under Awendaw's Zoning.

Awendaw is a long, narrow town, in disjointed pieces, starting near Guerin's Bridge Road and stretching up Highway 17 on and off for the next 10 miles, toward McClellanville.

This fractured conglomeration of annexations, some of which don't even touch, is sandwiched between the Francis Marion National Forest on one side, and Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge on the other. Both the Francis Marion NF and Cape Romain NWF have major tracts of privately held land within or adjacent to their boundaries, which were once held by timber corporations.

Within the past five years, these corporations have sold significant portions of their holdings to big out-of-town developers.

These tracts are beyond Charleston County's urban boundary and zoned low density. To reap a profit, the new owners need two things to happen. First, they need to get out from under Charleston County's rural zoning so that the housing density could be increased. The easiest way for them to accomplish this is to annex into Awendaw, which has eagerly agreed, permitting a 30-fold increase in density.

Second, the developers need a centralized sewer system. Like most rural communities, Awendaw's 570 homes (about 1,200 residents) use individual septic tanks. It is nowhere near cost effective for the town, with its sparse population spread out over 10 miles, to financially support or manage a centralized sewer system. But if Mount Pleasant Waterworks agrees to extend its water services to Awendaw and then later its sewer services, developers will be able to build Atlanta-style urban sprawl housing projects.

So I say to the administration of Mount Pleasant Waterworks, please carefully consider extending water services to Awendaw, and do it only with a legally defined agreement that sewer services will not be forthcoming.

The residents of Awendaw have come out in large numbers opposing the massive, city-style developments that have been proposed. And the rural nature of Awendaw and the natural beauty of the Francis Marion and Cape Romain need to be preserved for our children and future generations.

BOB RYMER

Kinloch Lane

Mount Pleasant.