BY The Carrboro Citizen

Last chance for citizens to speak to the Orange County Commissioners about Buckhorn Village is Tuesday, April 1 (no fooling). The project seems to have a lot of momentum, but is its approval in our best interests? The potential revenues are being touted as clean & easy dollars, but I think nothing could be further from the truth. Even if the development were to have a significant residential component, it is fundamentally highway-oriented and import-dependent. Why on earth — why, for Earth’s sake, would we want more of that? Why on earth would we want another Southpoint?

Orange County has had an extraordinary, admirable and effective history of environmental activism. Courageous citizen leadership has prevented, to a great extent, the kind of car-friendly, pedestrian-hostile, farmland-wasting, air and water quality-trashing development that continues to swamp and disfigure neighboring counties. Today, without a doubt, the most serious environmental challenge we face is how to reduce our carbon emissions and keep the planet habitable for most species, humanity included. The county’s preliminary carbon emissions inventory shows transportation contributing 49 percent of our CO2 emissions. If we are not willing to demand that a 1.4-million-square-foot retail “village” mitigate the enormous transportation emissions it will bring, then we might as well abandon the whole lot of our environmental regulations. Even if the buildings meet the highest standard of energy efficiency, Buckhorn’s net emissions will still be negative because of the location. (See “Driving to Green Buildings:
the Transportation Energy Intensity of Buildings” in the September 2007 issue of Environmental Building News.)

Interstate-oriented development is a fat chunk of the high-carb diet that now threatens life as we know it on the planet. Buckhorn is nowhere near the population center of the county. For me, it will still be easier to get to Southpoint (if that’s the kind of shopping I want), and at least I have the option to get there by bus. Buckhorn’s plans include bus pullouts, but who will provide, and at what cost, and when, the statewide transit system needed to get people to Buckhorn without their cars?

Fifteen hundred jobs sound good — but in this kind of retail center, they are mostly very low-wage jobs. Even if we had a need for such in the county, and I think that is arguable, we know for sure that those folks will not be able to afford to live here if they don’t already. Is the developer going to build 1,500 affordable units onsite to house them? Will the county implement zoning to support highdensity residences on contiguous properties? If not, then add employees’ vehicle emissions to those of Buckhorn’s shoppers.

Whether they come by car or bus, Orange County residents alone can’t possibly provide the consumer base to support a project of this size. The development is offered primarily as a mechanism to harvest interstate traveler dollars using a chain-store retail model. Most of the proceeds will be exported to out-of-county and out-of-state investors. We didn’t like it when New Hope Commons and Southpoint were built at our borders, sapping the vitality of our downtowns. How will Buckhorn be so different that it will not cause further depletion? Will our municipal leadership weigh in on what appears to be another threat to downtown renaissance efforts in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough?

What’s needed in the conversation about Buckhorn is skepticism, not boosterism. A county commissioner who ran on an environmentalist platform said it looks “clean, properly located” (Chapel Hill Herald, 1/13/08). The president of a local chamber of commerce that has been touting its commitment to “sustainability” characterized Buckhorn as “extraordinary” (N&O, 1/12/08).

I strongly disagree with calling Buckhorn “clean” in the sense that there would be no smokestack emissions or undesirable effluents. High-volume chain retail centers are “smokestack-by-proxy” developments. Buckhorn will likely offer mostly products made overseas in factories powered by burning coal and subject to marginal, if any, effluent and emissions controls. Will county staff provide us an estimate, based on the Southpoint model, of what percentages of goods to be sold at Buckhorn will come from which countries, and data about how each supplier country generates power, about their environmental regulations and how much they pay their workers and protect their health? Without such information, how can we know we are not “exporting” much of what is truly “dirty” about this economic and land-use model?

How can one call “sustainable” an economy so intensely dependent on imports, cheap oil, underpaid labor and environmental neglect? Residents of Orange County have expressed growing interest in having a “local living economy.” Witness our support for expanded local agriculture. Many would like our local economy to encompass a wider spectrum of exportable technology, goods and services. We’d like to strengthen local entrepreneurship and make greater use of residents’ abilities to transform what is mostly close at hand into the things we need to survive and enjoy a fruitful quality of life. Part of the Buckhorn conversation should include an update from county staff about this quest and an analysis of how Buckhorn might play a positive role in the effort. The developers say they’d like to include local businesses, but how could we ensure that?

Is Buckhorn really a path toward sustainability, or more of the “business as usual” that appears to be an increasing threat to our health, safety and welfare? The commissioners are still taking witten comments and meet again on the plan Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., in Hillsborough.

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