DURHAM -- The city-county Development Review Board delayed ruling Friday on a 450-space parking lot planned for a field behind Erwin Mills Apartments, saying the developer needed to make drainage improvements.

Members of the Friends of the South Ellerbe Creek and the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association objected to Erwin Square Limited Partnership's application to put a parking lot on the field off Hillsborough Road.

The groups cited the high concentration of parking lots in the Ninth Street business district and the resulting stormwater runoff.

The Development Review Board is scheduled to review the parking lot proposal next month.

Copyright 2003 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

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[Also see follow up story in ECWA Archives]

DURHAM -- Riled by a developer's plans to dump gravel on a blanket of grass where prism kites soar and golden retrievers prance, neighbors plan to register their opposition to the planned parking lot before a city-county planning agency Friday.

Based on the Development Review Board's past performance, they might as well stay home.

The board, responsible for signing off on every minor and major site plan in Durham, bases its decisions on technical merits alone, such as whether there is adequate landscaping. Members of the oversight panel, who approved 326 of the 327 developments presented to them last year, are not empowered to address broader quality-of-life issues -- whether a development encourages crime, blends in with the character of a neighborhood or paves over a Joni Mitchell version of paradise.

Because a 450-space parking lot behind the Erwin Mills Apartments is consistent with the site's light industrial zoning -- also permitting crematoriums and health clubs -- the board will likely approve it, said Steve Medlin, a city-county planning supervisor.

"They don't have any real discretion," he said.

That's not comforting to Michelle Nowlin, a nearby resident and coordinator for a group called Friends of the South Ellerbe Creek. Nowlin worries about the proliferation of parking lots off Hillsborough Road from Ninth to Fifteenth streets and the resulting runoff pollution.

"It turns the whole area into a parking lot ghetto," she said.

The site, spanning a few acres from Hillsborough Road to Main Street, eventually will become housing or commercial space as part of the 35-acre Erwin Square complex, said Terry Sanford Jr., an owner of Erwin Square Limited Partnership. After demolishing the Burlington Industries plant more than a decade ago, the landowners wanted a temporary source of revenue, he said. Roughly a third of the field is slated for the parking lot, although Sanford has not yet secured a tenant.

John Schelp, president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association, said his group feels betrayed by Sanford, after supporting a rezoning two years ago for the city's first super-high-density residential development across a driveway from the field. Sanford's company owned the 5.6-acre property -- previously used for overflow parking at the First Union building -- before selling it to a developer of a 330-unit apartment complex now under construction.

Today, the nine-member Development Review Board consists of transportation, public works and planning personnel, and one citizen representative. By contrast, the city-county zoning committee and city-county planning commission, which handle rezoning and zoning permit cases, are entirely citizen boards.

Joined by county commissioners Chairwoman Ellen Reckhow, neighbors have lobbied for more voice on the development board, such as adding a representative from the Open Space and Trails Commission. That recommendation is included in a draft ordinance governing Durham development, which is being revised over the next year. The city-county Unified Development Ordinance also could broaden the scope of the board by allowing it to consider quality-of-life issues.

City-county Planning Director Frank Duke, who serves on the development board, recalled feeling helpless last year when the White Star Laundry & Cleaners presented an office plan with a parking lot fronting Ninth Street. Neighbors objected to what they considered an unsightly use, but they could not cite a violation of the zoning code.

"I felt like that was very intrusive to the area, but I didn't feel like the ordinance gave me an option," Duke said. The plan was approved, and the developer later worked with residents to move the parking to the back of the property.

"We should be looking at standards that deal with neighborhood protection," Duke said. Even the developers have complained, he said, about Durham's vague guidelines compared with those in other cities.

For now, David Gorsuch, a Duke University computer programmer, can still escape his office in the First Union tower every day at about lunchtime to walk across a field that yields beneath his feet. It's not the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. But it's more pleasant than pavement, the Apex resident said.

"We benefit from the fact that it's here," Gorsuch said on a recent return trip, clutching a half-eaten bagel. But "it belongs to somebody else."

Copyright 2003 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

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DURHAM -- Backhoes and other earth-moving equipment will soon set out on a project of ecological reconstruction to reverse what once seemed like a good idea -— channeling the Ellerbe Creek to prevent floods.

The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association has received a $600,000 grant from the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund to restore just over a half-mile of the creek to its untamed, meandering self, the association announced this week. The 0.6 mile-creek starts at the Indian Trail Park, continuing downstream through the association’s nature reserve across Guess Road and Interstate 85.

"It is earth-moving stuff," said Steve Hiltner, Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association’s executive director.

The project is designed to improve water quality and habitat for fish and other wildlife in the creek, and to protect the West Ellerbe Creek Trail from erosion. It also will help filter stormwater runoff from nearby streets.

Back in the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers put a flood control plan in place. They deepened the shallow Ellerbe, then about four feet deep. The corps wanted to channel the creek and create narrower, steeper v-shaped banks, Hiltner said.

The creek got to be about 12 feet deep, as some stretches are today, but at a price. Unstable banks yielded to erosion. Sedimentation further degraded water quality and conditions for wildlife. Water rushing down with little to stop it created precarious conditions for plants and animals and a muddy bottom. The concentration of water also didn’t prevent floods as initially believed, but at times worsened it.

With the grant money, however, at least a portion of the creek will be widened and the Ellerbe will be able to meander again, Hiltner said.

The meandering and gentler slopes will create opportunities for diverse niches, like small pools to serve as habitats, he said. The reconstruction project also includes placing boulders along the creek.

Volunteer Chad Hallyburton, who has done extensive monitoring of fish and other wildlife along the Ellerbe and surrounding creeks, knows the section to be restored well.

"That section is basically a street ditch at times," he said. About eight species of fish can be found there, well-known fish such as bluegills, largemouth bass, minnows, sunfish and others that brave the odds, he said.

Once the restoration is completed, people could expect to see a "vast improvement" in aquatic life, with more insects and plants also moving in, Hallyburton said.

"You are not going to see more species coming in - but probably you will see more of the species that are already there."

N.C. State experts will be responsible for the project’s design, using knowledge gained from a similar project to renew a campus creek. They will use old aerial photographs and old maps, Hiltner said.

The presence of machinery next to the creek will take some education, Hiltner said. NCSU will also take care of reaching out to neighbors, although details haven’t been worked out yet. It could include programs at the nearby schools, he said.

The city of Durham could make use of the floodplains at the association’s nature reserve, Hiltner said.

All the polluted, untreated runoff water is currently funneled straight from stormwater drain system to Ellerbe Creek.

Wetlands at the reserve would filter the stormwater, Hiltner said. The city could redirect stormwater around Maryland Avenue, Guess Road and the Westover Park to the association’s nature reserve and vegetation there could partially filter it before it goes back into the creek, he said.

Last year, the association bought 11 acres from the Carolina Duke Motor Inn motel and expanded its nature preserve to 17 acres. The land cost $27,500, he said. The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association plans on opening a nature trail as early as this summer, Hiltner said.

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Best urban jungle
Early in the morning, the urban nature reserve off of Albany Street in Durham is way spooky. The land dips and rolls in strange heaps, remnants of old vines hang down like gnarled fingers and hunks of old concrete rise up out of the dirt, like bones from the elephant graveyard in The Lion King. There's a bit of mist, a flash of early sunlight and then the startling sight of a blue heron flying through the woods toward nearby Ellerbe Creek. Hard to believe that rush-hour-filled I-85 and Guess Road are a mere base-hit's distance away. Over the past year, members of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association have wrestled what was once an impassable snarl of vegetation into a 6-acre trail that features two small wetlands, a miniature "prairie" and a natural grape arbor. A wooden bench and signs that explain the natural alchemy underway ("Good Bugs, Bad Bugs," "Native Plant Restoration") dot the landscape. The reserve sits next to a portion of the city's new West Ellerbe Creek Trail that's fast becoming a favorite with local bikers, joggers and pet-owners. As chances to commune with nature in the inner city go, this one's tops.

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DURHAM - Durham officials said a city water line carrying reclaimed water from the sewer treatment plant ruptured Tuesday morning, leaking about 15,000 to 20,000 gallons into the stormwater drainage system and subsequently into Ellerbe Creek.

Reclaimed water is the end product of the wastewater treatment process and has passed through the entire treatment process except for final disinfection.

City officials, who notified the state of the leak as required by law, said the leak would result in "minimal" environmental impact. As of Thursday, the only effect noted through testing and monitoring of Ellerbe Creek was a slightly increased level of ammonia

Also, the water washed an additional 100 cubic feet of sludge into the drainage system.

Sampling will be conducted daily for the remainder of the week, according to a news release. The water line is believed to have ruptured at about 1 a.m. City officials discovered it at about 6 a.m.

- From staff reports

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Report gathers environment data stats to help Durham County assess progress

For the past seven years, school nurse Janice Anderson has seen more and more students coming into her office with asthma symptoms.

They used to account for about 6 percent of the students under her care. Now they are more like 10 percent of the nearly 2,000 students in the three Durham schools in which she works, Anderson said.

"There is definitely a steady increase in the number of students that we as school nurses are identifying with asthma," said Anderson, who led a recent systemwide project to tackle the problem.

Air pollution is widely known as one of the triggers of asthma and other respiratory problems. But Durham residents had no easy way to track down local statistics on air quality and other environmental concerns.

A recently released report on Durham's environmental health has changed that. The 25-page report compiled 2001 local statistics previously scattered in university, state and federal Web sites or in phonebook-thick reports.

The report, the first of its kind, offers a yardstick for evaluating how the county is doing to protect its natural resources, to watch for emerging information on local issues and to serve as a first step toward keeping better records.

Put together over two years by the all-volunteer City-County Environmental Affairs Board, it includes indicators on air and water quality, solid waste, toxic products, biodiversity, transportation and energy.

"If people think of environmentalism just as tree-hugging, they are missing an important part of what it means to care about the environment," said Judy Kincaid, a member of the board.

The report doesn't compare Durham to other areas of the state or offer new statistics, but board members hope the county will try to build upon it, she said.

In compiling data, the Environmental Affairs Board also found out about other databases, such as one still in progress on protected open spaces in the county that would be important to add in the future, the report said.

Several local environmental groups were contacted during the making of the report, Kincaid said. They provided input, and the report will be made available to them, she said.

Steve Hiltner, president of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association and a former member of the environmental board, wrote extensively about water-quality issues in Durham for the report.

"There really is a need in Durham for some kind of yearly assessment," Hiltner said. "The public needs to know whether there is progress being made or whether we are losing the battle."

To have such a report periodically also would give people a chance to figure out how local government is doing in protecting the environment, he said.

During a presentation to the County Commissioners last week, the board stressed the need for staff support.

According to Commissioners Chairwoman Ellen Reckhow, who requested the report two years ago, Durham County may create an environmental management branch in the future. It would be either as a full-fledged department or a division under an existing department, Reckhow said.

As an additional responsibility, the environmental management branch would manage existing and new open land across Durham. The county already watches over the Little River Regional Park and a nature trail around Githens Middle School and plans to buy more land for preservation, she said.

It likely would be a small branch, with one or two full-time staff members adding to the report periodically and revising it, she said, stressing that the idea would have to be considered more carefully by the full board of County Commissioners.

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It's fun to watch 6-year-olds deal with the concept of spring starting on a particular day. They think something magical is going to happen--all the flowers will burst forth, the temperature will suddenly jump. But the heavens and the trees don't give a hoot about March 20th, the official start date for spring, and kids everywhere are left to wonder what it's all about.

By coincidence, March 20 was the day I went to my daughter's first grade class to do a little planting project. The bushes we were going to plant had no leaves and no roots, but I assured the students that they would grow. That would have to be magic enough to fill the gap between this most ordinary day and the far grander work of their imaginations.

The activity is by now pretty standard. A couple of big plastic tubs--the cut off ends of a donated 55 gallon drum--stand ready outside the classroom. After some discussion about the things plants need to grow, the kids do their best to shovel schoolyard dirt into the tubs.

When they're filled to the brim, we add water to turn the dirt into glorious mud. Finally, each kid takes a freshly cut section of stem from one or another native shrub that grows along Ellerbe Creek in Durham--silky dogwood, buttonbush, elderberry--and sticks it deep into the ooze.

This time, though, about when we had 20 stems in each tub, the kids began singing "Happy Birthday." Now the grown-ups were left wondering. In the eyes of the first graders, the tubs of brown mud with sticks pointing up had taken on the look of birthday cakes with chocolate frosting and candles. "Happy birthday, silky dogwood. Happy birthday to you."

In a week or two, the buds on the sticks will open, and the buried portions will sprout roots in the mud. By fall, Forest View Elementary will have 40 shrubs to plant on the school grounds. But more importantly, the kids got to dig the good earth, to learn which way's up on a buttonbush sprig and, best of all, they found meaning in the day. A birthday for spring--maybe that's what March 20 is really all about.

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Barbara Solow's article, "Vanishing Point," [March 14] shines light on one of Durham's sleeping assets. Like the cultural legacy of brick warehouses downtown, areas that speak to a distinctive natural heritage still exist in Durham. They will either be preserved through concerted public and private effort or face fragmentation and homogenization by development. Our city's future as a recreationally diverse and livable community is deeply tied to the creative preservation of these last special places.

Ellerbe Creek, which flows from west to east through town, is potentially a unifying element in Durham. The process of restoring and preserving the creek, though just in its beginning stages, is already creating new connections: between people, their neighborhoods and government, between past and future, and between urban dwellers and a rich natural world waiting to be rediscovered right in our midst.

--Stephen Hiltner, President, Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association

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Quiet efforts are underway to preserve a precious natural resource that runs through a Durham neighborhood

Some days, Gerald Bowen feels as though his neighborhood in western Durham is under siege. His comfortable home on wooded Shoccoree Drive above a swath of Interstate 85 is the picture of privacy and calm. But about once a month, a real estate company flyer will appear on Bowen's doorstep, reminding him that the happy isolation he's enjoyed for the past 35 years could soon be over.

Photo By Alex Maness

Looking at the headwaters of Ellerbee Creek as they rush down the hillsides of Gerald Bowen's neighborhood in western Durham, it's hard to believe that I-85 is just around the next bend.

Development pressures are heating up along nearby Cole Mill Road and U.S. 70, where it seems lots are being cleared of trees almost every week for new homes and businesses. "Every time you turn around, they're cutting a new patch out," says the retired IBM manager.

Signs of change are also visible in Lake Swannanoa, a neighborhood fish pond located just a few hundred yards from the end of Bowen's driveway. After almost every rain, plumes of yellow silt are visible on the surface--runoff, he says, from new construction sites along the interstate corridor to Orange County.

It's not just the lake Bowen's worried about. There's a larger water issue at stake: Flowing along the hillside, into Swannanoa and down the slopes of his neighborhood, are small streams and tributaries that make up the headwaters of Ellerbee Creek. The creek, which is part of a watershed covering 42,924 acres that empties into the Neuse River, is currently on a list of the state's most polluted streams. Among the main sources of contamination, city and county water experts say, is runoff from newly built-up areas such as those now encroaching on Shoccoree Drive.

Bowen, a longtime member of the Eno River Association, wants to find a way to protect the Ellerbee Creek headwaters area and prevent added runoff and silt from clogging the waterway in other parts of town.

"You can spend all the time you want to, doing things downstream," he says in the relaxed cadence of a true city native. "But if people don't take a look at what's going on up here, all that won't add up to much."

Bowen has shared his concerns with city and county officials and makes frequent calls to the county Engineering Department's Sedimentation and Erosion Control division, which patrols problems in local creeks. In recent months, he's also been talking with leaders of the Ellerbee Creek Watershed Association about the possibility of convincing some of his neighbors to donate or sell land along the creek for conservation.

Steve Hiltner, the association's president, is reluctant to talk about the group's activities in the creek headwaters area because he fears publicity may tip off developers. But the 2-year-old nonprofit already has an impressive track record of similar projects in other parts of town. Last year, the group was awarded a $32,000 county matching grant for purchase of a 6-acre creek reserve just downstream from Indian Trail Park. A large part of the association's match was in the form of property donated by residents of the surrounding Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood.

Bowen also has a track record. As a member of the Eno River Association, he helped negotiate with riverfront property owners for land donations for Eno River State Park and West Point on the Eno. Closer to home, he and his neighbors pushed the state Department of Transportation to launch $22,500 worth of cleanup efforts in Lake Swannanoa three years ago. The homeowners blamed DOT's Cole Mill Road interchange project for a flow of several tons of sediment that temporarily turned the pond into a muddy pit.

In some parts of Bowen's neighborhood, the headwaters of Ellerbee Creek are little more than a barely visible trickle through the woods. In others, they rush full-speed down steep slopes, creating pools and falls over moss-covered rocks.

The waterway has always been part of the community's secluded charm. But with burgeoning growth along its borders, some residents worry that some of the larger tracts of undeveloped land over which the creek waters flow will draw the attention of developers searching for valuable upland sites.

"I feel like we're not in control of what's happening," says Madison Yarbrough, who's lived on Shoccoree for the past 45 years. "We hear all kinds of rumors and we see surveyors sometimes. But nothing's happened yet."

Bowen also worries that property tax re-evaluations now underway in Durham will make it harder for some elderly residents to remain in the neighborhood or to consider donating portions of their land for conservation.

"People are going to be paying higher taxes on these trees," he says. "I've got good neighbors. We've all been living up here together for 40 years. But a lot of them can't afford to just give [land] away."

Competing with developers can cost big bucks. The good news, says Kevin Brice, associate director of the Triangle Land Conservancy, is that there are new resources available to groups that want to buy or donate land for green space. Among them are federal, state and local government matching grants for preservation projects, and a more generous state income tax credit for property owners who donate land for public use. The cap on the credit has risen from $5,000 in 1983 when it began, to $250,000 for individual North Carolina taxpayers.

As an example of how such resources can be used for conservation, Brice cites the example of the newly created Little River natural park that spans parts of Durham and Orange Counties. The Land Conservancy and the Eno River Association agreed to raise $170,000 of the $1 million needed to buy the 391-acre park site. The two counties and state and federal agencies came up with the rest.

"What organizations can do now that they couldn't do five or 10 years ago is leverage dollars," Brice says. "If you can show a commitment in sweat equity or volunteer labor time or actual cash, there are matches out there that simply didn't exist not too long ago."

Others say that as the pace of growth has accelerated in Durham, public sentiment has tilted more strongly in favor of conservation.

"People are much more aware of the environment than they were 20 years ago," notes Wayne Cash, a former president of the Eno River Association who chairs the Durham Farmland Preservation Board. "It's amazing to me to see the reservoir of love for the land that exists in our population."

For Shoccoree Drive residents, the key question is whether the right resources can be found in time to preserve the creek headwaters area.

"I know from working with the Eno River Association that it takes a long time to really get these things going," Bowen says. "Things are precarious out here. But it looks like the city and county would rather spend their money on [creek projects] downtown than look at what's going on at our end of Durham." [One such project that's still on the drawing board is stream restoration for a section of Ellerbee Creek that runs through the proposed Durham Central Park. That part of the creek drains four acres of streets and parking lots downtown.]

"He's right," says County Commissioner Becky Heron, who introduced Bowen to the Ellerbee Creek Watershed Association leaders some months ago. "We do need to be aware of what's going on up there. So far, the only thing that's kept people out of that area is that it hasn't been for sale."

For now, Bowen says he'll continue working with the watershed association, talking to his neighbors and keeping his fingers crossed that the area stays out of the sights of developers.

"The main thing is, this area is worth protecting," he says. "And if it's not, well, it's not for me that it would really matter. It's for the younger folks."

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Saturday, Feb. 17: No, it's not a drainage ditch that runs throughout Durham. Ellerbe Creek is a natural stream that many folks have chosen to treat like an open sewage line. Portions of the creek are in better shape than others, but the sections that run through downtown Durham are in need of a bit of cleaning up. The Friends of Ellerbe Creek have held nine cleanups in less than two years. The next one, to be held Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. will mark their 10th. The Friends will be working in concert with those concerned with Durham's new Central Park as the creek flows through that area. Those who want to help with the beautification and preservation of the creek will meet at the corner of Foster and Corporation streets, near the historic Durham Athletic Park. Call 541-5723 or visit www.owdna.org/fosec for more information.

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South Ellerbe Creek flows for three miles through some of Durham's oldest and most densely developed neighborhoods (Old West Durham, Walltown, Trinity Park and Northgate Park).

It is home to wild rose and blackberry bushes, wild pear trees, cat tails, thrush grasses and other wetland plants, large bullfrogs, rabbits, racoon and several varieties of birds -- including red tail hawks and great blue herons.

After crossing under Northgate Mall's massive surface parking lots and Interstate 85, South Ellerbe flows into what was a greenbelt of forests and farms that separated Durham from Braggtown. It was here, on Thanksgiving Day, that an old 18" terra-cotta pipe burst, spilling 4.5 million gallons of raw sewage into the creek for a period nine days -- the biggest sewage spill in the state.

Once detected, the City of Durham responded to the spill quickly and capably. However, the City of Durham must take responsibility for the slow detection of this spill of raw sewage into South Ellerbe Creek and the Neuse River system. The City uses automatic monitoring devices in the wastewater pipes to detect spills. But the one person in charge of monitoring the computer readings was out sick, so the spill went unnoticed.

Durham must give a higher priority to protecting our public trust waters by giving more attention to this very important duty. The first step could be training existing employees as back up operators and making the readings public so that more people could monitor for leaks. The City is permitted to discharge treated water into the creek. For this privilege, it must show respect for the community and the natural environment and take responsibility for protecting the creek from such disasters.

>We also ask that the risk of spills be minimized by placing a priority on prevention. Inspecting wastewater pipes with more frequency, and replacing the old terra cotta pipes that are likely to crack over time with more durable piping, should be at the top of the list. The spill on South Ellerbe Creek could have been prevented by a system to detect and replace high risk pipes. Durham should be commended for having already mapped its wastewater system, and should be able to use these maps to locate pipes that are compromised such as the pipe on South Ellerbe Creek.

Urban creeks are the most neglected and degraded creeks in the nation -- polluted, channelized, littered, and forgotten. Yet, these streams contribute to drinking water for urban communities, and also provide recreation and refuge from concrete and asphalt. Restored rivers help make cities livable again, offer many urban residents a significant connection to nature, and provide enormous benefits for public health, recreation, economic growth, and community pride.

The Friends of South Ellerbe Creek and the Neuse River Foundation ask the City of Durham to take appropriate measures to protect our waterways by investing the necessary resources to prevent such disasters in the future.

signed,

Michelle Nowlin, Friends of South Ellerbe Creek
and
Heather Beard, Neuse River Foundation

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