May 2003

• A silver spur in our flank? - By Ben Blankenship
  
  The good old days we've long enjoyed in Aquia Harbour may soon become an endangered species.
  
  For years, we've seen our private communty as a haven from the tacky suburbs arising elsewhere in north Stafford. More to the point, it's that we haven't seen them, thanks to the extensive woods virtually surrounding us, adding to our sense of security.
  
  But we all know what's begun happening to those extensive woods. They are being bulldozed. Most prominent have been the new apartment complexes arising behind the post office. Pilgrim Cove homes, which had been cozily hidden off Aquia Drive near the stables, suddenly saw concrete where trees had been.
  
  So AHPOA built a thousand-foot security fence behind homes backing onto the apartment complex. Now it looks like we are going to be in the fencing business for sure pretty soon. As AHPOA President Bob Hunt sadly opined at the April Board meeting, "We are going to end up putting a fence around Aquia Harbour."
  
  About the same time the apartment construction began near Pilgrim Cove and environs, way out at the other end of the Harbour, just beyond homes near Titanic Drive's terminus, Garrett Corp. began developing Aquia Overlook. It hasn't had the eye-assaulting effect that the apartment complex has, though, since AO's homes are on lots of at least a few acres and are in the $500K class, with lots of woods retained.
  
  Segue to this year. Lately we've been apprised of Garrett's efforts to get housing projects started in a bigger way, where many homeowners backing onto the woods alongside Harpoon Drive fear their fates will be similar to those on Pilgrim Cove. Garrett has offered to finance a second gate, assuming the Harbour wants one, to get our support for the builder's effort to get his property rezoned from one home per three acres to three homes per one. Based on two public hearings on the issue, the second gate idea looks dead, but Garrett's construction and rezoning efforts on the nearby tracts aren't.
  
  And now, hold onto your hat. The Silver Cos. intends to tiptoe into other woods we hold dear. Correction: Make that stomp. Correction: We don't hold the woods. They lie, for now, behind Harbour homes, and had been on property belonging to St. William of York Catholic Church.
  
  Affected most will be some 15 of our homes on the perimeter, from about halfway down old Aquia Drive north from the gate to a short ways further north on Atlantic. They back onto planned "clustered" lots said to average under 11,000 square feet in size. In all, some 256 lots are planned for single-family detached homes.(The plans show lots 580-591 and 631, 632 and 614 to be most directly affected, although plans are known to change and so could these.)
  
  Part of the tract Silver now owns also abuts Aquia Harbour in the area north of the bridge and on the side of Aquia Creek opposite our homes alongside the creek on Aquia Drive. But fortunately, barring an unrelated and huge flood, our homes there won't have their rear views disturbed, since the area in question is all wetlands and will stay that way.
  
  Another point: AHPOA already owns a 20- foot-wide buffer strip around the perimeter of the Harbour, so our homes there won't see new construction jammed right up against them.
  
  Silver is said to be negotiating access to U.S. 1 from its land-locked parcel. The plans show a road to be cut just south of the St. William of York property.
  
  What might the place look like? Perhaps like Widewater Village, now under construction about a mile north of St. William on U.S. 1. It features single-family detached modular homes that cost $250,000 and up. Also, "up" describes their fast construction. As school board member Robert Belman noted about such modular developments at a recent meeting, no sooner do the bulldozers leave than it seems the families are in, speaking about a development in his district in south Stafford.
  
  When will Silver's construction at Aquia start? Nobody's saying. The plans were hurried to Stafford County officials in late March, along with a lot of those from builders elsewhere, to avoid the sharp increases in construction fees that are now being imposed on future projects.
  
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April 2003

• Don't look a Gift horse in the mouth: Ben Blankenship
  
  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, not even down at the stables.
  
  Even so, we've got a beaut of a contradiction, right here in the Harbour.
  
  There is this stupid federal law, see. I mean really stupid. It says that when any new construction must destroy existing wetland acreage, twice that amount must be created somewhere else nearby.
  
  It so happens that Aquia Harbour is near enough to the construction of the new Wilson Bridge over the Potomac River at Alexandria to qualify. Also, unlike a lot of other areas similarly situated, it seems we have some land where new wetland acreage can be "created."
  
  Specifically, it is creekside frontage, just beyond the end of Delaware Drive, consisting of nearly two pristine acres hardly anyone has ever seen. Understand, the plot isn't wet by any means. The land is high and dry now, but that's no disqualification. Not at all.
  
  Again, you see, although the Harbour has lots of wetland acreage (just glance downstream from the marina soon at all the lily pads), none of it can qualify. Candidate acreage, to qualify under the law, must not be existing wetlands.
  
  No siree. Instead, they'll take our pristine two acres and strip them down to a depth of six or more feet so that high tide from Aquia Creek? will inundate them. That stripping will involve the removal of some 8,000 cubic yards of dirt, officials say, and carting it to a disposal site elsewhere. Elsewhere, says GM Chuck Halt, is on our land north of Harpoon and east of Bosun Cove, where our developers originally had set aside a site for a school, and where a second-gate entrance to the Harbour could someday be cut (dream on).
  
  Then they'll establish wetland plants suitable for the area, erecting a bulkhead nearby, plus a canoe launch site and a nice path and stuff like that.
  
  Guess how much this whole cockamamie deal is going to cost. Halt says it could be as much as $500,000. Who'll pay? No need to guess: We 1040-fied taxpayers in general.
  
  But wait. We local fortunates will benefit, in a way, since the "creation" of the environmentally correct two acres as wetlands comes at a price to be paid in cash to AHPOA. To wit: Us here. How much? About $72,000. Not bad, right?
  
  Good for us, but bad for the country, I'd say, unless what we have here is an example of wise environmental stewardship despite the cost.
  
  The Virginia Department of Transportation, which funnels taxpayers' money into such projects, has agreed to pay us the $72,000 for a 10-year lease of the land. By the time you read this, the cash may already be in the bank. VDOT also must pay about $25,000 for the Harbour's legal expenses and such for closing the deal. VDOT had already incurred costs of geologists, archeologists and others who scrutinized the property repeatedly to make sure it qualified.
  
  As I said, it's not totally a loss to the U.S. taxpayer if you think wetlands are that environmentally precious. Also, Interstate travelers and local commuters should benefit from an improved Wilson Bridge.
  
  And we Harbourites will have two more wetland acres to harbor extra Canada geese, snakes and beavers.
  
  The well-organized environmentalists nationally and locally can? chalk up another victory in the battle to promote their idea of a sustainable ecology, and hang the cost.
  
  For what it's worth, it ain't worth it. Don't you agree?
  
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November 2002

• The Second Gate: William M Carpenter
  
  The "second gate!" We have all heard about the plan, someday, to have a second gate. The story began a long time ago. when we bought our lot in 1970, the salesman for American Realty, the original developer, said there would be a second gate in the second section in about six months. When we started building our house on Aquia Drive in the first section in 1971, the word was still "a second gate in about six months." When the house was finished in June of 1972, and we moved in, the second gate was reported to be coming very soon. The place had been picked out, aross Harpoon from Admiral Drive, and thus out to U.S. 1 near the crucifix. Ther is, in fact, if you look down among the trees off Harpoon across from Admiral, the remnants of an old road, and it could be used as the base for the road leading out from the second gate.
  
  And so it went, until 1975 when American Realty went bankrupt and we took over the AHPOA to run the Harbour ourselves, as we have been doing ever since. In the crisis atmosphere of having to take over and to raise the dues to pay for all our amenities (roads, security force, marina, pools, golf course, tennis courts, stables, office staff, and other expenses)it was a shock for many when we raised the dues to $180 from $60 that the developer had been charging. There wasn't much intrest then to talk about spending more money for a second gate. We sent the executive committee of our newly-elected board down to Memphis to the bankruptcy court, and they came back with $580,000 which American Realty had been honest enough to save for us out of all the dues paid up to that time and put in escrow.
  
  Some of us on the board then wanted to take the money from the court and put it into a reserve fund, and begin to charge dues enough to meet the actual costs of running the Harbour. But that was too much for the majority of the board and so we ate up the escrow over the next two or three years by taking from it the difference from the $180 and the real cost of operations.
  
  But the second gate issue gradually revived, and we actually began to talk about how it might be done. By then we had created our own police force to take over from the weaker coverage by the security contract organization that we took over from the developer. A second gate would have to be manned by gate guards, as is the main gate. Some of us went out and walked the route of the second gate, and information was obtained about what property we would have to acquire to get out of U.S. 1. One problem we encountered was a piece of property owned by a man and his wife, who were separated, and wouldn't talk to each other. I had a plan in mind to overcome the impasse: just take our road equipment and cut a right of way, taking small slices of property that belonged to others--the owners could have sued us, and the court would have awarded them fair compensation for the land, and we could have paid it, and the result would have been that we had a road for exit out a second gate. But our lawyer said no, we can't do that, so we did nothing.
  
  The story of the years since then is one we all generally know, that we talk now and again about a second gate and as each year passes, the cost goes up, and we get scared by the numbers. Meanwhile, the traffic pouring in and out of our one gate gets heavier by the day. But the issue is not going away.
  
  For reasons of alleviating traffic, and for emergency exit if something should happen to the present gate, a second gate is something we ought to have. It's food for thought.