A development company proposing to build a neighborhood on land in New Hanover County that includes a forest of centuries-old trees will “continue to fight” to see its plans through, the company’s founder said.
Copper Builders founder Wade Miller earlier this week called out what he referred to as misconceptions about Hilton Bluffs, a neighborhood proposed within a 4,000-acre tract that includes a nationally threatened forest.
Supporter Spotlight
In front of a crowd of opponents of the proposed development, Miller stressed at a New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meeting that trees in Sledge Forest would not be cut, wetlands would not be developed, 1,000 acres would be reserved as open space, and he reiterated a desire to conserve more than 1,100 acres on the tract.
“This means over 60% of the property will be protected if we achieve this goal,” he said. “We know this path comes with tradeoffs. We lose some density. We lose our golf course. We will lose one home per acre conserved. This is our preferred plan. This is what we are trying to do. We’ve invested considerable time, resources and energy into all this and we will continue to fight for it.”
Miller, as well as several people opposed to the development proposed for Castle Hayne, addressed commissioners during the board’s public comment session Monday afternoon.
Prior to the meeting, nearly 150 people gathered outside of the county’s historic courthouse in downtown Wilmington for a Save Sledge Forest rally.
The board meeting came on the heels of an announcement late last week that the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources had rejected a nonprofit’s multimillion-dollar grant request to purchase hundreds of acres of wetlands in Sledge Forest.
Supporter Spotlight
Unique Places to Save, in partnership with the Charlotte-based development company, had applied for a $15 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant to purchase 1,160 acres.
Opponents of the proposed neighborhood argue that the entire tract should be spared from development.
Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River in northern New Hanover County and is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.
More than 20 years ago, the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina identified the forest as a significant natural area, one that includes bald cypress trees up to 500 years old, longleaf and loblolly pines older than 300 years and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic white cedar.
The forest was added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests earlier this year.
“With abundant wetlands and rising waters, the entirety of this site, not just a portion, must be preserved to maintain the site as a nationally significant heritage area,” geologist Roger Shew said during the commissioner’s meeting.
Shew, a senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, warned that developing the upland area of the tract would impact adjacent wetlands with stormwater runoff “or subsurface flow that may exacerbate flooding and contaminant movement.”
“We already know that contaminants have moved off the GE site into the wetlands,” he said. “In fact, Copper Builders is petitioning to have a small brownfield site designated there.”
The tract being eyed for development is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site contaminated from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants that were stored in unlined trenches during the 1960 and 1970s.
That contamination spread across two parcels, including one owned by General Electric, and the other owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate.
Miller did not address concerns raised about contamination. He did, however, point out that development would occur in areas that are farmed regularly for timber.
The current owners of the property have the right to clear cut all of the land, he said.
“We don’t want that to happen,” Miller said. “We want to save Sledge Forest through honest conversation efforts, not through an ask for legal or regulation changes. I’m an outdoorsman. I want to protect it. I care deeply about it.”
A petition of more than 13,000 signatures of those fighting the proposed development was presented to commissioners.
Because the proposed development is on land that does not have to be rezoned, the project does not require approval from a public body, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.
“It’s been a year since we learned about that project, since we learned that a developer had found a loophole in our ordinance that would allow him to build perhaps the largest residential project in the history of New Hanover County, while also allowing him to block any input or review by you, our elected officials, or by us, the community that will be impacted,” Castle Hayne resident and Director of Save Sledge Forest Kayne Darrel said Monday. “Due to this loophole, we were told by that developer that this massive project was a by-right development that gave us no voice in the decisions. Our ask is that you make a decision to join us in being part of the solution because we believe, and we want you to believe, that together we can fix this mistake and we can save Sledge Forest.”
