‘Green’ wins a fight in south Charlotte

It looks as if the greenway protection gang in south Charlotte won its fight with City Hall. (To be precise, they were fighting Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities, a city department, and the county Park and Recreation Department.)

I wrote about them in my Urban Outlook column Jan. 20, “Once foes, now greenway fans work to save it.” Then I got sick in February (as did everyone in my house) and I didn’t close the loop to make sure what looked likely at the Feb. 7 Mecklenburg county commissioners’ meeting really did happen. It did. Unanimously. The commissioners agreed to use a compromise route for a new sewer line that wouldn’t plunder a bottomland forest along the Lower McAlpine Greenway.

Barry Shearin, CMU’s chief engineer, said today the utility department is proceeding with what was called Alignment 1A, which doesn’t cross the creek or require any disruption of the greenway forest. It turns out, he said, the cost of Alignment 1A (an estimated $4.7 million) is roughly equivalent to the cost originally projected for the project, along what came to be known as Alignment 1, before development in the area made that alignment more expensive.

Here’s the good news and the bad news. I’ll start with the bad. Not only was CMU not looking very creatively for ways to protect the creek and the greenway from sewer construction and easement disruption, the county park and rec department did not appear to be pushing them very hard to do that. After all, the county owns the greenway.

Here’s the good news. Neighbors in the area DID push to protect their greenway, and it was their pressure that inspired CMU to find a more environmentally benign option that didn’t cost much more money. It’s too bad they had to push the park and rec department, too. They used to full advantage the park department’s admirable network of citizen advisory committees, up to and including the park and rec commission.

It worked. Bravo!