The Westmoreland Planning Commission completed its business in record time this Monday. The agenda’s single land use action item has been pending since September and the public’s opportunity to contribute input had ended on October 3.

The joint request submitted by Tidwells’ Saint James Lane homeowners Robert and Barbara Sutton and Mel and Karen Wester has been an action item on the Commission’s agendas for three months. A Bay Act

exception was needed to validate construction of the retaining wall the neighboring property homeowners hoped to complete before more storms caused greater damage to the fragile Machodoc waterfront they share.
In September the Commissioners asked the applicants to develop a more detailed vegetative plan to mitigate encroachment into the Act’s resource protection area. In October the Commission accepted the plan but delayed action for yet another month.

The final delay occurred when Bayshore Design’s Buck Pace advised the Commission that the application could not be approved without the Commission’s receipt of an engineer’s water quality impact assessment. The list of vegetative plantings and sets of mathematical calculations associated with the applicants’ storm water collection proposals satisfied the county’s Land Use Office staff and the Commissioners. It only took two minutes to approve the application.

Only Commission Chairman John Felt discussed the matter, commenting that storm water from 114 square feet of one dwelling will be collected in a 50-gallon barrel and storm water from 85 square feet of the adjacent dwelling will be collected in another 50-gallon barrel.

“The barrel will be placed at the bottom of the rain spouts,” Felt explained. “This has to be the shortest meeting on record,” was the chairman’s last remark.