Angell: Say no to proposed transfer station rezone
Posted
By Vanessa Angell
There is a rezoning case going through Maricopa County Planning and Zoning that residents of the Northwest Valley should know about.
Republic Services wants to bring a waste transfer station to the area, which would require the land to be rezoned from the current residential district to heavy industrial.
Residential areas are not a place for heavy industrial companies to operate.
There will be many impacts to local surrounding areas if this is rezoned: diminished home values, loud noise, noxious odors, environmental impacts, an increase in the bird, bug, and rodent population, as well as blown-out trash littering the side of all the roads, not to mention the proposed site is on a flood plain and up the hill from our drinking water aquifer recharge station.
There will be an increase in traffic, especially heavy-duty truck traffic and a huge number of pick-up trucks with open trailers, which will increase the occurrence of vehicle crashes.
All these additional vehicles will be using our narrow, twisty, two-lane residential road that is not engineered for the heavy-duty truck traffic weight or the additional vehicle volume. This area is already congested and these additional vehicles will make it near impossible to get in and out through our main egress route for our community. Not to mention the traffic nightmare we already have at that particular intersection where the community has coined 115th Avenue and Happy Valley Road the “Death Intersection,” due to the frequency of vehicle crashes that occur.
Opposition to this transfer station has been gaining steam for the last couple months.
The movement was already in progress and a petition was started before I ever became aware of this application to rezone. A homeowner on one of our community Facebook resident pages uploaded a picture of the posted sign in the desert, and that is what started the movement. Another homeowner began a petition on that same day. At some point, someone suggested that we have a single group page to get comments organized and have a centralized location for discussion. I volunteered to create the Facebook page, Happy Valley Says NO to a Waste Transfer Station.
That is how my involvement began.
I built my forever home and have lived in Crossriver for over 13 years. I certainly never anticipated that I would ever have to deal with heavy industrial zoning being near my home. One advantage I have is that I know what heavy industrial zoning is and what ramifications it has on a residential community because I own a steel recycling facility. They may propose to do some recycling at this site, but our opposition is about keeping all heavy industrial companies out because if one is allowed in, then all heavy industrial companies must be allowed in. This opposition is not about the applicant and their business, it is about the zoning and long-term planning for the Northwest Valley.
There is a misconception that we are against a recycling and waste transfer station.
Our community understands the importance of this type of facility. But we feel there are better, more appropriate locations. The applicant has suggested there are other heavy industrial companies surrounding us. There are not, and none of the businesses they have referred to are on heavy industrial land. Furthermore, none of them are operating a business with such great community impact as a waste transfer site. And to top it off, those referred businesses were all here before us. So as potential homeowners, we had a choice to see what zoning was in the vicinity of our homes and decide if we wanted to live by those businesses. In this situation, the community is here first and we do not want a heavy industrial district to be formed in our residential neighborhood. The growth plan we prefer is residential, retail, and commercial, which would increase home values for all and bring more people to the Northwest Valley.
Residential areas are not a place for Heavy Industrial companies to operate.
Editor’s note: Ms. Angell is a resident of Crossriver and the admin for the Facebook page, Happy Valley Says NO to a Waste Transfer Station.
