Officials want to hear from residents on land use

DARLINGTON – The Darlington County Planning Commission wants to know what county residents think about land use issues in the county.

The commission and planning officials have scheduled three public meetings in January to give citizens an opportunity to comment on land use matters, including the future land use map and land use component of the county’s comprehensive land use plan and the possibility at some point of zoning.

The first meeting is Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Lake Swamp Fire Station. The remaining meetings are set for Jan. 13 at Lawton Park in Hartsville and Jan. 27 at the Palmetto Rural Fire District fire station on McIver Road near Darlington. Both start at 6:30 p.m.

County officials are in the process of updating the county’s comprehensive land use plan, which includes seven components or elements that provide a snapshot of the county’s economic health, housing and population data, environmental conditions and other important factors that influence the overall health of the county.

Those seven elements include population, housing, cultural resources, economic development, natural resources, community facilities and land use. County council adopted its initial land use plan in 1998 and 1999 and has updated six of the seven components.

Planning officials hope citizens will attend the meetings and tell planners what they want to see or not see in the land use plan, said Darlington County Planning Director Doug Reimold.

Reimold said officials hope to have an updated land use element ready to present to Darlington County Council in April.

Over the last several years, county council has seen several land use issues come up. In 2003, a major controversy arose over a proposed factory-sized hog farm. Concerns also have surfaced over the location of adult businesses. Most recently, council has heard concerns about a proposed large turkey farm.

The land use element is the final component of the plan remaining to be updated. State law requires that the plan’s seven elements be updated at least every 10 years.
“The biggest thing is for people to understand that the land use plan is not a regulation,” said Charles Brooks, senior planner for Darlington County. “It’s not zoning. It’s not an enforcement tool. This is not going to restrict development one way or the other.”

The land use plan is not a zoning measure, and Darlington County has no zoning ordinances. The county cannot adopt any kind of land use regulations, including zoning, without a land use plan in place under state law.

And any such measures would have to go through the county planning commission and be approved by county council before they could become effective, Reimold said.
At present, land use development in the unincorporated areas of the county occurs at the will of individual property owners, Reimold said.

The land use element of the plan is a “wish list” or vision of how the county could or should develop and grow over a prescribed period of time, Reimold said.

Brooks and Reimold said the updating process is designed to gather opinions about what people think about land use planning in Darlington County. In 2006, about 51 percent of Darlington County voters voting in an advisory referendum indicated they favored some form of land use planning. “That’s not much of a majority,” Brooks said. “Many people don’t want it.”

The comprehensive land use plan categorizes existing land uses throughout the county and proposes, projects, forecasts and recommends future uses of the same land area. The land use element offers a guide for future development, and any proposals or recommendations set forth in it must receive approval from county council.

The future land use map is not a zoning map, Reimold said, but is aimed at giving residents a better idea of areas that may be best suited for certain types of uses. The map includes residential, commercial, industrial, preservation and general development areas.

While the map provides a guide to establish some land use patterns in the unincorporated areas of the county, most of the areas on the map are proposed as general development areas, which allows property owners to continue to develop their properties as they see fit, Reimold said. Agricultural use is expected to continue to dominate most of those areas with isolated residential or commercial use, he said.