News

Cities don’t grow haphazardly. They grow following a plan laid out by city officials, and every now and then the city revisits the plan to see if it’s on the right track.

That revisiting is happening now in New Bern, and Sound Rivers gathered with residents this week to host a workshop on how to weigh in on the Re-New Bern initiative, the rewrite of New Bern’s land-use ordinance.

“It was a great event,” said Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop. “We had 17 people attend, in addition to our staff and board members, and had a really fruitful conversation about what people want to see out of growth in New Bern: what responsible growth looks like; what watershed-wise growth looks like; and the types of land-use practices that are contributing to water-quality problems — things we don’t want to see in New Bern.”

Samantha, Water Quality Specialist Taylor Register, Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz and Stormwater Education Coordinator Sierra Stickney (Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps member) met with community members at Craven Community College, and first introduced attendees to the work Sound Rivers does and the water-quality issues the Riverkeeping team sees that are caused by land-use practices. They then separated New Bern’s current land-use ordinance into four main categories (housing types, transit and infrastructure, environmental and housing justice/affordability economics) and broke out into groups to determine what they do and don’t want to see in each category.

“They shared their takeaways, and we will be incorporating that information in Sound Rivers’ comments,” Samantha said. “But their top concerns were flooding and wetland loss contributing to more flooding, basically, and people also cared a lot about recreational access.”

One issue that participants brought up was a proposal several years ago to develop part of Union Point Park, on the waterfront in downtown New Bern, a proposal Sound Rivers weighed in on. “They want to see protections put in place for public parks and an expansion of recreational resources, in particular, river trails and accesses,” Samantha said.

Samantha said Sound Rivers will host another workshop once the city releases the draft of the new land-use ordinance, and get even more people involved.

“We had a great group. There were community organizers, a representative from the NAACP, a lot of locals who get the Sound Rivers eNews, a college student just there to learn — people were stoked,” Samantha said. “We agreed to get back together when something comes out from the city.”

She said the process will likely take longer than anticipated because New Bern, like many municipalities across the state, is requesting exemption from a bill recently passed by the General Assembly that puts into question what municipalities can and cannot do with regard to stormwater, zonings and other issues previously determined by local government.

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