Approving truck stop is wrong
Recently, the Pilot Flying J Co. of Tennessee held a public meeting on Santa Fe’s south side to reveal plans to build a travel center. The company proposed a large truck stop at the intersection of Rancho Viejo Boulevard and N.M. 14. In the May meeting, Pilot “outlined plans to spend more than $10 million to build a travel center that would be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A complex including a gas station, two fastfood outlets, showers and parking for 70 semi tractor-trailers.”
Pilot’s attempt to hold a second meeting June 20 to announce its request for variances to subvert county lighting codes and to subdivide the proposed site for additional development, failed when 200-plus attendees walked out in protest (“Rancho Viejo residents heckle, walk out of Flying J meeting,” June 21).
The proposed truck stop flies in the face of the county’s espoused Sustainable Growth Management Plan. For decades, Santa Fe County has worked to balance the needs for economic diversification and residential development against strong community mandates for cultural and environmental preservation.
In 2015, the county adopted the Sustainable Growth Management Plan that codifies cherished community values centered on protecting and preserving the physical environment and scarce natural resources, promoting a green, sustainable economy, and maintaining the unique cultural character of the area as a world-class tourism destination. Approval of a land-use application to build a Pilot Flying J truck stop at the gateway to Santa Fe would entirely undermine the spirit and letter of the county’s planning process, showing it to be a sham, unless decision-makers stand behind their own Sustainable Growth Management Plan and the Santa Fe County Sustainable Land Development Code.
The Sustainable Growth Management Plan aims “to create a framework to protect our resources and to provide a sustainable quality of life with an attendant Sustainable Land Development Code, guided by the Plan, to enforce this new growth management paradigm. The Santa Fe area is known worldwide for its special landscape, creativity, artistic endeavors and unique cultural history.”
The Sustainable Growth Management Plan is predicated on “a pressing need, to expand the degree to which Santa Fe County puts to good use the considerable creativity, expertise and wisdom of its residents in developing a more sustainable lifestyle, finding new and better ways to relate to the natural environment, and to initiate a more collaborative relationship between residents and government entities to solve problems of interest and concern to all.”
To operationalize its vision for the county, the Sustainable Growth Management Plan sets forth “directives” framed as “goals, policies and strategies,” to “specifically determine and direct all legislation, administrative regulation, area, specific and community plans, and the development review process. …” It also outlines three “key principles” of sustainability to inform the plan and code throughout: “To be sustainable, a community must adhere to three key principles of sustainability: environmental responsibility, economic strength and diversity, and community livability.” There is nothing inherent in a truck stop that honors these principles.
So, while I am following county water conservation guidelines to take shorter showers and to turn off the faucet while I brush my teeth, while never washing my car in my driveway, I will find it beyond ironic if the county approves Pilot Flying J’s application to run water 24-7, 365 days a year.
The proposed truck stop flies in the face of the county’s espoused Sustainable Growth Management Plan.