State agency denies RDU’s request to build a security fence near Umstead State Park
A state environmental agency has blocked Raleigh-Durham International Airport’s plans to build a security fence around its property near Umstead State Park, but the airport says it’s only a temporary setback.
The state Division of Water Resources denied RDU’s request to build the fence in a buffer zone meant to protect water quality in the Neuse River basin. The agency said the proposed fence was not permitted under the Neuse River riparian buffer rules.
RDU announced last fall that it planned to build an 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire to keep people off its property along Old Reedy Creek Road near the park, including 105 acres it has leased for a quarry. Cyclists and hikers have used airport land on either side of the road for years, blazing a network of trails through the woods and building bridges, jumps and obstacles for bikes to navigate.
Airport officials said those trails and structures pose a legal liability for the airport and have degraded streams on the property. RDU cited the need to protect the stream banks in seeking a permission to build in the riparian buffer zone.
But in a letter released Wednesday, Division of Water Resources director S. Daniel Smith said the section of rules cited by the airport allow projects that stabilize stream banks only if erosion is threatening existing buildings or other structures.
“Portions of the proposed security fence will encircle undeveloped property where no existing structures or facilities are present,” Smith wrote. “Other portions of the proposed fence are redundant to existing airport facility fencing and thousands of feet from existing structures.”
Smith also said the division was concerned about the 10-foot cleared area that RDU proposes to maintain on both sides of the fence so law enforcement officers and maintenance workers can monitor it. That corridor along the fence would ostensibly be a road, Smith wrote, making the division “concerned about the potential for increased and ongoing vehicular traffic within the buffer.”
RDU contends that the division’s denial is based on a new version of the Neuse River buffer rules that went into effect June 15. The Airport Authority, RDU’s governing board, will try again, said spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco.
“The Authority intends to modify its application to comply with the new rules and resubmit,” Hawco said in an email. “The perimeter security fence is necessary to enhance airport security, keep trespassers off airport property and prevent worsening of the environmental damage the agency has already acknowledged.”
The Department of Environmental Quality said the state’s denial of the fence does not foreshadow whether it will allow Wake Stone Corp. to build a rock quarry on part of the property the airport wants to fence off. A different DEQ agency, the Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, is expected to decide this summer whether the company can create a 400-foot-deep open pit mine between Old Reedy Creek Road and its existing quarry off North Harrison Avenue.
