Jeff Whitten
Former Editor, Bryan County News
Look on the bright side”, someone told me the other day. “At least a hurricane hasn’t hit Georgia yet,” he said.
That is a good thing, though count me among the grumpier ex-patriated members of the Palmetto State chapter of the CAVE fraternity who think the occasional tropical depression might also turn out to be a good thing if it manages to blow a few thousand northern transplants back to whence they came before it fizzles out. Without hurting anyone beyond their feelings, of course.
I shouldn’t feel that way, perhaps, but as a citizen against virtually everything I can’t help but notice it’s getting awful crowded in the South, and the region continues to fill up despite rising sea levels and temperatures, and tempers. So I cringe every time my news feed includes some internet story listing small towns in the South exuding southern charm whilst just waiting to welcome folks to come on down and move in.
One such write up, featuring a paragraph or two about Bluffton over in my home state of South Carolina, said in essence so many folks from a certain U.S. region far removed from this one had moved in the place had a Midwestern feel – and my wife’s recent annual trip to Hilton Head reminded me again that local cable there carries the Big 10 Network, which is as unsettling to me as an ice hockey team in Savannah.
In the meantime, I’d wager the main folks welcoming newcomers to move in are those who stand to make money off them, and then half those folks – those who move here and those who took their money and bought houses in gated communities to get away from them – get riled up about higher property taxes, lagging infrastructure and gridlocked roads, as if somehow it’s the fault of the locals for not keeping up.
Look, if this part of the world had been allowed to grow its population at a reasonable level instead of at annual rate of about 5 to 10 percent for more than two decades we’d have been able to manage growth. Instead, well, that trip that used to take you five minutes by car might take half an hour and when you get there the place will probably be overrun with folks who got here last week.
In the meantime, a local state senator is starting to wonder why Georgia is running out of farm land. He recently told a Savannah TV station one culprit was development, which pretty much sums up the entire catalogue of culprits in my book, since much of the farm land I used to see around my neck of the woods has been turned into warehouses or subdivisions or roundabouts, and all bring with them traffic and noise and litter and people wanting to beat you to wherever it is you’re trying to go.
There is a study afoot nonetheless to figure out why the state’s farmland is vanishing. I suggest those who will do the studying look at what state leaders are trying to accomplish and go from there, and I wish it well.
I also wish there was a way to protect empty spaces in the South the way they do in other countries, before they’re all turned into massive planned unit developments to lure even more disgruntled folks down here to complain about the heat and traffic and whatever else gets their britches in a twist.
Take the UK as an example of a country that appreciates nature.
My wife and I were watching a travel show the other day as the host walked near the ocean on a grassy, windswept bluff with few folks around and little sign of modern life for miles. No strip malls, no supermarkets, no Chic-Fil-As, no traffic. Just wild, isolated beauty. We agreed: Had that view been here on the Georgia coast it’s a safe bet developers in loafers and fishing shirts would be busy trying to turn it into a 100,000-home public-private partnership of a gated planned unit development with a golf course, private airport, marina and amusement park.
If, that is, they can get the water for it. With Hyundai looking at being permitted by the state Environmental Protection Division to extract some 6.6 million gallons a day of groundwater out of the aquifer to crank out environmentally sustainable electric vehicles to save the planet, this part of Georgia – once a laid-back paradise of woods and fields and trees and swamps and fresh and salt water -- might be on its way to becoming a giant sinkhole.
But look on the bright side. At least it’ll be the No. 1 sinkhole in the U.S. to do business in.
Jeff Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News now living the retired life. His opinions, like his politics, are his own.