Letter: Oppose Harvest Farms, a turning point for Virginia Beach

Dear Editor:

I am a Pungo resident, an athlete, a 3-acre mini farmer, a mom, a wife of a retired Navy serviceperson and a former business owner who is passionate about the outdoors. I live on one of the streets severely affected by flooding in Pungo. 

I have read news that flooding on my street and in my neighbor’s yards is a result of wind-driven events. My flooded street ebbs and flows with downpours, not winds, for most of the flooding events in the recent past. 

Farmers on my street have fields getting flooded and crops destroyed. In addition, streets around Back Bay are completely inaccessible when it floods. This poses a health and safety issue to bus drivers, children, taxpayers going to work, landowners and city workers providing services.

Effects are not isolated. Impacts of choice are cumulative.

I am circulating a petition which can be found online via gopetition.com.

The proposed development called Harvest Farms, which I adamantly oppose, serves as a turning point for the growth plan in the southeastern portion of the city. Our elected representatives must acknowledge the data from studies, initiatives and reports at their disposal and reject the zoning request from this developer. Perpetuating unsustainable practices is not forward thinking. It is irresponsible.

The petition I am sponsoring calls for accountability by this city’s elected representatives, who have a duty to ensure the health and safety of all its citizens to the best of their ability. If the city’s representatives made a choice to follow the guidelines for the transition area and goals of all the reports our citizens have paid for, there would be absolutely no question that another development on the border of the transition area – which directly affects rural Pungo – would be an absolute no. 

Every citizen pays for the choices made throughout our city. If we are community, we have a duty to voice our opposition and the stewards of our city’s operation have a duty to listen. It is a precedent decision which will impact how choices are made for this unique and preservable part of the city in the years to come. We must stand together and stop this now.

— Melani Moreno, Pungo

Ed. — The proposed Harvest Farms subdivision, which would bring housing and commercial development to Pungo, could go to the Planning Commission in November, though that is not certain. The developers are revising initial plans following concerns about the project raised by advisory bodies to the city and by citizens during meetings the developers hosted for the public. Concerns, in part, dealt with aspects of the plan, including its density, that were not consistent with guidelines for development in the transition area between the suburban north and rural south of Virginia Beach.

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