Bedford Bulletin, October 9, 2002
Growth in Bedford County
Bedford County’s rural character makes it special to many residents. Although rural character cannot be precisely defined, part of rural character has to do with how land is used. Is it being used for residential and recreational purposes or for agricultural and other natural resource purposes, such as farming or timbering? The balance of land use is changing in Bedford County – it is shifting from agricultural and other traditional rural uses of the land to residential uses. Our rural character will disappear as subdivisions grow and this is a concern to many county residents.
Bedford Citizens for Land Preservation (BCLP) is dedicated to supporting responsible growth in Bedford County while maintaining its rural quality of life. Finding the right mix of growth and preservation of rural character is especially important as the county drafts a new comprehensive plan, scheduled to be completed in 2004. This comprehensive plan will be our blueprint for future growth and development.
Let’s look at growth trends in the context of our region of the country and our state. Did you know that the Southeast region is the fastest growing region in the nation? The overall population of the Southeast is projected to grow by approximately 24 percent between 1995 and 2015. Five of the ten fastest growing counties in the nation are in the Southeast and the third fastest growing county in the nation, Loudoun County, is in Virginia.
Productive farmland and woodlands, recreation areas, and scenic open space are being converted into residential and commercial uses to accommodate this growth. While the nation as a whole lost 6 percent of its farmland between 1982 and 1997, the Southeast region lost 14 percent – over 10 million acres.
Virginia, the 12th-most populous state in the nation, has experienced a population increase in the last decade that is comparable to the region as a whole – 14.4 percent. Over 7 million people now live in the Commonwealth. Its population is projected to grow by another 1.5 million people by the year 2025.
Over three-quarters of a million acres in Virginia were developed in just fifteen years and recent studies indicate that development is accelerating. An estimated 343,500 acres were developed between 1992 and 1997, an average of 188 acres per day. If this pace continues, more land will be development in Virginia in the next 40 years than in the previous 400 years.
Virginia has already lost nearly 450,000 acres of prime farmland to development from 1987 to 1997 – about 5 percent of its total farmland.
Bedford County’s population has doubled in the last thirty years. The 2000 Census shows that Bedford County is poised to become the dominant population center in Central Virginia, possibly overtaking Lynchburg by mid-decade, if current trends continue. As part of its comprehensive planning process, the Bedford County Department of Planning has projected population growth based on the rate of growth in the county in the past three decades. By the year 2030 the number of residents could top 136,000 (compared to 60,371 in 2000). This assumes that the trends remain the same. However, looking at what is happening in the Forest, Goode and Smith Mountain Lake areas, recent trends may indicate even faster growth in the next three decades.
According to County Administrator, William C. Rolfe, Bedford’s current zoning ordinance allows “. . . between 106,000 and 525,000 more homes. Based on our current average occupancy rate of 2.5 people per household, Bedford County could hold 265,000 more people at the minimum or 1.3 million people at the maximum. That’s all without changing a single line on our zoning map.” (Bedford County Communicator, June 6, 2001.) The zoning map was created in 1998 – without the benefit of a comprehensive plan for land use and development in Bedford County.
The new comprehensive plan the county is developing will help us ask if we want that level of growth and the costs associated with it. These costs include the price tag for community services – real dollars and cents – as well as the cost of losing Bedford’s rural character.
Like other counties in the Southeast, Bedford is losing prime farmland as it grows. According to US Census on Agriculture data, over the 23-year period from 1974 to 1997 Bedford lost 106 farms to development. That’s 19,676 acres of farmland that is gone forever. It represents a loss of 9 percent of Bedford’s farmland during this period, significantly above the national rate. Loss trends in a ten-year period between 1987 and 1997 for the county’s largest farms (1,000 acres or more) are an alarming 64.2 percent. In the 1990s (1992-1997) Bedford County lost 7 percent of its full-time farms. This suggests that the rate of loss is increasing.
What has triggered Bedford’s explosive growth? According to a recent article in the News and Advance (August 23, 2002) the growth is the result of the expansion of metropolitan Lynchburg on the county’s eastern end, the rapid development at Smith Mountain Lake, and the attraction of communities, such as Montvale, to serve as “. . . bedrooms for Roanoke commuters. The fuel for the fire is relatively inexpensive land and proximity to many of the region’s tourist spots.” In addition, Bedford offers easy access to Lynchburg and Roanoke. Developers have been able to purchase cheap land and sell it cheap. Much of this land has been farmland.
Numerous studies have shown that resource land, such as farms and woodlands, subsidize residential areas – farms pay more in tax than they use in services. But Bedford County’s farms are disappearing at an alarming rate and residential areas are growing.
Since 1970, ten county schools have been built or renovated and two new elementary schools opened last year. The new county courthouse has more than doubled its space in its recent complete renovation and in the past ten years the county has built a new sheriff’s office and renovated the county’s jail.
How will Bedford County pay for the schools, roads, libraries, police and fire protection, and water and sewer lines that new residential communities need? Stay tuned to future articles on Cost of Community Services studies that are a way to determine the fiscal contribution of different land uses to local budgets.
