Orange County NC Website
14 <br />147 environment, and health we are called upon to meet the challenge to limit businesses that are part of the <br />148 problem. I am in favor of a ban. <br />149 <br />150 Rachel Phelps Hawkins: I think as Mary said that education should be number one starting in the schools <br />15l when the kids are very young. The other problem is we have buses half full, everyone doesn't have to <br />152 drive their kids to school but they do and the buses are running with no one on them wasting gas. <br />153 <br />154 Brian Crawford: Michael or Craig are we still under the EPA mandate for this area because of the number <br />155 of pollutants we put in the environment? I understood the Triangle had some sort of restriction. <br />156 <br />157 Craig Benedict: The non - attainment designation has been released. We are now in another stage where <br />158 we had to provide a management and maintenance plan to make sure our land use plan and other policies <br />159 in the future would not move us into the non attainment area again but we have been released from that <br />160 non attainment zone. <br />161 <br />162 Brian Crawford: My second question is has anybody sat down to look at the link between how severely our <br />163 drive -thrus in this county impact our carbon output. I don't think that's been looked at enough, we know <br />164 intuitively that it makes sense but if this isn't done will it throw us back into the management plan or EPA <br />165 guidelines. I don't understand how this is a solution. It looks like we are jumping to this regulation as a <br />166 solution to our emissions problem in the area but yet no one has made that connection that this would help <br />167 it at all. I say that because its seems to be that at the Commissioner level three are some fairly strong <br />168 opinions that this ban should be in place. <br />169 <br />170 Michael Harvey: I think the goal we were asked to look at is what some reasonable regulations might be <br />171 because it's not just emissions or environmental pollution that are the ultimate concerns that we are <br />172 attempting to address here. It is noise; it is the commingling of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, stopped <br />173 traffic in drive -thru lanes. It is the shielding and buffering that provide esthetic separation from these types <br />174 of uses as well as help augment potential emission issues. Planning staff doesn't have the opportunity or <br />175 wherewithal to do the study that has been discussed. I don't' know where the County Commissioners <br />176 would be with funding such a study. These regulations were written to address County Commissioners' <br />177 concerns about coming up with options. We believe the regulations we have provided in the options try to <br />178 address those and provide reasonable regulations and not to address emission issues but address some of <br />179 the other issues identified during the review of the Buckhorn Village project as well as other issues that <br />180 have come up in the past about what is acceptable and what we should be trying to encourage to offset <br />181 some of the other concerns. <br />182 <br />183 Mary Bobbitt- Cooke: I'm not sure we can really translate California data into Orange County. In the public <br />184 health information in this report looking at maybe doing something about childhood diabetes if they stop <br />185 drive - thrus, that is way off the charts, public health is really more responsible than that. I think someone did <br />186 it to make a presentation at a meeting. Obesity is an issue but it's not going to be solved by drive -thru <br />187 regulation. My real point, is that where there are big concentrations of emissions are where our children <br />188 are. Asthma is the number one reason children miss school. We may want to regulate these new <br />189 businesses when they come into this county but we are ignoring the health of our children. That is a public <br />190 health fact. I really think we would be remiss not to send back to our County Commissioners the idea that <br />191 using a pass through for health reasons or emissions is missing where the emissions really occur and that <br />192 is harming a very vulnerable and fragile part of our population, our children. It is voluntary, of course <br />193 people won't keep their car off when they need it for air conditioning or heat but the reality is as more <br />194 people get educated, the more they will turn them off. Public health has learned that you start with <br />195 education before you regulate. I would recommend that we send a message back that if we're interested <br />Il <br />