Planning commission give OK to gas station under conditional use rules
By WILLIAM SNOWDEN
Editor
The planning commission voted last week to approve a conditional use for a Wawa convenience store and gas station to be located on Crawfordville Highway on a parcel between the old and new Whiddon Lake Road.
Planning commissioners voted unanimously, 7-0, to approve the store at their meeting on Monday, April 8. The matter does not go to the county commission.
It was the first gas station approval since the controversy over the gas station sought by Southwest Georgia Oil to be located at the Crawfordville Highway-Bloxham Cutoff intersection – on a parcel that cave divers had identified as having an underground tunnel where water flowed from Chip’s Hole sink to Wakulla Springs.
At one point, hundreds of people attended a county commission meeting to object to the gas station’s location.
That controversy was resolved by the land being purchased by the state for conservation, and Southwest Georgia Oil doing a land swap to locate the station on the other side of Bloxham Cutoff.
In response to the controversy, county commissioners changed the process of approval for gas stations – making them conditional uses under commercial zoning, meaning the planning commission could vote to reject the application for conditional use if there were concerns.
Facing heightened scrutiny, Wawa officials said at the meeting that they had done electrical testing of the parcel – as well as soil borings – to determine there are no underground caves or conduits on the property. The surveyor for the project said the electrical testing found no indication of voids to a depth of 70 feet.
The gas station will have underground storage tanks, and Wawa’s engineers described the company’s leak protection and detection system that goes above and beyond federal and state requirements.
Planning Commissioner Chad Hanson said he appreciated the level of detail that was received, but expressed concern “about the lack of public presence here.”
Besides Wawa officials and other people with business before the planning commission, there were no citizens in attendance at the meeting.
Hanson also urged county commissioners to review and update the springs protection ordinance, which was approved in 1994. The full planning commission voted several months ago to urge county commissioners to address concerns about the ordinance.
The planning commission is chaired by Andrew Riddle, and members at the meeting were Hanson, Mark Mitchell, Rhonda Carroll, Leonard Donaldson, Kent Malik and Robin Tyler.
