Residents in Yorklyn and neighboring Hockessin have been fighting for years to preserve natural lands and a historic village along the northwest edge of New Castle County. Some progress was made during the latest state legislative session, and now they are asking for Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer to take additional steps to halt reckless development.

Developers like Drake Cattermole have exploited a legal loophole to bypass water protection regulations and county codes, the residents said, and only the governor can stop a project that developers slipped into a state-managed plan under the Carney administration without community input or notice. 

Developers, including Cattermole, first tried to push through a large development in Yorklyn in 2008 but were denied by New Castle County. But a loophole was added to the state’s bond bill in 2011, which exempted the developers from the county code and review process. This allowed developers to clear-cut 10 acres of forest without public notice and to ignore the county’s land-use regulations.

Now, residents are sounding the alarm because construction will soon begin on 61 luxury townhomes located in the Cockeysville Water Resource Protection Area—a 3-mile stretch from Yorklyn to Route 7 that sits atop a vulnerable aquifer that supplies water to local residents and Artesian Water Company. The Cockeysville water protection area is tightly regulated in the county code, but because the developers were exempted from the county code, they did not have to comply with those regulations. DNREC, which oversees the project, has told residents that it will not intervene because it signed an agreement with the developers.

Residents are asking Gov. Meyer to instruct DNREC to halt construction and to end the agreement with the developers when it expires this coming December. Meyer has declined the residents' requests to meet with him, so they are launching a petition and email drive, urging him to take action and put the public interest before that of private developers.