On March 2, 2002, we told you about growing citizens’ resistence to a Wal-Mart supercenter in the tiny town of Kilbuck, Pennsylvania, along the Ohio river. The group, called “Communities First”, has filed a lawsuit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court against Kilbuck Supervisors. “We are against any sort of big box retail on this site,” resident Bob Kier told the Pittsburg Tribune-Review. Residents worry that the combined impact of a 200,000 s.f. Wal-Mart supercenter in Kilbuck, and a proposed Target on Camp Home Road will overwhelm the area with traffic. The citizen lawsuit claims that Kilbuck officials gave the Wal Mart initial approval even though the developer did not have adequate permits for grading the land or for water quality. Communities First says approval of the plan was based on incomplete records and a number of procedural violations. One official from the developer, ASC Development, said the project’s opponents were “a handful of people” not from Kilbuck.
Developers always want you to believe that opposition to their plans are from a “small band of people outside of the local community” — which is usually a perfect description of the developer. For more background on Kilbuck, go to the March 2, 2002 listing. The developer in this case says they are “still working through” the environmental challenges this project raises, but residents from several surrounding communities object to the Kilbuck plan, because it will impact their towns as much, or more than tiny Kilbuck. This is a regional project, but the develper only wants people from Kilbuck to have a say in the impact.
