By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Critics of a zoning change that would remove watershed-buffer protection from a 165-acre tract next to Jordan Lake have filed a formal protest petition that could forestall the change unless four county commissioners agree to it.

The filing came in late Monday, and officials are trying to verify that it meets the local standard for invoking the supermajority requirement. Commissioners are scheduled to debate the rezoning early next week.

County Attorney Lowell Siler estimated that about 20 people signed the petition. "The issue is going to be how much land they actually own," he said.

Durham law requires supermajority approval of county rezonings in any of three types of cases:

n When the owners of 20 percent of a tract targeted for rezoning sign a protest petition.

n When the owners of 20 percent of the land lying within 100 feet of the sides or rear of a parcel protest.

n When 20 percent of the owners of the land within 100 feet of the far side of a road that borders a tract protest.

It is unlikely that critics can meet either of the first two tests.

The tract's owner, Southern Durham Development Inc., is eager to build a dense development on the N.C. 751 parcel. The land adjoining it to the west and north belongs to the federal government. The land to the south belongs to Seven Five One Investments LLC, a company controlled by Neal Hunter, the businessman who assembled and sold the 165 acres to Southern Durham Development.

Assuming federal neutrality -- and Jordan Lake's operators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to date have stayed out of the fight -- that leaves critics to look for support to the east, on the other side of N.C. 751.

There, there are several undeveloped parcels, and the Woodlands of Chancellor's Ridge townhomes.

If the petition qualifies as legally valid -- a point officials were still checking as of Wednesday afternoon -- it would make it much more difficult for supporters of the rezoning to get it through the commissioners.

Should Commissioners Joe Bowser, Brenda Howerton and Michael Page all vote for it, either Commissioner Ellen Reckhow or Commissioner Becky Heron would have to join the majority.

But both have been highly critical of the idea of changing the watershed buffer, at least on the say-so of a landowner-funded survey.

Southern Durham Development, meanwhile, isn't counting on the zoning going through.

It has a lawsuit pending in state that claims it's entitled to be free of buffer restrictions because former City/County Planning Director Frank Duke in 2006 agreed with a Hunter-funded survey that placed the lake's boundary far enough away from the tract to justify taking them off.