Draw a line no one should cross and someone will cross it.

A case in point: a wiggly line through West Earl Township, south of Akron, separating housing from farms.

The line runs through the western part of the bucolic township and marks the boundaries of one of Lancaster County's 13 urban growth areas. These are regions around the city, boroughs and villages the county planning commission, in cooperation with municipalities, have deemed appropriate for development.

The county's goals, stated in its new Growth Management Plan, are to keep 85 percent of residential development within urban growth areas and to aim for an average housing density of 7.5 units per acre.

The goals are not controversial. Surveys consistently show most people in Lancaster County want to preserve farmland and understand the logic of steering development to built-up areas.

In Pennsylvania, however, county land-use plans are unenforceable. Municipal boards can choose to abide by a county comprehensive plan or do their own thing.

Reasonable arguments

And in West Earl Monday, the supervisors chose to do the latter. At a developer's request, the supervisors crossed that wiggly line, voting 5-0 to rezone 25.9 acres just outside the growth area from agricultural to medium-density residential.

Hurst Brothers Development Co. wants to build single-family homes, duplexes and townhouses — 150 units — on the cropland bordering Oregon Pike to the south and Rose Hill Road to the east. The housing density would be roughly 6 units per acre.

Is the rezoning an outrage? Not really. In busting through the growth boundary, the supervisors did not act cavalierly.

Township officials subjected the proposal to months of scrutiny before concluding the tract's proximity to water and sewer lines and the way it is hemmed in by a floodplain to the west and homes to the east make it a logical site to be developed.

In addition, undeveloped residential tracts are few and far between in West Earl. The largest two are 33 and 38 acres, both owned by farmers who are not "clamoring" to sell to a developer, according to Supervisor John Ford.

By allowing Hurst to put up 150 homes, Ford said, spot development across the township might be deterred. (Farm owners are allowed to subdivide a one-acre housing lot for every 50 farmed.)

Furthermore, Ford said, township sewer bills, now the highest in the county, likely would dip because of the addition of 150 homes to a system with excess capacity. He sees the sewer authority spending almost nothing to gain an extra $100,000 a year in revenue.

Boroughs hurt

So the supervisors have their reasons for crossing the line, none of them ill-founded.

But there is a consequence of building scores of homes in a township that's 79 percent rural: It would contribute to the hollowing out of boroughs struggling to revitalize. New census data shows that half of the county's 18 boroughs have lost population since 2000. Two of those boroughs — Akron and Ephrata — are close to West Earl.

The county planning commission, charged with thinking regionally, urged West Earl to hold off on the rezoning unless there's "demographic proof" nearby areas can't meet the demand for housing.

The supervisors, thinking locally, gave that concern short shrift.

Well, what's done is done.

But it's not too late for the supervisors to consider a couple of ways to make the rezoned tract a better fit with the county's plan.

They could both allow Hurst to build at greater density and rezone 26 acres elsewhere from residential to agricultural.

Having crossed the line, West Earl would then be more in line.

E-mail: jhawkes@lnpnews.com