Over and done

Village of Catlett is headed to a board of supervisor’s vote on Thursday, after which it is presumably headed to the landfill. Three supervisors have indicated they will vote against the proposal, as we reported on Wednesday.

Mintbrook is likely not far behind, on both journeys.

Our thanks to the board for turning down requests to build the wrong kind of houses in the wrong places and for refusing to foster residential growth for which there is no demand, either current or future.

That doesn’t mean the supervisors are off the hook for coming up with a plan to address the failing drainfields have been a fact of life in Catlett for more than a half century.

Village of Catlett developers championed their proposal as the best way to accomplish this goal. The supervisors wisely decided that it was not.

Mintbrook is a more viable development, but also depends too entirely on large, single-family homes. The nationwide oversupply of such has been estimated to be as many as 15 million.

They’re not all hereabout, to be sure, but the unmistakable pattern is migration back toward the city, not away from it.

Times have changed. Development needs to follow suit.