Press Release | 8.15.25

Yorklyn Residents Call on Gov. Meyer to Protect Water Supply, Stop Reckless Development

Developers Drake Cattermole and David Carpenter have exploited a legal loophole to bypass water protection regulations and county code. 

Yorklyn, DE—Residents of 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. They made progress in the latest legislative session, but now they are taking their fight to Governor Meyer. 

Only Meyer, they say, can stop a project that developers slipped into a state-managed plan under the Carney administration, without community input or notice. Developers Cattermole and Carpenter first tried to build 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 them 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 Meyer to instruct DNREC to halt construction and to end the agreement with the developers when it expires this coming December. Meyer has declined their request 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.