Neighbors oppose upscale rehab facility in south Augusta | The Augusta Chronicle

Esther Stembridge faced her own problems with drugs and alcohol but got clean in 1986 before her children were born. She sees the need for treatment facilities like the upscale one being proposed off Bennock Mill Road in south Augusta where she lives but that doesn’t mean she won’t stop fighting to keep it out.

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“We just don’t want it on our neighborhood,” Stembridge said. “We just don’t want it in our backyard.”

After more than an hour of lobbing questions at proponents for the Georgia Recovery Center for Impaired Professionals during a hearing Monday of the Augusta Planning Commission, many of her neighbors did not sound convinced that the residential treatment center would not be a potential danger and disruption to their quiet, rural area. The hearing was required by Georgia law and the actual zoning hearing cannot take place for at least six months.

Many who packed the Augusta Commission chamber were among the more than 300 who had signed a petition opposing a “halfway house” there and Augusta attorney Pat Rice took umbrage at that.

“It is not, it is not, a halfway house,” he proclaimed. ”It is not part of the criminal justice system. There are no criminals in this program.”

via Neighbors oppose upscale rehab facility in south Augusta | The Augusta Chronicle.