An article Lancaster Intelligencer / Journal New Era titled “City property owners to pay storm water fees beginning this spring” reports:
“The city plans to make $140 million in improvements over 25 years…
“The fees are expected to generate $2.6 million in revenue this year. That money will be used to plant trees, add drainage islands to parking lots, porous pavement to alleyways and park basketball courts, and vegetative “green” roofs on buildings.
“Doing so is expected to allow 1 billion gallons of rainwater to soak into the ground that now runs into the city’s curbside storm inlets. During heaving rains, that water overwhelms the city’s wastewater treatment plant and overflows into the river carrying raw sewage along with it.”
As a builder of communities with a half century of experience, we question how long “porous pavement to alleyways and park basketball courts” will last over the course of a few years as oils and soil from normal use clogs their porous surfaces. The approach is considered dubious at best.
As for “vegetative ‘green’ roofs on buildings”, this may indeed be ‘pie in the sky’. Who is going to tend the gardens? How long will it be before they fall into disuse and simply become hard baked dirt? And here is a salient question: What will take place when there is a need to re-roof every fifteen to twenty years?
The primary way storm water is normally handled is either through detention or retention basins. Detention basins collect water during rainfalls and slowly discharge it over a day or two as surface runoff.
Retention basins do not discharge the water and can only work properly where the soil contains good natural porosity and residue is scraped from the bottom every few years.
Just take a look around any recent suburban construction. Usually 10% to 15% of the land is utilized for these purposes.
The other alternative is to capture storm water in a newly constructed storm sewer system. Separated storm water only requires minimal treatment before it goes into a tributary. The current problem is storm water and sanitary sewer share the same sewer lines and thus must flow through the far more complex and expensive to build and operate sewer treatment plants.
Locating potential retention or detention areas in the City or nearby and / or constructing storm sewer in a limited number of appropriate locations is what NewsLanc’s publisher Robert Field sought to explore when he was rebuffed by city planner Randy Patterson and Mayor Rick Gray. That would meet State requirements and perhaps be the most economical approach for the long run.
Do it right and it is right for fifty to a hundred years. Play around with roof top gardens and special paving and we put on a big show, temporarilly placate the Department of Environmental Protection, but the problems remain to be re-addressed in a few years. Once again, we push our responsibilities onto our children.
When Mayor Rick Gray invited NewsLanc’s publisher to a private meeting to be briefed about roof gardens and porous paving, Field raised concerns and offered to review plans and come up with suggestions. In typical fashion, Gray turned a deaf ear. Gray thinks he knows everything. Just ask him.
Let’s put storm water down the drain; not taxpayer money.
As a former municipal official I agree with your assessment of this plan as nothing more than “pie in the sky” and a waste of taxpayer money.
Another example of left-wing bureaucrats shoving the newest and greatest plan on the taxpayer.