Land Development Provisions To Protect Georgia Water Quality

<br /><br /> The process of developing land into subdivisions, shopping centers, or office parks typically has a tremendous impact upon the quality of streams in the vicinity of the development. In many cases, the land development regulations under which many of these types of developments are built, both unnecessarily restrict the developer and do little to protect the neighboring streams from longterm impacts.<br /><br /> Land development regulations can hurt Georgia’s streams, or help them. By writing informed provisions into development regulations and keeping unconstructive ones out, it is possible to improve water quality, reduce erosion, and maintain water supplies and stream ecosystems while each watershed and each municipality develops functionally and economically.<br /><br /> Stormwater management has in the past been seen as a separate technical component of development. It has been aimed exclusively at drainage and flood control during large storms that occurred only at intervals of years. And it has been implemented exclusively with specialized add-on structures; land uses themselves were unchanged.<br /><br /> Today’s concern with runoff quality places new demands on some aspects of urban development — while telling us to reduce the stringency of regulating certain other aspects. The way to develop with more environmental ensitivity is, in many instances, to develop more economically. Every time rain falls on an urban development, it washes off oils, bacteria, litter, sediment, fertilizers, and foreign chemicals from streets, parking lots, lawns, dumpster pads, and metal roofs. The streams erode with great volumes and rates of runoff. Stream habitats, wetlands, and water supplies are lost to flooding, pollution, erosion, and summer drought. Knowledgeable design of urban development can solve the problem of runoff quality at the source — in the land uses where pollutants are first generated and rain water first touches the ground. The solution is embedded in transportation, land use, soil and vegetation, and only secondarily requires separate engineering structures. Georgia’s municipalities can guide their new development to meet these concerns.<br /><br /> This report outlines the types of provisions that could be modified in or added to local development regulations that could improve runoff quality. Runoff quality" as used in this report includes the quantity of runoff during storms, its constituents, and all of its direct and indirect effects on ground water, water supplies, streams and wetlands. The report explains the potential provisions’ roles in runoff quality protection, and comments on their effects on cost, safety, and other issues. More is known, scientifically, than is being put into practice today in Georgia’s development patterns.<br /><br /> Dissemination and implementation of new practices has been below the state of the science and below the needs of Georgia’s watersheds. The provisions in this report were developed from reported experiences and studies around the country, and refined in dialogs with a task force of Georgia citizens and government and business representatives. <br /><br /> The provisions can be used in the existing ordinances through which municipalities are already regulating new development and its runoff: zoning and subdivision ordinances, erosion and sediment control laws, tree protection ordinances, stormwater management ordinances, and design standards documents. <br /><br />