BOCC passes stormwater rules -- but is the real debate still to begin?

Good to see the recommended rules for stormwater management pass the Board of County Commissioners last night. As the Herald-Sun notes, the changes tighten erosion control and runoff measures that need to be implemented on construction sites, bringing development rules into compliance with new state mandates. The City Council will take up the same measures at its December 7 meeting.

As the N&O points out, though, these changes are relatively minor compared to the much more significant ones possible down the road under an accelerated-timetable creation of a Falls Lake watershed protection strategy, moved ahead on the timeline by a Wake County legislator.

There's no question that Durham's stormwater practices need improvement. Ellerbe Creek is a mess, and most of Durham was developed before modern SWM practices came into play to require on-site treatment before discharge.

As non-green as "sprawldivisions" with low density and no walkable stores or restaurants in their vicinity often are, they do have to have retention basins in many cases to slow the flow of runoff and in some cases to allow on-site treatment and mitigation. Contrast that with a good ol' rain in Durham's inner-city neighborhoods, where the water flows pretty quickly down to the creeks and off to places like Falls Lake.

Yet there are some legitimate concerns, too, and questions that we should expect -- make that demand -- to see enter the public discourse over the next year. The more I talk with elected officials and stakeholders, the more I want to see a full discussion of water quality and its regional implications enter the debate.

The first and most obvious challenge that exists: finding a fair regional strategy to pay for clean water.

It wasn't like Durham decided just to overlook water quality in runoff and said, "Hey, let's send nitrogen and phosphorus down to Raleigh's drinking supply!"

As it happens, both Falls and Jordan Lake were initially designed for flood control as their primary function.

Their use as sources of water was a later addition. Which means that decisions made about stormwater and effluent flows were done without the expectation that Falls Lake would immediately become a reservoir.

Which raises a second question: the focus on stormwater and runoff, which has been primarily framed around new development and growth.

In left-leaning Durham, it's easy to get people thinking about roads, cars, and subdivisions as the source of water quality problems; those fit our broader consciousness' understanding about where environmental pollution comes from, after all.

We've heard about runoff from automobiles, and about household fertilizers -- even about dog waste on grass clippings, which contributed to the State's requirement that Durham build run-off hills with ponds to filter out waste from our rebuilt yard waste composting facility, forcing the City to run the water from the ponds through our sewage plants before releasing the water.

I was floored, then, to see in the N&O's very good treatment of the Falls Lake Rules a few months ago a statistic that I wasn't familiar with:

When it comes to phosphorus, almost 44% of what heads to Falls Lake originates from agriculture; forests themselves represent another 4%. For nitrogen, almost 41% comes from forests and agricultural uses.

"Developed areas" -- a datapoint we presume to mean subdivisions, roads, and other sources of run-off -- total 5% and 13% of runoff, respectively, according to the Division of Water Quality. Point sources, which include sewage plants but also industrial and other permitted discharge users, account for 30% and 22%, respectively.

Of course, those data reflect what enters Falls Lake from a variety of sources, not simply Durham. When you look across our part of the Neuse subbasin, it's only 7% urbanized, with almost 73% forested or wetland. (Our subbasin includes part of Orange, Person, Granville and Wake Co., too.)

Now, as noted above, Ellerbe Creek has been widely pointed to as a major source of pollution in the lake -- and rightly so. The creek, which runs through urban Durham towards Falls Lake on the northeast side of Durham, suffers from everything from failed septic systems (which don't work well in our soils, it seems) to urban pollution to old landfills, contributing massively to the pollution of Falls Lake.

And that's the story we see by and large in the media, which has designated this as a conflict between Durham and Raleigh, with the former opposed to clean-up and the latter just desperate to have clean drinking water.

As the N&O complained in a rather poorly-done editorial:

The question: When bills for the clean-up come due, who pays? Raleigh officials have agreed in principle to help meet the expense, but just so long as the burden doesn't "significantly" shift away from "those creating water quality impacts." In other words, Durham, get your wallet out. Did we mention that the Bull City doesn't drink any Falls Lake water?

That translates to some in Durham as pouring money down the drain. Council member Eugene Brown called it "facing a burden without a benefit" and declared, "It would be a travesty."

Not exactly. The travesty would be if a city could simply turn its back on the hardship and expense that its inability to safeguard a water resource imposed on downstream neighbors.

For once, the comments on an N&O story brought more insight than the McClatchy product itself.

One commenter noted that Raleigh seems eager to see Durham clean up its runoff to Falls Lake -- but shouldn't it be asked to clean up its runoff, which affects downstream water quality in places like Goldsboro and New Bern?

I'm no hydrologist -- so take this with a grain of salt. But when I looked at the DENR study of Falls Lake and the Neuse Basin, I came away with the distinct impression that most of Wake County's Neuse-flowing creeks looked pretty impaired, too. Like Durham's.

The difference, of course, is that they almost all flow downstream of Falls Lake. Which gives the river and Mother Nature plenty of time to let the waste clean up before it reaches other cities.

As another commenter noted, an approach that looked at whole-basin strategies -- based on the amount of pollution entering a water basin generally, not just the of-public-interest spots like Falls Lake -- would more effectively allow all municipalities contributing to pollution to help pay for its cleanup, at the point of entry, not use.

At the very least, I'd like to see a broader discussion around the entirety of the basin, and how the Neuse gets cleaned up in general.

The lucky fact of geography means that Durham may have a special responsibility to treat its runoff more than Raleigh does to clean up Falls Lake -- though as the N&O notes today, the fact that much of Falls Lake's pollution comes from forests and the atmosphere means it could be impossible to meet the quality mandates no matter how much treatment is done.

In any event, the question of how much Raleigh should pay for this clean-up is a very real one. And it may suggest Raleigh would be better off to look at building new reservoirs (such as in Rolesville) or tapping Kerr Lake to grow its water supply instead of relying on Falls alone.

Right now, the debate's over poor Falls Lake and mean ol' developing Durham.

There's a kernel of truth there, but I don't think it's the whole truth.

And if we're going to advance the debate, we need to see more public discussion about the entire issue, not just those comfortable talking points.

Comments

[Reyn]

This is an outstanding post and gets beyond so much of the condescension in this debate.

Durham actually surrendered a great deal of opportunity because Wake County needed water, not just because the population but because it doesn't perk and because it hadn't done what Durham had done and developed reservoirs.

But Kevin, the statistics also reveal the natural downsides to man-made lakes. The very natural settings around them contribute to the problem. That had to be apparent up front...this wasn't the first man-made lake.

Incredible post. It is time every place in the basin and most of all the State's second largest city and county get off the high horse and accept they are part of the problem and need to be part of the solution.

[Todd P]

Well said, BCR. What Raleigh and the N&O are asking for is akin to holding the good ol' USA solely responsible for fixing global warming. Although we are clearly part of the problem, we are not the whole problem.

[Michael Bacon]

One problem I have with Durham's response to both the Jordan and Falls Lake issues is that we've looked almost entirely at retention ponds and other off-site remediation impacts. I wonder what we could accomplish with tax breaks for green roofing and rain gardens? There are benefits of green roofing that accrue directly to the property owners, like better insulation and lower energy bills, not to mention the garden-in-the-sky aspect.

Green roofs are never going to be the whole or even a majority of the answer, but I do wonder what it would take (and what the benefits would be) to get a lot of the retail landlords in south Durham to put lightweight green roofs on their buildings. It won't do anything about oceanic surface parking lots or lawns fertilized to be day-glo green, but I have to think it would make a pretty sizable dent in stormwater runoff levels.

[Will Wilson]

Fantastic discussion. I've put together a short summary of how development harms urban water quality, including measures of some pollutants, some organisms, and historical sedimentation rates in Pamlico Sound. Also shown are plots on the efficacy of various approaches to dealing with stormwater and a "risk analysis" of precipitation and reservoir inflow rates. Those dry basins we see across the city are the cheapest solution with the lowest maintenance costs and, not surprisingly, have the lowest performance. See my postings,
http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=61, and
http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=263.
I would like to see the evidence that farms and forests are responsible for the nitrogen and phosphate pollution: What sampling locations, what sampling periods, etc. Even so, directly connected impervious surface causes high volume and high peak flow, causing the "urban stream syndrome", reducing the ability of streams to reduce these pollutants. That's not the fault of farms and forests.

Finally, what about everything other than N and P? What about mercury, PCBs, and PAHs? These are carcinogenic pollutants from tire dust and fossil fuels emissions, and aren't even monitored (or at least the data aren't public) by our stormwater people. (NOTE: I think they work hard with good motivations, it's just that this monitoring costs money and time they don't have..) I know of stormwater results from the Wilmington area (still in prep) showing that not even snails live in their detention ponds due to PAH bioaccumulation.
Just don't blame farms and forests --- blame ourselves and our urban structures. And let's deal with it.
Will Wilson

[Mike]

I've spent many hours on the lower part of Ellerbe Creek and I'm truly ashamed at what we've done to it. see for yourself http://www.riverbottleblues.com/uploads/P3220004.JPG

So tell our politicians to stop pointing fingers and start fixing the problem we have ALL created.

[Todd P]

I wondow how the water quality stats would change during a 'normal' rainfall year instead of a drought period like 2005-07. In addition, the massive I-85 reconstruction project, paralelling Ellerbe Creek for miles, was also at its height then - possibly adding contaminated highway runoff from incomplete stormwater structures.

But regardless of the possibly bad timimg, if you look at the map in the N&O story, Ellerbe Creek is in the worst condition of all the rivers / streams feeding Falls Lake. What's the solution specifically for Ellerbe Creek? A series of detention ponds across north Durham, retrofitting areas with no current controls? One big one between Durham and Falls Lake? Whose private property be taken to make room for them, and who will pay for it? What other options does Durham have?

Look for the stormwater utility fee in your water bill to be taking a hefty jump one day soon.

[Will Wilson]

Todd P:
Nitrogen export goes down in drought years (one example I've seen).

You're right...the solution will cost $$$, but our BOCC keeps on adding to the problem through things like the Jordan Lake fiasco.

Will Wilson

[GreenLantern]

From reading these posts it seems that most of you prefer that all growth and development come to a halt in Durham county, and that Durham should be solely responsible for cleaning up Falls Lake. There's ample development occuring in Wake and southern Granville to contribute significantly to the runoff problem. Other than Ellerbe Creek, Durham's share of pollution is made that more severe by the fact that we're upstream, and upstream the water is more shallow than it is near the Falls Lake dam. If you account for water volume, the numbers make it seem like there's a huge sewer plant on Little River, or some industrial farm located near Treyburn. It's also interesting to note that a large part of the nitrogen levels are from natural causes and from longstanding agricultural runoff, rather than residential and commercial development.

Raleigh should look for another source of drinking water and invest in another reservoir downsteam where they can control pollutants and manage development around it. No matter where you put a reservoir, the pollution levels are going to be highest in the shallower tributaries and coves. This report makes it seem like there's concentrated development going on in east Durham, when everyone knows that's not the case. Durham should not even consider shouldering the burden of cleanup costs beyond implementing stricter runoff controls on developers and improving access to the city water/sewer system. In other words, MORE development in the eastern part of the county would be preferable as developers of large residential tracts require city sewer hookup. This is especially true since most of the developable land in the area doesn't perk--a fact that I was faced with when I tried to buy a rural tract not long ago. The same situation exists in the Wake county portion of Fall Lake, where poor soils and failing septic systems were a big part of summer beach closings. Extending water and sewer lines in both counties, which is made easier by higher-density residential development, will go a lot farther than just saying no to any development.

Nimbyism and no-growth mantras, or overstating the case that "watersheds suffer a death of a thousand cuts" is only going to hurt our economy, drive away jobs, and end up costing the taxpayer more when more must be done with less. There are scientific solutions to encouraging the right kind of development, which in turn levels the playing field with our Wake county neighbors who allow growth to occur when they can blame upstream neighbors. This N&O report is flawed because it doesn't take into account that both Falls and Jordan Lake reservoirs begin in Durham county where the water is shallow, an unfortunate issue of geography, but nonetheless, not our problem alone.

As far as Ellerbe Creek, anyone knows that a straight channel of water, especially one near a city dump, will move faster and carry more runoff to a larger body of water. We could start by meandering the stream as was done with one of the creeks along the AT trail downtown. In the end, these kinds of scientific solutions will go farther to solving the problem than constantly objecting to new development and new residents.

[Steve Bocckino]

I live near a small stream that runs into New Hope Creek and ultimately Jordan Lake. During the construction of Southpoint Mall, about 2000 ft upstream, the waters were muddy with sediment for two years. When I would collect a liter of water, 100 ml of it was sediment. Tens of thousands of tons of sediment were deposited during this time. You could see the plumes in Jordan Lake from the air. If that much sediment was eroding, imagine the associated pollutants that went along for the ride.

We can't blame that on anybody else.

[gonzo]

GL: "From reading these posts it seems that most of you prefer that all growth and development come to a halt in Durham county, and that Durham should be solely responsible for cleaning up Falls Lake."

What in the hell makes you think that? I don't see that in any of the comments here. Or are you just making stuff up?

[Will Wilson]

GL,
A decision must indeed be made: What fraction of the county should be paved? Given our clay soils, I think we've exceeded the optimal fraction.

Two weeks ago I saw a Durham County budget presentation that talked about selling and leasing parks because our economy's broken. If development is so good, economically speaking, why hasn't the development experienced in Durham over the last 40 years provided a sustainable situation? How will another 40 years of development change the economic situation? Carving out new subdivisions from farms and forests doesn't equal economic development.

[Bull City Rising]

@Will: I have a hard time accepting the idea that Durham has hit some magical limit of how much development it can sustain. And as with all things, there are tradeoffs:

- Given the high number of jobs in RTP and at the Duke/VA complex, wouldn't banning any new development in Durham lead to more people living in Mebane, Holly Springs, Oxford, etc., and driving excessive commutes each day to/from work? How does the "green" impact of that offset, or not, the run-off problem?

- With population increase currently projected, are there other parts of the US that are "better suited" for growth than Durham? Are we making assumptions about the carrying capacity of our county without knowing what the carrying capacity is of other areas?

- How can we restrict growth without creating economic segregation (Chapel Hill) or without impairing desirable growth in jobs and economic options?

- Does an analysis leading to a conclusion of "no more impervious surfaces" depend on Raleigh's choice of Falls Lake as a water supply source? Does it consider the marginal cost of developing a new reservoir for Raleigh coupled with significant (but not unattainable) pollution reduction for Ellerbe Creek and other Durham watershed feeders?

I too don't like seeing greenfield development. But I also recognize that it's a necessity, though not as preferred as urban redevelopment in my book.

I would be hard-pressed to say that today's Durham isn't more attractive, more interesting than Durham of forty years ago. If you are wondering where the tax revenue has gone, look at the loss of industrial jobs (in Durham and other cities) and the increased economic activity in tax-exempt (Duke/NCCU) and tax-abated (RTP) zones.

Absolutism -- for development, or opposed to development -- is something I have a hard time accepting. I would welcome some evidence that the tradeoffs of growth are so high in Durham as to make further development of the county completely economically and environmentally unfeasible.

But I'm not convinced that exists.

[JeffS]

- rather than attempt to keep a reservoir that was built as a water supply clean, Raleigh should just abandon it?
- growth is mandatory?
- sprawl ("greenfield development") is a necessity?

This sounds like the conclusion of someone who derives their paycheck from development/construction/realty.

--------

It's obviously not just Durham. The entire country has sold out its natural resources to developers.

[Bull City Rising]

@JeffS: A couple of points.

First, I derive my income as a university administrator. My sole real estate investment is my single family, owner-occupied home on Duke St. Sorry, not in the development or real estate biz.

I didn't realize that having what I would consider to be a moderate position on development means I must have a financial interest. Care to elaborate?

Secondly:

- As noted above, the Falls Lake reservoir was not built as a water supply, but as flood control, from what I understand. IOW, if it had been proposed to be a reservoir from day one, many different land use and water treatment decisions might have been made that weren't. Wake has an opportunity to build a new reservoir near Rolesville, but opposition has crept up in Wake County from pols in that region, concerned it would limit their ability to build more houses in that part of the county. So: Durham should pay the price solely for Falls Lake because Wake decided after the fact to make it a water source, and doesn't want to forgo growth and tax revenues elsewhere itself?

- I didn't say growth is mandatory. However, the population in the US continues to grow. Unless we're tackling the Zero Population Growth problem -- and there are certainly those who'd like to -- I don't consider it feasible to say growth is something avoidable.

Arguments opposed to growth usually go something along the lines of, "Our population is big enough / bigger than we can handle and we don't need / can't take in a greater population." I tend to find that argument to be a highly localized one that considers perceived local conditions, not broader regional/national ones.

- "Necessity" was a poor choice of words on my part. "Inevitability" might be a better term.

But I don't think greenfield development is the same as sprawl.

For instance, I noted during the Erwin/Cornwallis high school debate a few months ago that -- whether or not one wanted to see a high school at that intersection -- it's hard to describe growth in the forest as "sprawl."

Sprawl, to me, is tearing down forest land in Fuquay-Varina or Roxboro or Pittsboro or Zebulon to build bedroom communities with no local job base such that people commute 15-40 miles each way to work.

It's hard to have sprawl 3 miles from the largest single-site job center in the Triangle (Duke/VA). If anything, that's growth adjacent to jobs; shorter commutes, closer communities.

There's plenty of *other* reasons not to develop Duke Forest further, mostly related to its research mission, of course.

But it's why I think we have to look at growth in parts of the US 70/Miami Blvd. corridor (RTP), or northeastern Durham Co. along the I-85/EEC corridor (RTP/downtown/Duke)... because growth in those areas means bringing beds closer to jobs, rather than further away.

We can have lots of reasons to oppose development in an area. But let's not use the term sprawl for things that don't reflect, well, sprawl.

[Todd Patton]

Whether you favor no growth, smart growth, or some other kind of growth, the fact is that the lakes are impaired today by the growth that has happened in the past 140 years. We can't go back and un-build Trinity Park or Downtown or the thousands of other properties built throughout Durham before stormwater controls existed, and even before Falls and Jordan Lakes existed. Up until the 1980's, stormwater controls = curb & gutter.

The actions of the BOCC to adopt stricter controls, likely to be followed by similar action from the City Council, already address the issue of stormwater control for future development.

The problem lies with development already on the ground with totally unregulated runoff, or with apparently insufficient controls in effect up to now. Using water quality issues caused by prior unregulated development as an excuse to stop future development is just muddying the water. Its an apples and oranges comparison.

Wake County is trying to force Durham to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up a problem a hundred + years in the making. That's money we don't have.

What we do have is a City Capiltal Improvements Budget with about $500 million in unfunded projects, and a DPS Capital Plan calling for another $500 million in school improvements, plus untold other County projects like the new courthouse. Forcing people to drive to work in Durham County from Mebane and Apex and Garner won't help pay those bills a bit.

[Will Wilson]

BCR: You provide a great community forum (and you're a great writer)!

You ask good questions that the majority of our BOCC don't, and I don't question your motives. I agree development and high density have positives. High density promotes mass transit, yields lower fuel and electricity use (per capita). The data exist. I'm also thankful for good coffee!

High density also doesn't mean sprawl; we could redevelop urban areas with higher apartment buildings. More people, less runoff per person, better functioning stormwater controls. Right now the city/county want high density with no controls. Right now high density comes from lax zoning, and rezoning whenever a developer snaps their fingers (and sprinkles their $$).

Just suppose one supports the extreme of 100% impervious surface: no farms, no forests, no fields. (If one doesn't support that, then one supports capped development, and then the community needs to discuss what cap is best.) I think clean water's the primary issue in this hypothetical scenario. The origins of Falls/Jordan, I think, is irrelevant. With our clay soils and add'l paving, groundwater recharge is low, and I doubt that a million people in the triangle (more if more growth is desired) could sustainably get their water from wells. If those reservoirs weren't built for sedimentation when we had lots of agriculture with old tilling methods, we'd need to build them now for drinking water. Do we want that water to be clean, or dirty? Even though they're not our primary water source (Little River and Lake Michie are), we share watersheds, and we have a moral obligation to protect these common resources. Further, as Durham's population grows, we're tapping into Jordan.

Certainly I put a high value on nature, on farms, and on open space. To me, they have inherent value, but they also provide a number of so-called "ecosystem services." Convincing others of that value is a hard slog, but water quality affects us all, and that's the easiest, most important focus.

[Tar Heelz]

@Will, et al,

If stormwater runoff is managed, why should we worry about the need to adopt some arbitrary impervious surface figure? Caps on impervious surface in a world of on-site stormwater management (see Ch70, art. X of the UDO), accomplishes only two things: (i) the preservation of a certain "look" (i.e. lawns, common open space, etc.) ; and (ii) the promotion of greenfield land consumption that could otherwise have been avoided.

I vote we set stormwater quantity and quality limits based on good science and then let the engineering and architectural communities adapt.

@Todd,

A Modest Proposal:

Shouldn't the polluters be paying their way? If your land/neighborhood dumps unmitigated stormwater and its accompanying nutrients into the water supply, you pay for it. Why should that be a public obligation? Heck, my S. Durham (boo) neighborhood manages its stormwater with engineered, platted stormwater devices. I already (indirectly) paid for their construction when I purchased and today I continue to pay for their ongoing maintenance.

Sounds to me like it's time for the hypocrites of Trinity Park, Downtown, etc. to pay up. We sprawlers are already doing our part.

[Will Wilson]

TarHeelz: Here's a start for your science training (a book from the Nat'l Acad. of Science www.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/nrc_stormwaterreport.pdf). Initially focus on pp. 17-22 (WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE NATION’S WATERS?) and pp. 22-28 (WHY IS IT SO HARD TO REDUCE THE IMPACTS OF STORMWATER?). Ultimately, too much development is the problem, and limiting development is the solution. (Note this pdf is free, but differs a bit from the published hard-copy.)