The Steering Committee has settled on a “structure” for the Ordinance update.  The Stormwater Ordinance will be reformatted to create a series of “upfront” sections that will steer an applicant directly to the applicable regulatory section for the specific development, and specific site characteristics under consideration.  This will be partly in the form of a matrix and partly in the form of text under appropriate front-end articles.

An applicant would first characterize the site he intends to build the project on.  The steering committee approved the following categories that pertain to the site pre-project.

1. The degree to which a site is already “developed”, as indicated by the “Total Impervious Area” (TIA) of the site.  Degrees of development threshold distinctions are contemplated at the less than 15% TIA, 15% to 50% TIA, and greater than 50% TIA.
2. Whether or not a site includes “Waters of DuPage County”.
3. Whether of not a site includes a “Regulatory floodplain”.

Note that a site may be included under more than one category.

Next, the applicant must characterize the proposed project.  The Steering Committee has given a conditional nod to the following project characterizations as a starting point to be used in determining which Ordinance requirements apply.

1. Those not meeting the requirements of the categories below will be classified by one or more of the following:
   1. Change in Impervious area
   2. Grade changes
   3. Modification of existing structures
   4. Construction of new structures
   5. Modifications of existing buildings
   6. Construction of new buildings
   7. Linear Transportation Project-Vehicle and pedestrian facilities in linear land holdings created for that purpose.
   8. Naturalization Project-A project, or a portion of a larger project, whose purpose is
      1. Streambank Stabilization
      2. Wetland Mitigation
      3. Wetland Mitigation Bank
      4. Water Quality Improvement
      5. Stream, Stream habitat, and Upland habitat Restoration; and Forestry management activities
      6. Watershed Plan Implementation Projects

Based on the characteristics of the site, and the characteristics of the project, the applicant will be directed to specific articles that will define limitations, methodologies, standards and mitigation requirements where appropriate.  It is anticipated at that all developments will have certain requirements they must meet, some of them procedural and some regulatory.  Procedural requirements that might apply to all include such things as the form and content of a permit submittal, development security, Maintenance requirements, violations, appeals, variances and the like.   Universal Regulatory requirements might include such topics as erosion and sediment control and incorporation of Best Management Practices.  Within those topics, specific requirements can be tailored to the site and project classifications as appropriate, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.

This concept is a starting point in the Update, and of course will be more fully developed as we proceed.  What do you think?  What problems do your foresee with this approach as applied to your own community?

The Consultant team has been talking to Staff at DuPage County who regularly review Special Management Areas about the idea of creating a special project “category” for projects whose purpose is primarily to improve, restore or protect “natural features” of the landscape.  We will be bringing a fuller discussion of the issues to the Steering committee very soon.   Natural features of regulatory significance in the current ordinance include “Waters of DuPage”, and Riparian areas.  These categories refer to what is on the site pre-project, and do not speak directly to the nature of the project itself.  Not all projects represent degradation of the existing resource, and in many cases the environmental resource is not “better off in a no-build scenario”, compared to its expected condition after a project is built.  Examples of the types of projects we are referring to here include:

• Wetland creation
• Wetland and Steam Restoration
• Streambank Stabilization
• Retrofitting of BMPs to existing development
• In-steam aquatic habitat creation or enhancement projects
• Enhancement of existing degraded wetlands and riparian areas.

There are good reasons why a stormwater ordinance needs to look at these types of projects differently, and it seems advisable to create a vehicle within the ordinance structure to do so.  To date, we have named this category “naturalization projects”.  The need for development mitigation factors like “site runoff storage (detention)” and some other mitigation practices would be applied differently or sometimes not at all to naturalization projects, as the “development” involved in such projects is a form of mitigation for old developments.

Do you see these categories as in need of different requirements from a stormwater perspective?  What other types of projects should such a category encompass?  What sections of the Ordinance, if any, would be applied differently in your view?