Builders predict more problems
Panelists expect stormwater limits to return
By Tony Biasotti, March 19, 2010, Ventura County Star
Builders and developers got what they wanted last week when water regulators agreed to revisit the stormwater runoff permit issued last year for Ventura County, a permit the development industry claims would cripple business.
But at a housing and development conference in Camarillo on Friday, the general consensus was that the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board will issue a new permit that’s very similar to the old one. Regulators are committed to reducing runoff because it sends polluted water to the ocean and speeds up erosion of hillsides and streams.
"California had a flood-control culture for many years," said Mark Grey, director of environmental affairs for the Building Industry Association of Southern California. "Now we have a sustainability culture."
The association challenged the restrictive new permit at the State Water Resources Control Board, which last week ordered it be rescinded. The Los Angeles water board will now draw up a new permit and bring it for a board vote this summer.
The association’s assumption, Grey said, is that the regional board will reissue the same permit it approved last year. The association opposes many of the regulations in that permit.
Even if the new permit is not exactly the same, it’s almost certain to contain a similar mandate for "low-impact development," said Randy Chapman, a hydrologist with the engineering and construction firm Huitt-Zollars.
"Low-impact development" in the initial permit meant a requirement that all development and redevelopment projects eliminate rain runoff on 70 percent to 95 percent of their surface areas.
"Even if the permit is rescinded, none of those issues go away," Chapman said during a panel discussion that ended the conference Friday.
The conference, an annual event that typically focuses on housing, was called "A Perfect Storm" this year. The organizers believe that term describes the dual effect of the new stormwater regulations and pre-existing state laws to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
There’s an inherent conflict, some panelists said, between the two types of new regulations. The storm-water rules could push development out of urban cores and onto open farmland, because it’s easier to control runoff on farmland. The global warming legislation is supposed to have the opposite effect, encouraging "infill development" in city centers to reduce the distances people have to drive.
"This is my builder bias, my developer bias, but if you want to do an infill project, there’s a pretty substantial red tape and bureaucratic mess you have to go through" to comply with the storm-water regulations, Grey said.
The global warming laws — Senate Bill 375 and Assembly Bill 32 — have been unpopular with many developers, and some of Friday’s panelists said they’d like to see them rescinded. But when moderator Dawn Dyer, a real estate analyst and consultant, asked the group if they thought those laws would have a big impact on development patterns in Ventura County over the next decade, most of the panelists said no.
The panel was split between development professionals and government officials at the local and state levels. There was unanimous agreement that something should be done about climate change, but a wide range of opinion on whether California is on the right track with its response.
"Is it the right law at the right time? I don’t know, but it is the right time to do something," Oxnard Public Works Director Ken Ortega said.
