Monday, November 11, 2024

Wilmington City Council postpones vote on stormwater de-regulation indefinitely

The proposal was delayed twice before the city's planning commission approved it; now city council has delayed the vote again.

The City of Wilmington's administration is considering a change in policy that would cushion the financial blow for employees who were out of work during Hurricane Florence. (Port City Daily | File)
The City of Wilmington’s administration is considering a change in policy that would cushion the financial blow for employees who were out of work during Hurricane Florence. (Port City Daily | File)

WILMINGTON — Earlier this week Wilmington’s City Council held a public hearing on a proposal to weaken stormwater regulations in order to encourage development.

The proposal, which first appeared in early July, would roll back 2009 regulations that required, in many cases, developers who re-develop existing lots to implement new stormwater management plans. The request for a new, less strict regulation, was prepared by Senior Planner Christine Hughes.

Read the original report: City to consider striking stormwater regulations to incentivize redevelopment

Hughes said the request was a response to developers’ negative feedback and “pushback” against the 2009 regulations, which they said had disincentivized re-development.

“We’ve heard a lot of pushback related to redevelopment,” Hughes said at the time. “This attempts to level the playing field.”

The plan met with questions from the public when it went to the city’s planning commission, where it was postponed twice before being approved in September. At this week’s City Council meeting, it was postponed again.

During the meeting, Councilman Kevin O’Grady asked staff if they had consulted with anyone to assess the potential environmental concerns related to de-regulating stormwater management — a frequent point of contention for those concerned with the new ordinance, especially given the widespread flooding in the wake of Hurricane Florence.

Staff responded that they had not consulted with any experts about the potential environmental impact. O’Grady suggested that the council put the proposal on hold until that could be done.

According to Wilmington Spokesperson Malissa Talbert, city council discussed a delay of u to six months, but no definite timeframe was established; Talbert said it would likely be at least several months until an amendment staff report would be ready to allow council vote.

Councilman Paul Lawler took to his “Elect Paul Lawler” Facebook page to weigh the issues presented by the “interesting” proposal.

Lawler wrote:

Staff offered an amendment to the Code that would reduce stormwater treatment requirements for redevelopment projects to handle 50% of the stormwater. Their logic is as follows: currently many of these projects aren’t handling any of the stormwater and advancing to 50% would be an improvement. Further, they believe that given a choice a developer would rather develop a greenfield site, a previously undeveloped site, as it is cheaper and it is prudent to make the redevelopment site more attractive. This does that. I can follow their rationale.

However, is it fair to posit that a developer’s options would be between, say, the KMart site and an open site in Brunswick County? It seems that the KMart site would be considered because it is proximate to lots of people, i.e. customers, and that the need for customers would drive the project, not an environmental incentive. Further, there is a fair amount of development around here. These redevelopment options are likely to occur as developers will acquire redevelopment properties as no undeveloped land will be available. And at that point, are we better off with 50% handling of stormwater or do we demand 100% treatment?

The proposal will be back at some point in the future. I’ll be looking for answers to these questions.


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