{"id":9997,"date":"2018-04-03T07:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9997"},"modified":"2018-04-01T13:32:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T17:32:44","slug":"guest-blog-on-leggetts-stormwater-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9997","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog: On Leggett’s Stormwater Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kit Gage, Advocacy Director, Friends of Sligo Creek.<\/em><\/p>\n

Montgomery County, like the rest of Maryland and particularly the developed parts of the Chesapeake region, is full of parking lots and roofs and other impervious surfaces.\u00a0 All these hard surfaces have made for a relatively terrible environment \u2013 pollutants, worse flooding and droughts have been the result.\u00a0 The federal Clean Water Act thru the EPA, and the state of Maryland, require us to create projects that help our rivers, creeks, and the whole area better absorb stormwater.\u00a0 \u00a0Litigation has enforced doing this work.\u00a0 So Montgomery County doesn\u2019t have a choice about proceeding full speed ahead to do active stormwater collection and infiltration.<\/p>\n

Now County Executive Leggett has announced that he wants to back off from these projects \u2013 1) cancelling a bunch of them, 2) flat lining the Water Quality Protection Charge, and 3) changing the way contractors will do these projects.\u00a0 It makes no sense.\u00a0 The county already has to do special projects because it didn\u2019t do enough stormwater work. Mr. Leggett argues his concerns are inefficiencies and too great expenditures in the stormwater mitigation effort.\u00a0 Ok, let\u2019s look at his solutions:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Cancelling projects that are in process \u2013 already designed, locales evaluated, etc., is inefficient and costly.\u00a0 The county can finish these projects \u2013 or almost all of these projects \u2013 by getting bids from approved contractors as it already does and so do them quickly, efficiently and relatively inexpensively.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 We understand there may be other agencies using the Water Quality Protection Charge for other than stormwater projects \u2013 if this is true then that should be fixed, rather than limiting access to stormwater funds by the lead agency, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Parks that are doing these projects.\u00a0\u00a0 Their efforts over recent years have helped them learn how to do them better, more quickly, and more cheaply.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 There is no evidence that the Public Private Partnership (P3) is better.\u00a0 There is some evidence that some of the nearby P3 projects don\u2019t provide the more effective and environmentally sensitive solutions that should be required for good stormwater collection, infiltration, and wildlife support.\u00a0 Starting a brand new process for contracting is almost certain to be disruptive and inefficient, particularly to projects in process.<\/p>\n

Is there room for improvement?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 We could be planting lots more trees. We could do more projects like conservation landscapes in peoples\u2019 yards, schools, and other institutions.\u00a0 We could be changing the way we handle turf \u2013 reducing use of pesticides and fertilizers at the source, mowing high, aerating and soil testing to have grass act better to capture and soak in stormwater.\u00a0 These things are cheaper and easier to do.\u00a0 But don\u2019t take responsibility out of the hands of DEP.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s fix any problems, not create new ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kit Gage, Advocacy Director, Friends of Sligo Creek. Montgomery County, like the rest of Maryland and particularly the developed parts of the Chesapeake region, is full of parking lots and roofs and other impervious surfaces.\u00a0 All these hard surfaces have made for a relatively terrible environment \u2013 pollutants, worse flooding and droughts have been … Continue reading Guest Blog: On Leggett’s Stormwater Changes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,167],"tags":[1481,1549],"class_list":["post-9997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-ike-leggett","tag-environment","tag-ike-leggett"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9999,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9997\/revisions\/9999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}