July 2, 2008

To the editor:

A recent article about runoff issues at the Bojangles site on U.S. Route 13 points up the acute need for adoption of the Department of Environmental Quality's Stormwater Runoff Ordinance in Accomack County.

Poor soils, high water tables, nominal drainage slope and development pressure are causing avoidable problems with a dollar value of consequence to county taxpayers.

The solution to runoff problems is not a taxpayer bailout through construction of regional stormwater control. The solution is to adopt the model DEQ ordinance and then enforce it.

The burden of cost for runoff controls should be on the back of the developers, where it properly belongs.

Accomack County residents do not need to pay for drainage solutions caused by new construction. Those responsible for new construction need to pay those costs. But the underlying stormwater problem, and it is a problem, must be addressed.

A stormwater ordinance would begin to address drainage that begins in parking lots but ends up in the ditches everywhere in the County.

Right now, a developer's responsibility ends at those ditches. Right now, a required, engineered drainage solution is site specific and is independent of drainage solutions for adjacent property. All the trash and surface pollutants on hard surface areas is washed into those ditches by every storm.

New construction where nominally sized retention ponds are required but where the water table may be only 12" below the surface are not an appropriate solution because they don't work. In a storm, the ponds are immediately filled and then overflow into the prevailing drainage, never accomplishing the purpose for which they were designed.

We cannot continue to permit construction on poorly drained, hydric soils with high water tables. What ends up in those ditches is running eventually into the Seaside or Bayside waters. The true cost burden is already on the shoulders of county residents in the form of deteriorating water quality conditions. Regional stormwater mitigation may be a legitimate part of a comprehensive stormwater ordinance but the cost for that mitigation needs to come from the users not the taxpayers.

Responsible government should demand that developers pay that expense up front. The Board of Supervisors needs to adopt the DEQ ordinance now.

George Parker
Craddockville