South Walton Community Council

Roundtable Discussion

Single Family Residential Stormwater Management Requirements

When:          Monday, January 08, 2018, 5:00 PM 

Where:         South Walton Annex Board Room

31 Coastal Centre Blvd

Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459

SWCC invites you to attend a public roundtable meeting to discuss proposed Land Development Code changes for stormwater management.  The changes proposed by the Planning Department will impact those wishing to build single family homes on individual lots, and particularly on smaller lots.  SWCC fully supports the proposed changes and it is important that citizens get involved to add their support.  Adoption of new regulations begins with the Planning Commission meeting on January 11.

The following people will be available to present the changes and respond to questions and comments from the public:

·       Kristen Shell, WC Planning Manager

·       Rita Banhunyadi, WC Project Engineer

·       Debbie Heard, Chair, Coastal Dune Lakes Advisory Board

·       Alan Ficarra, Ficarra Builders, Inc.

·       Tim Tricker, Terra Nova Architecture, LLC

Background

Since the adoption of the current stormwater regulations, implementation has been challenging for several reasons. The program has caused massive delays in permitting times that are unacceptable for single family residential permitting. Initially, the Planning Department was not staffed appropriately to review single family stormwater plans. In addition, the consulting engineering community and residential building community were not accustomed to providing stormwater plans for single family homes.

To a large extent, maintenance of individual stormwater facilities on residential lots is challenging. Individual homeowners are tasked with ensuring that swales, pond areas, exfiltration systems, underground vault systems etc. are maintained properly. Improper maintenance of such systems, particularly those that are underground near foundation members, has the potential to cause structural damage. Having hundreds if not thousands of these individual systems also becomes a burden to County staff as these systems become permit requirements which necessitates code enforcement activities and inspection activities that place County staff in an entirely different, currently unfunded, role.

Many of the lots of record or legacy lots that are in older developments that do not have approved stormwater plans and facilities are small in size. Most are less than 0.33 acre. This leaves very little room to achieve desirable setbacks, landscaping, parking, and stormwater management. All of which are important to homeowners and neighborhoods.

The following changes are under consideration:

1.     Eliminate the single family stormwater requirement and replace with regional capital improvement retrofit program

2.     Require better site design with Best Management Practices (BMP) and Low Impact Development (LID)

3.     Relaxation of requirements for small changes and large lots

4.     Simplify engineering and design requirements