Our Responses: Stormwater Survey
April 8, 2024
in Comprehensive Plan & Growth Management Act, Responsible Development, Rivers, Lakes & Aquifers, Wildlife Habitats
Clark County Public Works recently released a Stormwater Survey – due by April 22nd: https://clark.wa.gov/public-works/stormwater
If you are concerned about clean water, healthy fish populations, and water management, we highly recommend that you fill out the survey!
When we took the survey, we found ourselves putting a lot of comments in the “other” category. We are providing our responses below in hopes that it gets you thinking about your own response and what is missing from how Clark County thinks about stormwater management.
Question 2. Other: I believe evaluating the importance of water for agriculture should be separated out from business and community. Water for ag is water for food. It must be prioritized.
Question 4. Other: Services to reduce pollution from surface mining, industrial, railroad, road construction, housing development. Preservation of forests and wetlands that provide natural pollution reduction.
Question 5. Other: Finding the sources of water pollution and reducing those sources before they lead to massive water quality issues that must be treated with chemicals.
Question 6: Other: Reducing the ability of developers to mitigate wetland destruction with manufactured stormwater facilities that are failing all over Clark County – these facilities do not provide the same benefits as native wetlands and they do not provide access to water for 4-legged creatures. We also need to reduce the amount of impervious surfaces that developers are allowed to build. We need to incentivize smaller footprints of impervious surfaces with commercial developments (parking underground), less impervious road surfaces (only build roads when it is 100% necessary, expand the public transit system to make more roads and wider roads less necessary, reduce the sprawl that is happening in the UGA and focus on development near transit corridors).
Question 7: Other: Incentives for developers (including county development) to NOT reduce tree canopy and a plan for tree replacement. You remove 1 tree over 50 feet tall – you replace it with 3 trees, for example.
Question 8. Other: Ensuring that all County parks, stormwater facilities (pond, swale, rain garden, etc.) are planted with natives that do not need to be regularly maintained (And certainly making sure they aren’t just mowed grass like in the photo above)
Question 9. Other: Improving the county code related to stormwater facilities. These developers are getting away with too much! These stormwater facilities should look and function like native wetlands. Every housing development has a wetland? – Yes!
Question 10. Other: Incentives for developers – commercial and residential and public to BUILD better! More pervious surfaces, more wetland and tree canopy retention, incentives to build on brown land, incentives to build on transit lines, etc.