Pressure prompts stormwater variance reports

Media, Council inquiries lead to voluntary disclosure
Late last year, 1st Ward Councilman Paul Sturtz publicly complained that the City Council was being left out of the loop when the city considered requests to bypass stormwater rules for construction projects. Columbia Public Works Director John Glascock responded this month by presenting Council with the first monthly report of stormwater variances.
Granting variances to the city’s stormwater ordinance has become a politically charged issue. The director of Public Works has the ability to waive the ordinance’s requirements for a building project, and developers often seek to get around the ordinance to reduce their costs. But recently finalized regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency mandate steep reductions in stormwater runoff into the Hinkson Creek. That has prompted some Council members and environmentalists to question the city’s variance procedures.
The Columbia Business Times reported last November that the city granted a significant variance for the IBM service center site on Lemone Industrial Boulevard in June 2010. The city allowed construction to go forward without plans to filter stormwater runoff for impurities, one of the ordinance’s primary goals. Sturtz was upset that such a large variance was granted without staff reporting to Council.
“Finding out this way, instead of through a staff report back then subject to Council input, is a sign of disrespect to us as elected officials and by extension the people of Columbia,” Sturtz read from a prepared statement at the Dec. 20 Council meeting.
Glascock’s presentation during the Feb. 7 Council meeting outlined four stormwater variance requests made in December and January. Three were approved, and one, for Trittenbach Construction’s planned new apartment building at 10th and Elm streets, was denied. Glascock told the Council his approach to granting variances has changed since developers and engineers have had more time to work with the city’s stormwater ordinance.
“When I started in 2007, I suppose I was more lenient just to get everybody on board (with the ordinance),” Glascock said.
He has since tightened his standards, he said. “We have a lot of people come in who don’t want to do anything. That’s not acceptable.”
After the meeting, Glascock said that inquiries from the media and the Council prompted him to begin disclosing the variance requests monthly.
“It was just information we had that we wanted everyone to have,” he said.
Ken Midkiff, the public spokesman for the Sierra Club on stormwater issues, said he was pleased with the city’s voluntary disclosure.
“I was somewhat encouraged by what (Glascock) had to say, that he’s issuing fewer and fewer (variances),” Midkiff said after the Council meeting.
Although no Council member specifically asked for the variance summaries, the usual impetus for a staff report, Sturtz said last Tuesday that he was “skeptical they’re just reporting unsolicited.”
“That was part of my criticism at the end of December, that this large variance had been granted to IBM without any reporting to Council,” he said. “I would like, if a very large variance is being granted, that we be informed about it beforehand.”
Overall, though, he said he was glad the city staff will report on variances regularly to Council.