Below are the latest updates from the Western Dane Coalition for Smart Growth and Environment (WDC/SGE).

Thanks again to Stefi & Arnold Harris for all of their hard work and astute research toward protecting Dane County’s rural areas from sprawl! Pit bulls have nothin’ on them!

Remember, the meeting is tonight, Thursday, November 12th at 7:00 PM in City-County Building, Room 315.

-Mike

11-12-09

To: Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC)

From: Western Dane Coalition for Smart Growth and Environment (WDC/SGE)

We ask that Kurt Sonnentag, (CARPC) member and also the current Mayor of Middleton to recuse himself from any discussion and or vote on the City of Middleton and the Town of Westport CUSA amendment request for the area known as Bishop’s Bay. As a matter of public record we want a sworn affidavit of disclosure of any ex parte communications

which Mr Sonnetag might have had with the owner(s) or representatives of T Wall Properties LLC, or in absence of such contacts, a sworn affidavit that there has never been any such ex parte communications. T Wall properties are the development firm on whose behest The City of Middleton and The Town of Westport are applying for the CUSA extension.

Stefi Harris and Arnold Harris

And….

11-09-09

To:  Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC)

From: Western Dane Coalition for Smart Growth and Environment (WDC/SGE)

Re: Request by the City of Middleton and the Town of Westport for the Central

Urban Service Area (CUSA) amendment

This is the follow up to WDC/SGE letter of 11-05-09 addressed to your agency. Since then, the CARPC staff report has been issued. We feel it is important to communicate to the commission our renewed as well as additional concerns over several major issues raised in the staff report.

Stormwater Runoff Control

The proposed development at Bishop’s Bay would replace large segments of the amendment area, now mostly in fields, woods and brush with impervious surfaces such as concrete, asphalt and roof shingles. Housing units are planned for 348 acres. Many of these would be large buildings with connected roofs and equally large parking lots that do not allow rain and snowmelt flow into the ground. Roads along with their right of ways, practically 100% impervious, would take up 83 acres. Commercial and institutional zones also nearly fully impervious would use up 51 acres and 46 acres respectively.

16.4 % of the amendment area is in steep slopes. The maps show many houses and a road in one such area. Under post-development conditions roads and houses cut into the hill slopes will effectively interrupt the inland flow and cause runoff. CARPC staff made no attempt to estimate runoff volume from any storms.  If such estimates were produced, they would show runoff volume sizes of many acres of water several feet deep covering large parts of the area.

In addition to causing apparent flooding, stormwater runoff causes hydrologic changes on receiving bodies of water, reduces recharge to groundwater and stream baseflow, contaminates water (CARPC staff report 6-8-09) and alters ecology of waters and shores.

Water Quality Standards

CARPC staff reports claims that if stringent standards are applied to control of post-development peak rates, infiltration and groundwater recharge, then the runoff volumes could be controlled. However, a study using the USGS Precipitation Modeling System (PRMS), modified to reproduce more realistic conditions such as flow of water from impervious areas to infiltration practices and ponding as a factor in infiltration, contradicts the notion that infiltration practices can always preserve runoff volumes (Lathrop and Potter 2004:7,8). The study concluded that runoff volumes could only be preserved where development is moderate.

Similarly, evaluation of the effectiveness of a large number of detention basins in the North Fork watershed concluded that “these measures might mitigate some adverse effects of development if properly located and the development was not too high” (Hunt and Steuer 2001).

Introduction of over 500 acres of surfaces that range from completely impervious to substantially impervious, into an area, which currently contains very few such features, constitutes a high intensity of development. It is doubtful that runoff volumes could be controlled as promised.

In August 2009, CARPC staff attempted to impose on Verona similar runoff control conditions to the ones recommended for Middleton-Westport, namely stringent standards to be applied to peak rates, runoff volume and groundwater recharge rates. An answer came from Robert E Phillips the City of Madison Engineer. Phillips wrote that it is unclear whether these three conditions could be met simultaneously and that there is no current stormwater management model “truly competent to handle” all three requirements (Phillips letter to CARPC 10-7-09).

It stretches credulity to claim that minimally 7.6, or some other number of inches/yr of precipitation will be recharged in some areas when other factors that interface with recharge – evaporation, transpiration, interflow and infiltration cannot be accurately measured.

CARPC staff insistence that adequate level of recharge could be forced by engineered means are grounded more in optimism rather then in reality. Steuer and Hunt (2001:29) indicate that at Pheasant Branch, most of the recharge occurs during winter and early spring when snow is melting. That is precisely the time when stormwater infiltration basins and other similar facilities are still frozen or clogged and in no condition to handle their task.

An additional complication is that many standards, including the initially impressive ones, become diluted at implementation. For example, NR 151 regulations pertaining to post-construction performance standards for sediments, peak discharge rates and infiltration of runoff have several escape clauses that refer to situations where standards cannot be achieved and therefore are allowed to be lowered to “the maximum extent practicable”.

Lake Mendota

It is certain that increased runoff from the amendment area would not only impact Dorn Creek and Marsh, but would also impact Six Mile Creek into which Dorn Creek flows. At that point, Six Mile Creek flows through Governor Nelson Park and is graded by WI-DNR as an exceptional water resource.

While runoff volume control through attenuation of runoff peaks, although only arguably achievable, would make a positive difference downstream from development in Dorn and Six Mile Creeks, Lake Mendota is a different matter. It suffers from persistently high water levels. In the recent eight-year period its lake levels were at an elevated height for 788 days or little over ¼ of the time (CARPC 11-13-09 p 13). Because of sluggishness of the Yahara River system in processing of flows, peak runoff rate control at Bishop’s Bay development would have no positive effect (CARPC 7-11-09 report p 13) on Lake Mendota levels. The added runoff volume from that area would be counted as another contribution to flooding.

Groundwater

High-density urban development such as proposed would have dual impact on groundwater levels. Massive withdrawals of groundwater in hundreds of thousands of gallons daily would be basically exported from the area via the sewage treatment facilities. The proposed stormwater management facilities, despite of CARPC staff’s claim of maintaining the most stringent of standards, would never be able to capture enough water to replace even a fraction of that volume. The Lathrop and Potter study (2004), based on data collected at nearby Pheasant Branch, indicates that by 2020, baseflow in that creek would drop by approximately 12% as a result of well activity. Wetlands would also be affected. Their water levels would drop by 7% regardless weather water withdrawals were made from deep or shallow aquifer.

Imperviousness associated with any kind of modern urban development has the same effect as pumping wells on groundwater levels. It rapidly transfers much of the precipitation it captures into streams, rivers and lakes and does not allow much to return back into the circulation in the local water cycle.  The Lathrop and Potter study found that when groundwater withdrawals are considered together with increased imperviousness from urban development, then the effect on groundwater was amplified. Pheasant Branch Creek lost 63% of its baseflow and Pheasant Branch marsh lost 22%.

Requirements of NR 121.05 (2) (i) and NR 121.01

NR 121.05 (2) (i), requiring that best management practices needed to produce a basic level of control of nonpoint source of pollutants throughout the planning area be identified and evaluated, was ignored. The public will never be able to see and comment on that part of Middleton-Westport management plan prior to the hearing and to any decision-making by the commission.

CARPC staff recommendations allow for many parts of the proposed amendment to be left opened, subject to future changes that would come only after the decision to recommend for approval had already been delivered. Such a skewed interpretation of the NR 121 review process makes mockery of the public participation mandate. In all such instances it would be the CARPC staff, and not the Commission who would be making decisions on many important aspects of the final water quality plan amendment.  Such process places CARPC staff in a role of decision-makers that the state statutes never intended them to have.

Stefi Harris and Arnold Harris

Western Dane Coalition for Smart Growth and Environment

3427 County Rd P

Mt Horeb WI 53572