Erosion Regs

Athens Getting ’Em Right?

originally published December 12, 2007

It meets county requirements, but Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Commissioners Carl Jordan and Kelly Girtz don’t like it. It could breed mosquitoes, a neighbor complained, or injure a wandering child. It looks like a big shallow swimming pool with no water in it. It’s a retention pond, and many subdivisions have them, to catch a surge of rainwater and release it gradually, in order to prevent soil erosion and river pollution. It’s just that this one - at the new Discovery Trail subdivision on Barnett Shoals Road - is made of concrete.

“How could ACC possibly have strayed so far from our intended objective - to manage stormwater so as to imitate [predevelopment] natural conditions?” asked Commissioner Jordan in an email to fellow commissioners and senior county staffers. “Where are the vegetated swales and wetlands that have been demonstrated to work so effectively and inexpensively?”

Developers can indeed use those methods, says Jason Peek, who enforces erosion ordinances for the ACC Transportation and Public Works Department. “They could create swales between property lines,” Peek says, “kind of localizing your stormwater facilities throughout the development, instead of collecting it and taking it to one point.” Swales are shallow ditches that give rainwater a chance to percolate into the ground, and Peek says developers are being told about such options. “But at the end of the day, it’s the engineer and developer of the project that make the decision,” he says. “I understand people’s concern about the aesthetics” of a concrete retention pond, Peek says. But if a developer wants to maximize the number of lots on a site, “they’re going to try to make that stormwater facility footprint as small as possible. And I think that’s what they’ve basically done out at Discovery Trail.”

Some developments - like Falling Shoals on Whit Davis Road - have incorporated the more natural methods, Peek says. And he thinks the erosion regulations are accomplishing their purpose, saying the county has been enforcing the regulations more stringently. But development in Clarke County has slowed down, he adds. Asked if that means the county will eventually need fewer erosion inspectors, Peek responds there’s “plenty of work to do” just inspecting existing infrastructure.

Enforcement of anti-erosion ordinances costs the county government many times what developers pay in fees, according to a recent report by ACC Auditor John Wolfe. Inspections of construction sites last year cost the county around $300,000, Wolfe estimated in the report. But permit fees covered only about $42,000 of that cost, wrote the auditor (who works directly under the elected commission as an independent investigator of government operations).

Land-disturbing permits cost $50 for each acre of land that will be disturbed, and often run into hundreds of dollars. Wolfe suggested raising the permit fee still higher, and perhaps charging extra if inspectors have to return to re-inspect a site after a violation is found. (Peek thinks that a “reasonable” suggestion; ACC Manager Alan Reddish wrote in a written response that “an increase in fees will more than likely be significantly opposed by the construction industry,” but added he was “supportive” of covering more of the actual costs.) At present, Wolfe reported, much of the cost is being covered by the new “stormwater utility” fees paid by home and business owners.

Wolfe’s report said “missing data” in records kept by the Transportation and Public Works Department often made it impossible for him to determine how quickly developers complied with violation notices. (Reddish responded that the department will “immediately” improve its record-keeping.)

As for required stormwater infrastructure like that at Discovery Trail, Commissioner Jordan says a major problem is that “our environmental laws are being written by attorneys and implemented by engineers,” meaning post-construction hydrology and ecology may not approach pre-development conditions at all.

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net

Diesel Fumes

Cut Out the Idling?

originally published December 12, 2007

Idling diesel engines - on construction equipment, school and transit buses, and even trains - create “hot spots” of high particulate pollution, Ashley Simpson of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Atlanta office told a local audience Dec. 4. Cities like Athens should consider passing “anti-idling” ordinances, she told the Northeast Georgia Children’s Environmental Health Coalition. ACC Environmental Coordinator Dick Field says the local school system has an anti-idling policy for its buses, and Athens Transit buses shut down after five minutes, “weather permitting,” says transit Director Butch McDuffie. But in hot or cold weather, the transit buses are kept running in order to run heat or air-conditioning for passengers, he says.

Beginning this year, federal rules require new diesel trucks and buses to run 90 percent cleaner, Simpson reported. (Construction and farm requirements will follow in 2010.) But equipment can last 30 years, and it’s expensive to retrofit older equipment, she said, although effective fixes are available. A simple, cost-free solution, Simpson noted, is to reduce idling time. Diesel equipment produces more soot when it’s idling than at any other time - so machines should be turned off, not left idling, during waiting periods longer than five minutes, or in truck stops, she said, where drivers may run their engines just to power TVs and other accessories. Some truck stops provide electricity for that purpose so idling won’t be necessary, Simpson said.

“This is really everybody’s issue,” Simpson said. Unfiltered diesel fumes contain microscopic carbon particles coated with other toxic compounds, and contribute to respiratory diseases (especially asthma) and other diseases. “When the wind blows, it blows everything your way. You don’t know what you’re getting.” Her organization advocates for local anti-idling ordinances (or a statewide one), and for retrofitting older diesel equipment to reduce emissions.

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net

Sexual Assault Center

Finding Its Bearings, and a New Director

originally published December 12, 2007

After a turbulent 2007, the Sexual Assault Center of Northeast Georgia (SACNEGA) appears to be heading for year’s end with a more solid footing than it has known in months. A new executive director, Sally Sheppard, began work at the start of December, and - among other improvements - she says she expects the center’s 24-hour hotline (706-353-1912), operated since midsummer by Project Safe, to return to SACNEGA by Jan. 1.

Sheppard, 31, has lived in the Athens area since 1998, when she moved here from Hickory, NC. Her career since then has been focused on “direct services” (counseling, advocacy, etc.) to child and adult victims of sexual assault. After working in victim assistance in the office of the District Attorney for the Piedmont Judicial Circuit (Barrow, Jackson and Banks counties), she decided to get her master’s degree in social work from UGA, and did so in 2003. Then, she started a four-year stint at The Tree House in Winder (a child services non-profit), and during part of that period Sheppard has volunteered as board president for Winder’s Piedmont Rape Crisis Center. She has also done contract work with SACNEGA in recent years.

“I was amazed when I heard that it was closing…“ Sheppard says, recalling the news about SACNEGA in early June of this year. ”Because it’s almost saying that the services aren’t needed, but they are needed” - and the local community proved that, she says, by acting quickly to fill gaps in services and, soon after, to begin rebuilding the sexual assault center. “I’m so proud of this community to have come together the way that they have,” Sheppard says.

Sheppard also praises the center’s current board of directors for its work in the past several months; in fact, as board President Tim Johnson points out, the board has been doing some of the work of an executive director lately. For instance, Sheppard is not the first new staff person to have been hired: in October and November, a child advocate, an operations coordinator, and an adult advocate preceded her.

Unfortunately, Johnson says, that small crew will likely represent all the hiring that the center’s budget can support for the time being. He notes, though, that some funding sources that were in jeopardy this summer are already back in place. Grants from the Georgia Department of Human Resources, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council of Georgia (which administers federal grants) and the local United Way have been restored, with the exception of United Way money earmarked for adult services, which has been promised elsewhere.

That’s all good news, but Johnson points out that large-scale, large-amount grants for these types of services (particularly federal ones) are generally in decline. “We as a community, I think, need to step up,” Johnson says; local donations and charitable contributions may well need to play a bigger role in the center’s funding than they have in the past. Some help has come this fall: “We’ve had three fundraisers that were organized by community members, who, you know, care about the center and the services, and contacted the board and said, ’Can we help?’” The center has also held a volunteer training, and seen old volunteers wanting to return. (The next volunteer training will be in late January.)

And there are other tasks ahead: Johnson and some of the other members of the current “transitional” board plan to be replaced by longer-term board members by next summer, and the group is considering an arrangement whereby current transitional members like District Attorney Ken Mauldin and Athens-Clarke Assistant Police Chief Alan Brown will participate, but not vote as board members. That’s just one part of an effort to assure “that there are structural ways to prevent the center from becoming isolated from the community, specifically its partners it has to work with,” Johnson says. It is inherent that the various partners in the working relationship have somewhat different, though related, goals. And, Johnson says, “Even under the best circumstances, there can be conflict, and the next stage, I think, is for us to work together with all those partners to identify the best ways to build onto those processes, ways to keep what happened from happening again.”

Sheppard adds, “I think there was a bit of alienation - the center perhaps… not feeling all the support that they wanted to feel, and then alienating themselves from all the other agencies. And that is not the way I see to resolve problems. I would want to put myself more out there and say, ’Listen, let’s all come together on this.’”

Having taken back up important former tasks performed by the two recently-hired victim advocates, the center is also now helping child and adult victims get needed counseling, and is beginning the process of re-accreditation as a child advocacy center. Johnson says the board is excited about the center’s new director. “The center needs somebody with a lot of energy and passion, as well as the knowledge and expertise, and she brings all that,” he says.

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com