UPDATE: Prince George's Stormwater Bill

On June 20, 2011, the Prince George's County Council's THE Committee (Transportation, Housing, and Environment) met to consider CB-15, the stormwater management bill, for the third time in 12 days.  If you have a wet basement or erosion on your property this bill should be of interest to you.  Communities like Edmonston have flooded because of poor past development practices that would be fixed by a strong stormwater bill.

A broad coalition of community groups had called for at least a 1" redevelopment stormwater standard, which science tell us is the minimum needed to protect water quality (DC will do 1.2" and Montgomery County does 2.6").  Unfortunately, CB-15, as passed June 20, mandates only 0.5" of retention until 2016, when the standard will increase to 0.75".  Prince George's County won't even get to the minimum 1" until 2019!  Why are we waiting when our streams look like this? (PDF)

Sadly, getting to 1" at all was not even in the original draft of CB-15 and was only added at the behest of Councilmember Andrea Harrison.

A few other positive changes were made to CB-15, including:

• incentives for developers kick in only if applicable stormwater standard is exceeded by 25%
• alternative compliance language tightened to favor green infrastructure
• more sensible sunsets to grandfathering provisions
• notice provision requested by municipalities so they are informed of development plans

The fight isn't over yet though - the bill must be voted on by the full council some time in late July, and you can be sure that the developers will be back to try and fight off even the modest gains made on behalf of Prince George's County's environment.