Localities on the Virginia Peninsula are facing the prospect of spending millions of dollars to prevent or repair damage from storm water flooding. Floods have been with us since Biblical times, but dysfunctional human settlement patterns makes them worse. As a Daily Press editorial observes, “Nature has its way of dealing with heavy rain.” Some of the rain filters through the soil where it joins underground water tables; run-off gets buffered by vegetation before it enters streams and rivers.
But development has in many places robbed the land of its ability to cope with a deluge. Residential and commercial development has replaced open land with rooftops and asphalt. It has stripped the vegetation that hung on to soil, so it erodes and runs off, clogging streams and rivers. When heavy rains come along, with hurricanes or just big storms, the water backs up. Into houses and apartments, and deep on roads.
Well said. I would observe only that it isn’t entirely helpful to blame “development,” as if all development was created equal. Land-intensive development that paves over thousands of acres of roads and parking lots make the problem of storm-water run-off even worse. Asphalt is impermeable. The more of it you have, the more run-off you have.
Any long-term solution to stormwater run-off should contain at least two elements: (1) new techniques for creating natural, vegetative barriers to buffer the flow of run-off into Virginia waterways, and (2) human settlement patterns that disrupt less land and create less run-off to begin with.
Update: This from today’s News Virginian: “Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern Inc. outlined eight different ways the council could pay for the stormwater management plan approved earlier this year, with each option centered around the same idea of charging property owners based on the amount of impervious surface they own. … A proposal to offer discounts as an incentive to those who improve their onsite stormwater management facilities was met with a more favorable reception.”
A fundamental principle for any tax that pays for stormwater management systems should reward landowners who (a) reduce the area of impermeable surface or (b) improve onsite stormwater management facilities.