An environmental group that helped draft Chattanooga’s stormwater regulations for the South Chickamauga Creek in 2014 claims a city proposal to ease those regulations could aggravate water pollution and flooding problems.
But home builders who are pushing the city to relax some of its rainwater runoff requirements insist there is no need for Chattanooga to adopt stricter standards than the rest of the state.
The Chattanooga Stormwater Regulations Board, an advisory panel studying recommended changes in stormwater rules from the staff of Chattanooga’s Department of Public Works, has scheduled meetings Monday and Friday afternoons next week to consider changes in the 3-year-old stormwater rules.
The proposed changes would relax the requirement for any new development in the South Chickamauga Creek watershed to retain the first 1.6 inches of rain on site. After months of study, the city staff is recommending that homes and businesses built in the South Chickamauga Creek watershed be required to retain only the first 1 inch of rain – the standard set statewide by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
Sandra Kurtz, chairman of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway Alliance formed in 1994 to help protect the creek and its wildlife, said the higher runoff standard needs to be preserved because the creek “is particularly susceptible to flooding, runoff sediment and pollutants due to the filling in of floodplains and wetlands.”