A new way of thinking about how to handle stormwater runoff is needed even as the City Council decides if the burden on citizens is just too hefty, the director of the Office of Sustainability said Monday.
"We've run around with mops and buckets to try and clean it up," Dave Crockett said. "We can't continue to do that."
The City Council will meet today and hear a proposal from Mayor Ron Littlefield and his administration on the city's fees for water quality, or stormwater. An independent committee suggested last week that the council slash the city's proposed water quality budget by more than half -- from $21.5 million to $10 million.
Mr. Littlefield has said he is willing to reduce costs to businesses, industries and institutions for water quality programs in the first few years, but he said the city eventually would have to ramp up the program.
WHAT'S NEXTMayor Ron Littlefield and the city administration presents its water quality budget today to the City Council, just one week after an independent committee suggested slashing the $21.5 million budget to $10 million. The presentation will occur at 3 p.m. today during the council's Legal and Legislative Committee meeting.GREEN INFRASTRUCTUREExamples of green infrastructure include:* More trees planted in the city* Green roofs* Bioswales, or detention ponds that include vegetation* Cisterns* Parks designed for stormwater runoffSource: Office of Sustainability
Part of the proposal expected to be given to the City Council is an added emphasis on green infrastructure. Mr. Littlefield said in his State of the City speech last month that the city needs to get away from gray infrastructure and go green.
Mr. Littlefield said Monday that, on a visit to Washington, D.C., last week, he heard from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials that green infrastructure is the direction in which the country is headed.
"They said they were very interested in a green infrastructure direction," he said. "We're on the right track. That's the simplest way I can put it."
Council Chairman Jack Benson said he was worried about the cost of such plans, but said it was the direction the city should take.
"It's a costly approach, though," he said. "Especially right now."
He said the green infrastructure plan has a lot of "desirables" but needs to be implemented on a "pay as you go" basis.
Other cities, especially in the Northeast, have implemented such plans, records show. Philadelphia, Pa., has implemented cisterns in city parks and structures, and sidewalks have been dug up and trees planted in their place. On many roofs in Chicago, green, grassy meadows are now the norm, Mr. Crockett said.
He said he could see the same approach coming to Chattanooga.
"This is not a stormwater program," he said. "This is a total renovation of the city."
To make it happen will take incentives and education, he said. Most people do not know the benefits or how to implement green infrastructure, he said.
It will also take revision of old city codes such as landscaping, subdivision and street design, he said.
Mr. Crockett, who was on the City Council when the first stormwater fee was passed in 1993, said he now hears a lot of the same arguments against it that he heard back then. But he said the common denominator remains the same -- stormwater needs to be cleaned up before going into the Tennessee River.
He said the old plan still covers the same old ground: build pipes, pits and pavement to deal with stormwater. But the old way of thinking, which is to collect rainwater and send it the river, doesn't work because it does not reduce stormwater, it only redirects it, he said.
"We have continued to create the problem," Mr. Crockett said.