Please click on images to ENLARGE view of Hill Place stormwater outlet with rocks piled on a riparian-zone tree hanging over the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River. ANY action within 25 feet of the center of the stream violates the projects' stormwater permit. The 25-foot-riparian corridor required by the Corps of Engineers for the initial Aspen Ridge project was never enforced and hasn't ever been measured since before tree removal and dirt-moving and construction began in 2005. The 25 feet ignored the geographical reality of the overflow area on the east side of the stream and the delicacy of the stream shore on the western, higher bank. It was written by a FORMER corps of engineers employee who has been responsible for many wetland delineations in the past decade or two in northwest Arkansas. He is paid by the developers to MINIMIZE the extent of the wetland and recommend restrictions that will maximize space for construction. The corps approved the Aspen
Ridge stormwater/slash wetland-filling permit exactly as it was submitted. Can you spell rubber stamp? That was under the control of a Republican administration that thought an environmental problem was having a power outage or a failure of the air-conditioning system in the White House.
This pipe must be removed back at least 25 feet and some kind of miniature detention pond must be created to stop the rush of water that will be coming down that pipe when the big detention pond on the west portion of the project fills during heavy rain.
Aspen Ridge left this mess. Obviously, the contractors weren't told to fix it. It should have been pulled away from the stream and some kind of gentle spreading of the flow should have been develeped before ANY other work on the project began. Now, less than two weeks are left before the developers have promised to allow lease-holders to move in!
A person could call ADEQ and they would say call the Corps of Engineers and vice versa. Both agencies will tell a person to call his local government. "Your city can make stronger rules than we can, and they can enforce them." I have heard that a dozen or more times from federal and state officials when talking about violations of stormwater regulations. I hope that lessons learned from the Aspen Ridge/Hill Place and some similar "cluster projects" around the city in recent years will push our officials to create and pass ordinances that will make our years of pretense of being a "sustainable" city a bit closer to reality.
Why didn't I post photos of this online before now? someone will ask. For more than a year, the public has been kept almost completely off the construction site. I do have photos of that situation from 2006, 2007 and early 2008. It wasn't so bad then and I really expected it to corrected long before now. A politician or two told us that Hill Place student apartments would be the best thing that could happen to our neighborhood. But the main one wasn't reelected and he didn't bother to show up and see that the work was done up to code. The new administration is still having to cut the budget of all departments because of the economic problems. I just hope to see a fulltime watershed overseer hired in a my lifetime to enforce a stronger ordinance on wetland and stream riparian corridors so that one stop or one call with a complaint such as this to city hall will get it fixed instantly. The city is operating at a great disadvantage at the moment. But creating an effective ordinance actually would cost nothing but some time that staff members have available because few construction plans are hitting their desks right now. And there are volunteers with extremely valuable input available.
Cross-training code-enforcement, building inspectors and infrastructure inspectors and park workers and many others on staff to recognize water-quality and stormwater rule violations will cost almost nothing.
The Government-channel and CAT channel files are loaded with videos, many of which the city paid big for by bringing in experts who have been mostly ignored by everyone except us old folk with time to watch public television instead of sharing "what we are thinking" on social meda.
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3 comments:
The return of The Iconoclast must have inspired you to to kick some butt. This situation is an incredible piece of stupidity! When is the new administration going to stop collecting public input and just issue some clear, simple executive orders to get it done NOW? You have spelled it out over and over for years.
Coody ignored the truth. Jordan got a mandate from the voters to do the right thing. His time is NOW!
11:40, you are on target. Aub has written about all these concerns since I first read his columns in the 1070s. He doesn't even mention hunting and fishing anymore, just environmental damage being done in Northwest Arkansas. But the message is still the same: Protect the wetland and woodland or lose it and with it the fish and wildlife and the clean air and water on which this growing city of NWA depends.
Being consistent in stating the facts is what made him the state's premier outdoor writer, and he supported Jordan for mayor because Jordan is the same kind of man.
11:40, you are on target. Aub has written about all these concerns since I first read his columns in the 1070s. He doesn't even mention hunting and fishing anymore, just environmental damage being done in Northwest Arkansas. But the message is still the same: Protect the wetland and woodland or lose it and with it the fish and wildlife and the clean air and water on which this growing city of NWA depends.
Being consistent in stating the facts is what made him the state's premier outdoor writer by the 1980s, and he supported Jordan for mayor in 2008 because Jordan is the same kind of man. His time is coming!
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