Item A: Low Impact Development: Results of Review

Home Browse Search

a retrofit practice to reduce runoff volumes, pollutant loadings, and the overall impacts of existing development on the affected receiving waters. Typical LID practices or facilities were found to include use of swales, rain gardens, infiltration trenches, green roofs, pervious pavements, reduction of paving widths (skinny streets), impervious surface reductions, and open space preservation. C. Framework and Methodology for Review The team developed a framework for a systematic review of all relevant City regulations, policies and procedures related to green infrastructure and LID. This framework was modeled in part from methods used by other jurisdictions in completing LID review and evaluation of their LID implementation, and consisted of the following key steps: a. Scan existing regulations, policies, standards and programs to identify those potentially relevant to LID b. Evaluate and rank potentially relevant areas for degree of relevance to LID elements and contribution to meeting LID objectives c. Identify areas with moderate to high potential for increasing implementation of LID practices d. Identify barriers to increasing implementation of LID practices e. Identify incentives to increasing implementation of LID practices An initial scan of code, regulations, policies, procedures, standards, plans, program areas and incentives was performed to identify potentially relevant areas and specific provisions. This initial scan resulted in a comprehensive list which, over several months, was reviewed in detail and discussed by the team; items were added and removed from the list by consensus of the team. This list of regulations and practices potentially relevant to LID was ultimately refined and condensed into the working summary document located in Appendix A. Potentially relevant regulations and programs were then evaluated for degree of LID relevance based on their potential for meeting the council-directed objective to “increase the use of low-impact development practices for stormwater management.” A ranking system was developed and applied by team members to each area of regulation or program element based on its contribution to the key elements of LID (infiltration, filtering, storage, evaporation, reduction, and detention of stormwater runoff); the team average ranking was determined for each area. The final inventory of relevant regulations and programs consisted of those items on the comprehensive list which ranked with moderate to high overall relevancy, per average of individual team member responses, to meeting LID objectives. These relevant areas were then evaluated for potential modification to increase the use of low impact development practices for stormwater management in Eugene. The basic question asked by the review team was “could we do more”. This evaluative process considered the degree to which existing regulations, programs and practices were already focused and optimized for meeting LID objectives, the frequency of application of the regulation or program to LID objectives, the magnitude of impact on LID, comparison to best practices in other communities, and the scope of resources required for change versus degree of gain in LID practices. Based on these considerations, areas were determined to have Low, Medium, or High potential for increasing Eugene’s use of LID practices. Potential barriers to changes in each area were then identified and documented. The results of this evaluation are summarized in Table A and presented in more detail in Appendix A of this report. In addition, incentive-based approaches as utilized in other communities were researched and evaluated for potential for increasing use of LID. The intended outcomes of review included determination of regulations and programs currently in place with a significant contribution to LID and identification of areas where the city could do more to increase use of LID. The following sections summarize the result of the review. September, 2008 City of Eugene LID Report, Page 3 of 26