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Water knows no borders, as the flooding caused by Hurricane Ida last week proved.
This is part of the reason why the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission is pursuing a unique plan to cover 15 watersheds in Lehigh and Northampton counties. The proposal, underway long before the floods, could protect water quality and limit the impact of development on neighbors.
“Nothing like this currently exists in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said LVPC Executive Director Becky Bradley. “It covers almost all of our wetlands.”
The plan focuses on watersheds, defined as areas where rain and streams flow into a single basin or outlet. The benefits would include better water quality and protection against runoff water from new developments, Bradley said.
The commission will propose a model to be adopted by the 62 municipalities of Lehigh Valley. It will not cover all developments, such as fitting out a shed or small building, but any proposal to disturb more than 10,000 square feet of land would be subject to review.
According to this standard, all new warehouses would be checked.
The idea for a regional study has the backing of Northampton County Council.
“This affects stormwater management plans and ultimately compliance to control subdivisions and major land development,” City Councilor Tara Zrinski said. “We need it with the amount of development in the planning of this region.”
Persuading 62 boroughs, townships and cities to approve the same legislation can prove difficult, but Geoffrey Reese, LVPC’s director of environmental planning, said there is a precedent for such cooperation.
“This would build on our most recent efforts,” which were protecting Monocacy Creek. All the municipalities in that watershed have adopted a plan to protect the waterway, he said.
“It would be wonderful to be able to extend this to all the communities in the Lehigh Valley,” he said.
Pennsylvania provides model stormwater management regulations that can be applied locally. The LVPC requested a state grant of $ 225,000 to pay for the bulk of the study on global watersheds. He will need an additional $ 50,000.
“The goal is to put all watersheds and municipalities in the Lehigh Valley on a consistent basis for stormwater standards,” Reese said.
“This would allow us to create a single plan that allows us to regulate development in a consistent manner” and apply environmentally friendly infrastructure principles, “Bradley said.
“The need to update our Act 167 plan (a water management plan required by the state) has been on my radar for a few years,” Zrinski said. The city councilor said studying 15 watersheds at the same time would save money on several individual studies.
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