Monroe County PA Completes Stormwater Management Plan

Monroe County finally has a stormwater management plan that 17 municipalities along the Brodhead and McMichael Creeks Watershed are to use as a model for enacting local ordinances. Municipalities will have six months to enact ordinances that generally comply with the county's stormwater plan.

The original stormwater plan, written by the Monroe County Conservation District and the Monroe County Planning Commission, called for banning any development within the first 50 feet of waterways on projects of at least 5,000 square feet. It also called for greatly limiting development within the outer 100 feet of the buffer, allowing only such things as boat docks, athletic fields, and non-impervious driveways that provide natural drainage through the driveway surface.

After much public disapproval and discussion, the commissioners agreed to a compromise that removed all references to the actual buffer sizes, while generally supporting the idea of having buffers. The plan provides a mathematical formula for municipalities to use in determining possible buffer widths. Revised language approved by the county commissioners deletes the commissioners from the municipal approval process, leaving it solely up to the DEP to determine if boroughs and townships have "equivalent ordinance provisions" to meet water quality requirements. The commissioners also approved another change that recommends that only the municipal engineer and solicitor review municipal stormwater management plans prior to approval, not DEP. The commissioners claim the buffer provisions in the county plan that determine sizes based on each project's geographic features still give municipalities a tool to minimize future storm damage, without unduly infringing on individual property rights.

Pocono Record, December 7, 2006 http://poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061207/NEWS/612070339