[Durham INC] City/County Budget and Stormwater Services/BMPs

Tue Apr 23 12:28:46 EDT 2013

I apologize that I cannot make the INC meeting
tonight to bring this up in person (I have the kids on my own again and they
have commitments this evening).

However, I wanted to ask the INC to consider
making some collective suggestions regarding the city and county budgets, particularly
regarding stormwater management.
Please bear with me -- I tried to make the correspondence below as brief as possible, but there are many important things to consider here.

Right now the following 3 entities deal with
stormwater issues in Durham
city and county (I hope there aren’t more, but these are all I know of): 

Durham
County : Engineering and Environmental Services (EES)

City
of Durham - Stormwater & GIS Services (SS)

Durham
County : Soil & Water Conservation District (SWCD)

To the best of my knowledge, the SWCD receives
only a nominal amount of county funding (it is likely the smallest budget line
item), though I know of many rain-garden/cistern installations and stream-bank
restorations that the SWCD has done in the city (largely because the city
residents involved did not receive assistance from SS). 

At any rate, it is quite apparent to me that the
3 Durham entities above do not work together as they should and sometimes even
compete with one another, resulting in redundancy, inefficiency, and increases
in time, human resources, and $ spent (for both the city and the county). See
the ‘Examples’ section under my signature for specific examples.

I recently wrote several people in city and
county government about the need for the city and county to cooperate and
collaborate in this regard, and I suggested that they do so by using (and appropriately
funding) the SWCD for the purposes of cistern/rain-garden/small BMPs (best
management practices), stream-bank restorations, and public
education/awareness, as well as requiring SWCD’s true input and PR skills for
bigger projects like the Duke Fitness Wetland project.

I have personally communicated with SS and SWCD
(though I don’t have much experience with Durham
county’s stormwater/environmental services), and I am well aware of the SWCD’s
superior responsiveness, customer service, education, and installation and
maintenance of bmp’s. (After receiving nothing but a pat on the shoulder from
SS, I was assisted by the SWCD with a residential stream-bank restoration, 2 cistern
installations, sedimentation and erosion solutions/plans at a public school, a
rain-garden installation, and a few other projects at public schools and
private residences – see below my signature for a brief but more detailed
description of my experiences with the SWCD in this regard).

As a result of these experiences, I am convinced
that the city and the county should, at the very least, divert the
responsibilities of education and small-BMPs and streambank restorations from
SS to the SWCD and should fund the SWCD accordingly. I have absolutely no doubt
that we will see more bang for our bucks in a more timely fashion than what is
happening currently via the separate city and county storm-water management
organizations.

Furthermore, I have heard SS insist to the
public (i.e. at INC meetings and other public outreach meetings) that the
Trinity Wetland installation is in addition to smaller BMPs that are ongoing.
However, I have also become aware of individual comments among SS staff to the
effect that 'we shouldn't have to do [this or that] because the Wetland will
take care of it'. 

This is exactly what nearby neighbors are afraid
of...that SS is going to use the Wetland installation merely as a
water-filtering/cleaning facility rather than a truly and aesthetically
maintained Wetland that is habitat to vegetation and wildlife and truly used
for the purpose of public education.

I guarantee you that these nearby neighbors
would be much more amenable if the Wetland were required to pass the scrutiny
of the SWCD and to have to adhere to their strict maintenance and follow-up
guidelines over the long-haul. 

It seems to everyone I talk to (except SS staff)
that the SS just wants credits (as quickly as possible), whereas the SWCD wants
long-term, sustainable solutions.

Given the above considerations, the SWCD is the
perfect entity for addressing storm-water problems and BMP installations at
least on private properties (though public/gov’t-owned properties and projects
would greatly benefit from the involvement of the SWCD), not to mention for
conducting public awareness and education programs, in BOTH the city and the county.

If the SWCD were utilized in the above fashion,
we would reduce redundancies resulting from separate (but, nonetheless,
parallel) city and county storm-water programs, Jordan/Falls lake
programs/installations, etc.

Admittedly, the resources of the SWCD
(particularly human resources) are stretched to the limit (particularly given
their miniscule funding from the county (and no funding from the city)). They
will need additional funding to truly be able to put their expertise to work on
BMPs, stream-bank restorations and other projects in the city (and to increase
their involvement and oversight in the county).

In this regard, Stormwater Services receives tens
of millions from the water fees charged to Durham citizens (city and county) via their
water bills. Some of this money should be diverted from Stormwater
Services directly to the SWCD -- to fund an additional
position (or positions) to expand the work that SWCD's Mike Dupree and Eddie
Culberson have been doing to research, install, and follow up and
ensure proper maintenance (something most Durham citizens think is
lacking with Stormwater Services) for BMPs and Streambank restorations. 

** This is not only a request for more city and
county funding for expanded SWCD services, it also presents a means for
providing that funding by omitting current redundancies and inefficiencies in
city/county storm-water maintenance and diverting a portion of current
storm-water fees to the SWCD, which actually installs effective BMPs in a
timely and truly sustainable fashion and in a manner that visibly benefits
fee-payers and improves public relations. 

Thus far, I have been a bit of a lone wolf,
hoping someone with influence will hear me howling and sincerely consider what
I’m howling about. I now need other Durham
citizens (individual members of this listserv and the INC collectively) to back
me up by emailing/calling your city and county officials and managers and
showing your support at upcoming budget public hearings. 

This is going to require some serious communication
b/w the city and the county about how to ally their stormwater services, their
BMP installations, and their resulting stormwater credits as well as regarding
how much each should budget for the SWCD for their services.

Thanks, as always, for seriously considering my
suggestions and for making your concerns and recommendations/support known to your
elected officials and city/county managers. I don’t have time to initiate a big public movement
in this regard, but I hope that the INC and those who are on this listserv will
insist on increasing collaboration, reducing redundancies and increasing our
use (and funding) of currently existing entities for services in which they
have demonstrated success (which is the case with the SWCD).

Sincerely,

Melissa Rooney

* After quite a bit of push-back (which I have personally
observed), SS finally appears sincere in their efforts to collaborate with the
SWCD on small BMPs (raingardens and cisterns and the like), but the verdict is
still out on how much SS will involve the SWCD in larger projects, like
streambank restorations and the wetland project at the Duke Diet and Fitness
site.
Certainly, SS and SWCD still compete (rather than collaborate) for federal (and
other) funding, as can be seen with their two competing projects at Southern
high-school (these projects should be combined to get the most bang for our
buck, but SS politics appears to be getting in the way of collaboration here).
The following links may delineate this a bit:

Southern High School Received $30,714 for - Durham County

Farmland
Protection Program The regular monthly ... - Durham Count (search for
'southern highschool')

(I
could not find info on the separate funding given to Stormwater Services for
their project at Southern, but you can see a smaller example via the link
immediately above, in which it is stated that SS 'was going to buy [rain-garden] plants from Southern
High School [via the BETC project of Southern and the SWCD] but now they have
decided to purchase them from the [North Carolina] botanical gardens.' Why
wouldn’t the city’s SS support a county project when it is clearly synergistic
and beneficial to both?)

* SS has its own bmp (i.e.
raingarden)-installation program (separate from anything done by the SWCD): Durham
rain gardens are green in more ways than one - The News ... 

As a result, SS hired and trained (at taxpayers’ expense) its
own personnel to implement the program(s). Meanwhile,
the SWCD already had the expertise and experience (and a stellar record) for
installing and maintaining rain-gardens and other such bmp’s on private land:

Durham
County : Community Conservation Assistance Program 

Why not just give the SWCD more funding and use
the expertise that is already available to us (particularly when the SWCD
offered their services in this regard)? The latter would have saved quite a bit
of $ and time. It appears the reason is because of politics and unproductive
competition between SS and the SWCD.

* Brief recount of my personal experiences of SWCD’s superior
responsiveness, customer service and education:

After receiving a run-around from SS, it was the
SWCD that did the stream-bank restoration on my property on Gresham Ave (in the city). The SWCD also
installed a 1000-gallon cistern at Creekside Elementary School and at my personal
residence at 301 Spring Garden Drive, and the SWCD advised Grounds and
Maintenance Superintendent Allen Bailey with regard to the tremendous
irrigation problems at Creekside Elementary (we are slowly implementing their
suggested long-term (that's a key word) solutions). Furthermore, Mike Dupree
(from the SWCD) is working with Jin Ellington, the coordinator of Citizen
Schools (afterschool program) at Lowe’s Grove Middle School, to organize a
1/2-semester (at least) workshop for the Citizen Schools that focuses on
sustainable food production and environmental sustainability (including education
about stormwater and water resources). Two other SWCD employees had a table
regarding the same at Creekside Elementary's Science Night this month (and they
weren't even being paid for their time). I could make an extensive list of the
altruistic, non-paid hours that SWCD staff put into education of children and
the public.
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