The Mobile City Council unanimously approved a revised stormwater management ordinance this week, capping off an agreement reached just days earlier with state environmental regulators over how the city manages runoff and pollution in its waterways.
New Tiers for Land Disturbance Permits
The updated ordinance passed without discussion from council members, but it makes a meaningful change to how the city classifies construction projects. Previously, all land disturbance permits were grouped into a single category regardless of project size. Under the new rules, developments under one acre fall into a Tier 2 category that keeps the same requirements as before, while projects larger than an acre now fall under Tier 1, requiring developers to submit detailed plans and letters of credit to the city before breaking ground.
Dianne Irby, the city’s director of Planning and Development, said the split ensures the city collects proper best-management-practice reports from developers working on larger sites, which are more likely to generate significant stormwater runoff during construction. “It’s to ensure we have best management practices in place to make sure we minimize stormwater in those developments,” Irby said. The ordinance also requires commercial and industrial facilities considered “high-risk” to submit similar management plans as part of a broader illicit discharge detection and prevention program.
Part of a Broader Deal With State Regulators
The ordinance update stems from a consent decree the city reached with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management on June 30, resolving a dispute over the city’s compliance with stormwater management requirements. As part of that decree, the city agreed to pay a $135,000 fine, payable over three years, a significant reduction from the $475,000 penalty the city had initially faced last year for failing to comply with an earlier consent decree governing its stormwater system.
The decree also requires the city to purchase new litter-trapping equipment, including a litter abatement boat meant to help clear debris from waterways such as Dog River and Three Mile Creek, both of which are known to collect large amounts of floating trash after heavy rains. Irby said the city has not yet decided what type of boat to buy, noting that a boat suited for Three Mile Creek might not work well on Dog River. Councilman Fred Richardson floated the idea of a wheel-shaped litter-collection boat similar to one used in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, though that design could cost as much as $800,000.
City officials said funding for the litter boat and trap purchases is expected to be addressed in the fiscal year 2015 budget, which is currently being drafted and could reach the council in preliminary form later this month. Irby said the broader goal is to repair the city’s standing with state regulators. “We want to be sure we turn around the perceptions with ADEM and others in that we want a clean city and we’ll focus to make it a priority,” she said.