County board passes watershed amendments
By Greg Pearson STAFF WRITER

The Chesterfield Board of Supervisors adopted amendments last week that require developers to take responsibility for trapping runoff before it goes into the Swift Creek Reservoir.

Following the advice of county staff and a unanimous recommendation by the Chesterfield Planning Commission, the county board enacted new amendments last week that placed the responsibility of trapping the runoff from development back on individual developers. The proposal, which was supported by the Home Building Association of Richmond, Hands Across the Lake and the Brandermill Community Association, scrapped the master BMP plan.

Board Chair Kelly Miller and Matoaca Supervisor Renny Humphrey expressed reservations but voted with the other three supervisors.

At last December's board meeting, Clover Hill Supervisor Art Warren couldn't get a second for his motion to accept the amendments. His fellow board members tabled action until Mar. 14, but it was brought up a month earlier. Some commissioners speculated that board members have not been thoroughly briefed on the necessity of the amendments.

The amendments apply to the Upper Swift Creek Watershed in northwest Chesterfield County, which drains into the Swift Creek Reservoir and supplies 30 percent of the county's drinking water. Too much runoff could jeopardize the reservoir being used as a water source.

Though the Army Corps of Engineers had rejected the county's plan for a regional system of ponds to collect runoff, according to Planning Director Kirk Turner, developers were paying funds into a system to establish the regional plan and not treating the runoff. The amendments do away with the funding requirement and require developers to build their own ponds to collect runoff.

This week, the planning commission takes up the larger issue of how much development can be permitted in the watershed based on an environmental study completed by CH2MHill.

Some other options to control runoff include tightening the standards for commercial development and requiring less density and more open space in residential developments. Those solutions raise the costs for developers. A temporary moratorium on rezonings is unlikely since it might not be legal, said Turner. Midlothian Planning Commissioner Dan Gecker hopes developers will get together in a "pollution trading credit system" that could be monitored by the county.