Keeping it green

Posted 8/23/11

The Town of Tusten’s zoning rewrite was put online for public review on August 8. It is already open for written comment, and the first public hearing tentatively scheduled for September 26, …

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Keeping it green

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The Town of Tusten’s zoning rewrite was put online for public review on August 8. It is already open for written comment, and the first public hearing tentatively scheduled for September 26, followed by one on October 10.

The process has taken months, and from what we have seen, it has never been less than meticulous and thoughtful, and has at best—as in the explicitly prohibited uses section—ranged into the visionary. We applaud all concerned, especially given the public pressure that we have occasionally heard from those who felt that the process should have been hurried along to accommodate a developer for the Narrowsburg School property—something that, as we understand it, would have been legally iffy as well as a betrayal of the town’s commitment to achieve a document that embodies the goals and sentiments of its comprehensive plan.

That said, it would be surprising if, in such an extensive enterprise, there were nothing in the document that could be improved; and we believe that the definition of lot coverage—one of the standards that recurs in the district regulation tables for all districts—may be a case in point. We think that, relative to the intentions of the comprehensive plan, it contains a loophole that there is no reason to leave open, and we would like to suggest closing it.

The definition of lot coverage is “The percentage of the lot area that is occupied by the ground area of a building, its accessory buildings, and other impervious surfaces.” Impervious surfaces could ordinarily be expected to include man-made surfaces such as sidewalk, driveways and parking lots. But the recent technological development of pervious paving means that such areas, though devoid of vegetation, could conceivably be excluded from the measurement of lot coverage. The result could be a plan for, say, the Downtown Business District, which has a lot coverage limit of 65%, in which the buildings by themselves already covered 65% of the lot, and a substantial parking and driveway area were added to that on the grounds that pervious pavement was used.

From the point of view of storm water management, that’s just fine. And storm water management is certainly a main objective of lot coverage standards. Pervious surfaces absorb precipitation, allowing it to be filtered back into the aquifer slowly and cleanly rather than turning into runoff that can create flooding, erosion and sedimentation issues. The preservation of pervious surfaces, natural or otherwise, is especially important in a town like Tusten that adjoins an important river, the Delaware, that can be damaged by excessive sediments and dissolved solids such as those that result from massive runoff episodes, or from the day to day non-point-source pollution that occurs over time. There is no question, in this regard, that pervious paving represents a significant improvement over impervious paving.

But from the point of view of Tusten’s comprehensive plan, is it reasonable to view storm water management as the only thing that can and should be accomplished by lot coverage standards? The town attributes listed as most important in the survey that formed a major basis for that plan were small-town atmosphere and open spaces and scenery. To us, that implies that green areas covered with natural vegetation ought not fall below a certain proportion of the landscape. Why not, for Tusten, allow lot coverage standards to do two jobs at once: guarantee sensible storm water management, and assure the preservation of green spaces that will maintain that all-important rural town character?

That would mean eliminating the pervious paving loophole, and there are several ways it could be done. “Impervious surfaces” could perhaps be changed in the definition to “man-made” or “manufactured surfaces.” Or, if one still wanted to encourage the use of pervious pavement (as one certainly should), one could employ two-step standards where lot coverage was allowed to be higher if pervious versus impervious surfaces were used; e.g. in the Downtown Business District, perhaps a total of 70% for those using pervious paving and 65% for those using traditional impervious surfaces.

When we raised this issue at one of the rewrite meetings, it was pointed out to us that even if someone came up with a plan of the type we hypothesized—65% building lot coverage plus extensive parking, driveways, etc.—the plan would still have to go before the Planning Board, which could impose substantial mitigation. But why not give the Planning Board and others the strongest possible tools to maintain the comprehensive plan’s spirit, without loopholes, in the first place?

The “pervious loophole” may not seem very big, but we think it would be possible to abuse—and it seems like it shouldn’t be all that difficult to take care of. If there are any citizens of Tusten have an opinion, they might want to submit a comment on it. Comments can be submitted at a public hearing, at townclerk@tusten.org or by mailing Kathy Michell, Town Clerk, Town of Tusten, PO Box 195, Narrowsburg, NY.

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