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> Stream Buffer Destruction Act
Anti-Environment:
Stream Buffer Destruction Act
Our Position: oppose
Bill Number: SB510
Sponsor: Sen. Chip "Chop" Pearson
Legislative Session: 2006
Making the State minimum stream buffer the maximum. The array of bills Sen. Chop Pearson introduced in his attack on the regulation of stream buffers has been reduced to a single measure: SB 510. The bill originally wiped out any stream buffers in excess of the state minimum buffer of 25 feet, except for trout streams, which have 50 foot buffers. If any local government wished to have a wider buffer, it would have to purchase the land for that additional protection of downstream property and water quality. The bill (in the form that passed the Natural Resources Committee), leaves out references to the buffers found in the Metro Rivers Protection Act, and any reference to the Erosion and Sedimentation Act. And it includes a new allowance for a single family home inside the 150 Yahoola Creek buffer, if it is built on 2 acres, and the septic tank drainfield is outside the buffer. It also includes the earlier provision for the variance, but leaves that regulating up to the EPD, not the courthouse gang. And it has the fantasy “make it go away” stormwater ordinance.
SB 510 is profoundly anti-property rights, as well as obviously anti-environmental. The property rights of a single, upstream landowner or developer are set on a higher plane that those of anyone else, for no more reason than the fact that the upstream landowner has a title to property at a higher elevation than his neighbors.
Status
SB 510 is winding to its end on the Floor of the GA House. The bill has gone through more alterations and twisted procedural maneuvers than can ever be recalled for any legislation, but now has made it to House Rules Calendar, once, only to be dropped before any action was taken. That occurred on Thursday, March 23. The bill was not considered because the proponents discovered that they did not have enough votes (91) to pass the bill. The bill could have been considered on Friday, March 24, but there were not enough votes to pass it on that day either, and it was not brought up. The bill was originally supposed to be “handled” in the House by Rep. Amos Amerson of Dahlongea, but after he was defeated in committee in an attempt to amend the bill with an unconstitutional “legislative override of regulatory rules” provision, he handed the bill off to freshman Rep. Chuck Martin, of Alpharetta. Rep. Amerson and those attending the House subcommittee meetings heard the details of the bad faith shown in the construction and subsequent history of the project by the local leaders.
Action Needed
You can point out that there are numerous scientific studies demonstrating the performance of buffers in keeping dirt, pesticides and other pollutants out of our rivers, streams and reservoirs. That the requirements in the bill of the EPD to come up with a stormwater management plan that works as well as buffers is impossible. Local governments can allow forestry and agriculture inside the 150 buffer if BMPs are followed. Therefore the concerns of Lumpkin County residents that they can’t grow hay or strawberries on Yahoola Creek are completely unfounded. Besides, it’s outrageous that the mistakes made by the leadership in Lumpkin County should be allowed to wipe out drinking water protection all over the state.
Background
SB 510 is designed to allow landowners to create a new subdivision around and upstream from the reservoir, ruining it as a drinking water supply source, but making a very nice subdivision amenity. The state lent the local water authority about $15 million to build this lake, which will be the very expensive focus of a residential community. If these people would simply play back the money for the lake, they can do anything they like with it. But they cannot be allowed to remove the protections from every other drinking water supply stream in GA because they want to develop “their” reservoir “their” way. SB 510 passed the Senate by a vote of 33 to 16 on Wednesday, March 8, DAY 27 of the Legislative Session. The Republican Caucus voted to support the bill as a Party Line matter, after a vigorous discussion in which strong dissents were registered. Only two Republicans, Seth Harp of Columbus and Dan Moody of North Fulton, voted against passage in the floor vote. Several other Republicans yielded to Party discipline and reluctantly voted for the bill, which passed by only a 4 votes more than the 29 votes needed to pass a bill. Sen. Pearson's fellow area legislator, Rep. Amos Amerson, is expected to strongly push for SB 510, but the House Committee has proven less enthusiastic this term for anti-environmental projects than the Senate. The bill has one provision allowing gross buffer violations in the name of “single family houses” and also includes a “get out of jail free card” provision that counties can invoke to get pet developers off the hook for buffer violations. These features must not pass the legislature. The root cause of SB 510 is more closely tied to a single political problem in Sen. Pearson's district than his theories about property rights. The problem in Lumpkin County is the Yahoola Creek Reservior Project that was planned as a drinking water reservoir to support development about 15 years ago (and opposed by local environmentalists at the time). The reservoir was built, and them someone discovered that it would not yield the 6 million gallons a day they wished to withdraw from it. The dam at Yahoola Creek was raised and it made the lake larger. However, it is now an unpermitted lake. The state won't let these North Georgians withdraw water from it because it has no Corps permit. And worst of all, from the local viewpoint, the larger lake has buffers that effectively occupy more private property than they were "supposed to" because the lake level moved the line where the buffer measurement starts farther onto the adjacent land tracts. If this bill only applied to the manmade disasters at the Yahoola Creek Reservoir Project, it would still be poor legislation, but its application is statewide, except in the 16 counties of the Metro North Ga Water District, which got removed from the bill in its second version because it was plain their votes would kill the bill. The measure still applies to buffers in Athens-Clarke County and in Newton County, and perhaps in other places as well. A substitute version of SB 510 was offered to the Sen. Natural Resources Committee. It said that a wider buffer can be replaced with a “stormwater management ordinance” that is as protective of the stream and property as the buffer that it replaces. Such an ordinance is an exercise in the arena of legal fictions, unless some locale is willing to require incredibly expensive, highly engineered methods for landowners to do what natural systems can do in the space of a few yards alongside streams and lakes. Another alternative available to local governments with extra width protective buffers would be to grant variances to property owners to legally “violate” the buffer rules against land disturbing activity and construction, with some plan that is also as protective of property and water as the buffer that is being discarded. In cases where the wider protective buffer makes construction and land disturbing activity impossible, even for fantasy ordinances and buffer development plans, the local governments will have to buy the land, or just give up regulating the buffer, and let the downstream property owners and water quality go hang. In an attempt to lower the resistance of local governments to his bill, Sen. Pearson has exempted the 16 counties of the Metro North GA Water Planning District from the effects of SB 510. While this means that most of the state’s wider protective buffers are thus not affected by the action of the bill, the precedent is being set to sweep them away at a later date. And areas like Athens-Clarke Co., which has wider protective buffers now, will lose their preference in favor of the developers’ choices. Dr. Judy Meyer presented the Senate Natural Resources Committee with a brief summary of her study of trout stream buffers that showed that if trout waters have buffers of less than 100 feet, the streams cannot support reproducing trout. That work, commissioned by the legislature and which took 3 years and $300 thousand, was discounted by Chairman Ross Tolleson and Sen. Ralph Hudgens as “theory.” Hudgens even said that unless you measure the effect of a buffer, then destroy it, and measure the effect of that, you are only speculating about what happens. Former Wildlife Resources Director David Waller told the members that, “We know that buffers work, and how big they have to be to work, and we know there is no cheaper way to do what they do. This is just chipping away at the protection of natural resources, and your job is to protect those resources.”
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