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2808 North Fifth Street Suite 501 ·
St. Augustine, FL 32084 |
“LID” – A GOOD CHOICE FOR DEVELOPERS IN NORTHEAST FLORIDA
Wed, Jul 25 2007
There is good news for the future of residential subdivisions in NE Florida. More and more, developers are looking at alternatives to the often unsightly, fenced in retention ponds of old. Low Impact Development, commonly referred to as “LID”, is a stormwater design approach with most of the benefits of a natural wetland, which include improved wildlife habitat and water quality, as well as aesthetics.“LID advocates stormwater management practices based on soils and vegetation, designing for all rainfall events, large and small. Stormwater is managed as close to the source as possible, reducing conveyance, deep pipes, and large stormwater structures.” (Cahill, 2006)
Choosing vegetation that reduces stormwater runoff and designing retention areas to return water to the groundwater and atmosphere are important components of LID.
“The underlying concept of LID is to consider stormwater as a resource, not a disposal problem.” (Cahill, 2006)
The Environmental Protection Agency defines LID as follows:
“LID is a site design strategy with a goal of maintaining or replicating the predevelopment hydrologic regime through the use of design techniques to create a functionally equivalent hydrologic landscape. Hydrologic functions of storage, filtration, and groundwater recharge, as well as the volume and frequency of discharges, are maintained through the use of integrated and distributed micro-scale stormwater retention and detention areas, reduction of impervious surfaces, and the lengthening of flow paths and runoff time (Coffman, 2000). Other strategies include the preservation/protection of environmentally sensitive site features such as riparian buffers, wetlands, steep slopes, valuable (mature) trees, flood plains, woodlands, and highly permeable soils.” (EPA, 2000)
P&A President, Michael Pullium, who serves on the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Services (UF IFIS) LID Advisory Board, has been coordinating with IFAS on several LID projects in St. Johns County. Specifically, P&A is designing a Stormwater Ecologically Enhanced Project (SEEP) pond for Hancock Place and a LID site plan for Hastings Villas, two affordable housing subdivisions being developed by the St. Johns Housing Partnership. P&A has also been contracted to perform Engineering Services for the UF-IFAS PWACS Center in Hastings to create a demonstration project showing various LID approaches.
REFERENCES
Cahill Associates; Low Impact Development (LID) Issues for Florida: What’s Important and What should Be Monitored; West Chester, PA, 2006.
United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water, Washington DC 20460; Low Impact Development (LID), A Literature Review; October 2000 (4203) EPA-841-B-00-005.
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