Action Alert: County Council to hold hearing on Planning Board recommendation to allow increased impervious surfaces, weakening Clean Water protections
Ten Mile Creek - Fall
Update 1/26/2023: On January 24, 2023, the County Council voted unanimously to withdraw ZTA 22-12.
On January 17, 2023, the Montgomery County Council will hold a hearing on a Zoning Text Amendment, ZTA 22-12, that would exempt the impervious surfaces of master-planned bikeways from being counted toward the impervious limits that protect the Ten Mile Creek watershed. Below is a fact sheet about this ZTA. To take action, click here to send an email to the Council President and all Councilmembers. At the link you will find a sample letter you may personalize or send as is. If you want to submit a testimony, either written or oral, at the public hearing on January 17 2023, click here, and choose either ‘Live Testimony’ or ‘Written, Audio, or Video Testimony’.
Fact Sheet about ZTA 22-12
This is the 2nd round for this ZTA. In April 2020, the Planning Board requested that the County Council introduce an earlier version of this ZTA. However, the County Council did not introduce it at that time.
Why we care: Ten Mile Creek is a unique high-quality stream that flows into Little Seneca Reservoir, our region’s back-up drinking water supply. Ten Mile Creek is rated among the very best streams in Montgomery County in terms of water quality and biological condition. The 2014 Ten Mile Creek Area Limited Amendment to the Clarksburg Master Plan was developed and approved specifically to protect this unique and sensitive watershed.
Importance of restricting impervious surfaces: The science of watershed protection tells us that to protect sensitive and high-quality, clean streams such as Ten Mile Creek, we must establish and enforce the strictest-possible limits on development – specifically, on hard, paved impervious surfaces. Any addition of imperviousness to this sensitive watershed threatens both the quality of Ten Mile Creek, and the health of our region’s only nearby back-up drinking water supply, Little Seneca Reservoir.
ZTA 22-12 weakens impervious protection: The Clarksburg Master Plan’s East and West Environmental Overlay Zones (EOZ) were established in 2014 to protect the Ten Mile Creek watershed. The EOZ states “Impervious surface for any publicly funded road or bikeway…is exempt from this Overlay zone’s impervious surface restriction.” The proposed ZTA would weaken and amend the EOZ to state that “any master-planned bikeway” is exempt from the impervious surface limits in the EOZs, regardless of whether it is publicly funded.
Stream Conditions vs. Cumulative Impervious Surface (by percent of watershed). Data provided by Montgomery County DEP
Increased imperviousness damages streams: This policy change would allow additional imperviousness to be exempt from the current impervious surface limits for the Ten Mile Creek watershed, to the detriment of water quality, and it would also open the door to further imperviousness exemptions in the future.
Existing exemptions from impervious surface caps harm Ten Mile Creek: The existing exemptions from impervious surface limitations, and the expansion of exemptions proposed by ZTA 22-12, are not science-based. They ignore the fact that streams are harmed by the negative effects of imperviousness. To minimize the damage to Ten Mile Creek, the Council should eliminate all road and bikeway impervious surface exemptions, regardless of whether or not they are publicly-funded. The science doesn’t support any exemptions. By enabling significant increases in the stock of hard, paved surfaces, these exemptions weaken the County’s science-based protection of Ten Mile Creek centered on limiting imperviousness.
We can have clean water AND bike paths: The choice is not between clean water and bike paths. We can, and must, have both. The proposed housing and other land developments in Ten Mile Creek, in combination with the bike paths and all other forms of hard surfaces, need to conform to limits previously established by Montgomery County. Any proposed weakening of these protective limits should be rejected.
It is the Council’s responsibility to strengthen, not weaken, the protections that were put in place in the Ten Mile Creek Limited Master Plan Amendment and its associated Environmental Overlay Zones, to protect our precious watershed and drinking water supply. If there is any "room for interpretation" in the text of the Ten Mile Creek regulations, then interpret them on the side of more protection, not on the side of more pollution and degradation.
This controversial policy change, ZTA 22-12, which now before the County Council must be rejected as a violation of the Ten Mile Creek Limited Master Plan Amendment and its main enforcement regulation – the limits to imperviousness established in the Clarksburg Environmental Overlay Zones.
More details can be found on the Council staff report.
Click here to send an email to the Council President and all Councilmembers. At the link you will find a sample letter you may personalize or send as is.
If you want to submit a testimony, either written or oral, at the public hearing on January 17 2023, click here and choose either ‘Live Testimony’ or ‘Written, Audio, or Video Testimony’