THE PLANNING PROCESS FOR LID - Low Impact Development and Sustainable Stormwater Management - page 78

developers have considered if a proposed plan can actually be sustained by the
land that it will occupy without depleting the local hydrology. It is taken for
granted that government will convey water to the parcel, carry away the sewage,
and not be concerned if stormwater runs from the new landscape without any
real restraints or sense of loss.
One could develop a list of questions to be answered for each development
proposed:
• What watershed or hydrologic address identifies my parcel?
• What are the availability and limitations of this hydrology?
• Will my development program remove or destroy the vegetation?
• Will my development program require major earthwork and compaction?
• Will I utilize a surface source from a local river, or import water?
• Will I extract groundwater, and can I return it to the local aquifer?
• Will I need to convey wastewaters outside the local drainage?
• Can I clean the wastewater and reuse it by recharge design?
• Will my program produce increased runoff volume?
• Will my program generate surface pollutants in the runoff?
This set of questions is concerned with the water management issues and does
not address the energy limits of a given site location. A similar set of initial
questions could be developed that raise the same basic issues concerning energy,
how it will be provided, and what limits and opportunities exist at a given parcel.
Guideline 2: Apply LID Conservation Design
As with any problem, it is usually easier to prevent it rather than to solve it. Many
of our standard development practices create a given resource impact, and this
impact can be largely reduced or eliminated by what we might call conservation
design . In its most simple explanation, this translates as “fit the program to the
site” without destroying the land and water resources that make this place suitable
for development.
If the development program is residential in form, configure the unit layout
to use as little space as necessary to achieve a community that satisfies the
market conditions proposed: Cluster lots, minimize setback dimensions, reduce
structural footprints, use only that portion of the parcel necessary to meet the
design, and “drape” the plan over the existing landform, minimizing the need
to reshape the land. Many developers take a very different approach to the land
development process, clearing all existing vegetation and reshaping the land to
meet a preconceived notion of what the final development program should look
like from a given perspective (usually, a roadway entrance or highway). This type
of land development process is frequently described as “terra-forming,” with no
small amount of sarcasm implied. The reference is to a science fiction theme