CAHABA WATERSHED II
more on the watershed issue
by Don Casey

Twenty municipalities in the southern half of Jefferson County, the northern portion of Shelby County, and the southern end of St. Claire County have joined with the three county governments to form a Consortium. (Are we talking regional government?) The Consortium has spent $225,000 of taxpayer money to hire four consultants to study the area and write a plan of action for the protection of the Cahaba river. The final report will be used to develop a plan for the best approach to land use planning and protection of the Cahaba watershed.(1) The consultants: Limno Tech, Ann Arbor Michigan; EDAW, Arlington Va.; Marasco Newton Group; and Laurie Fowler with the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia at Athens are known nationally and globally for their knowledgeable approach to Sustainable Development issues. The Scope of Work (Attachment A of the contract signed by the Consortium) lays out the timetable and responsibilities for the consultants. The plan and additional information is available at the following website www.cahabastudy.com.

We do not know if the Consortium is aware of the sustainable development issue which will, by design, be applied to all aspects of the communities' and the individuals’ social, environmental, and economic activities. Nonetheless, the contract has been signed, and the money spent. Examining available information about the consultants hired offers some understanding of what we may expect for the two hundred twenty- five thousand dollars.

EDAW, Inc., an environmental, economic, planning and design consultancy with 700 employees and 24 offices worldwide.(2) The company is working towards sustainable development - their reputation is global. EDAW's wrote and published the following report: "Sustainable Planning A Multi-Service Assessment 1999 Feasibility Study for Implementing Sustainable Development Concepts and Principles into the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Land and Facilities Planning Processes and Programs." The eighty-two pages plus document is most interesting and will likely be the subject of a later column.

Marasco Newton Group ltd. working in concert with other organizations has structured a process they call Consensys. It..."is an integrated set of planning tools and facilitation services that support sustainable development in complex environment and development situations through consensus-building between corporate entities, government agencies, and civil society organizations. Consensys strategically combines tools and best practices from alternative dispute resolution and participatory development to create a systematic process for achieving transparency and participation and to strengthen the foundations of project sustainability."(3)

Limno Tech sponsored the 1996 Watershed conference which feature Jonathan Lash, member of The President’s Council on Sustainable Development.(4) Mr. Lash, commented in his keynote speech: "The task the President gave us was to come up with a sustainable development strategy for the United States and also to identify examples of sustainable development in action around the country."(5)

Ted Slawecki, representative of Limno Tech visited the September 25, 2000, meeting of the Cahaba River Basin Project Steering Committee. According to the minutes of the meeting Sustainable Development received 14 votes out of a possible 15.(6)

Dr. Laurie Fowler, director of Public Service and Outreach for University of Georgia at the Athens Institute of Ecology is the fourth and final on the list of consultants. The Institute of Ecology has an ongoing graduate program titled "New Ecology Degree Program and Conservation Ecology and Sustainable Development Graduate Students."(7)

Dr. Fowler is no stranger to the tools of the social planner, i.e. regulations required to establish a sustainable community. She is the coauthor of "Protecting Stream and River Corridors."(8) Page 25 of that publication defines the TDR (transferable development rights) program, a program generally operated in the following manner: Local government boards and or appointed committees (planning boards) will decide whose property will be designated as sending units. This is normally property located outside the "urban growth boundary" or UGB where development is restricted by regulation, by taxation or by the refusal of government to provide services, thus reducing the value of the property to virtually nothing. To compensate the owner he is granted "development credits" which he may sell to a property owner inside the UGB. At the same time, the planning board decides which parcels in the population zone (town proper) will have x number of people per square foot - that’s the receiving zone. The process is sometimes called "growth management." Should the property owner in the receiving zone decide to modify his home, building, or structure, he must purchase credits from a holder of sending units. The number of credits required is of course up to the planning board. Once the proper number of credits is obtained the planning board will approve the building permit.

Imagine the nightmare the receiving property owner faces when trying to purchase a large quantity of credits from sending property owners who were authorized one or two credits by the planning board. Dr. Fowler offers the following quote to rectify this shortcoming:

"....a market with hundreds or thousands of landowners holding a relatively small number of TDR credits apiece, this would only be practical if an effective TDR banking system were established." (page 26 "Protecting Stream and River Corridors")

A banking system that trades credits in rights that were once thought to be inalienable is just one of the many monumental changes that sustainable development is bringing to society. In The Upper Cahaba Watershed Study, Attachment A (the task assignment and timetable of the contract signed by the consortium and consultants) provides phrases that reference this change. Subtask 2-4, page ten, lists a few phrases; ....riparian buffers, greenspace protection, and other growth management tools (such as transferable development rights, conservation subdivision ordinances, development point systems, and urban growth system).

CLICK HERE for still more on the Cahaba Watershed.

Footnotes:

  1. http://www.cahabastudy.com (page 3)
  2. http://www.lawseminars.com/htmls/seminars/01luga/faculty.htm
  3. http://www.frameweb.org/tools2.html
  4. http://web.archive.org/web/20000419064343/www.epa.gov/OWOW/watershed/w96index.html#spons
  5. http://web.archive.org/web/20000310191032/www.epa.gov/OWOW/watershed/lash.html
  6. http://www.cahabariver.com/files/092500Minutes.pdf
  7. http://www.ecology.uga.edu/ardegreeprog99-00.html
  8. http://www.cviog.uga.edu/pprs/paper-streams.pdf

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