May/June 2002 - Darby Creek/Hellbranch Tom Hart, BIA

Darby Growth Moratorium Off Ballot, For Now:
Hellbranch Ordinance to be Considered

Tom Hart
Executive Director
Building Industry Association (BIA)

Darby Watershed Sewer and
Water Service Moratorium

  There is an issue pending at Columbus City Council that will have a dramatic impact on the future growth of our region and the development of the real estate industry.

  You may have seen the newspaper stories in February and March about the Darby Watershed Sewer and Water Service Moratorium. The proposed growth moratorium is being pushed by a small number of environmental activists. It would have prohibited the extension of centralized sewer and water lines into the west side of Franklin County for 5 years.

  At this point the Moratorium is officially off the May 7th ballot. Columbus City Council, the Franklin County Board of Elections and the Ohio Supreme Court all rejected the initiative, because the petition gatherers did not follow the law in obtaining signatures, although they collected over 7,500 of them.

  This reprieve is probably temporary, as the group driving the moratorium process is likely to mount a second petition drive, and this time do so lawfully. Their next opportunity to place the issue on the ballot would be November of 2002.

  The BIA and Columbus Board of Realtors® have opposed the moratorium petition approach because stopping certain types of growth for five years is not the answer to real environmental degradation in the Darby Watershed. The moratorium would trample the rights of property owners by degrading the value of their land, and hurt the economic viability of our community. A better approach would be for Columbus to adopt reasonable development standards on the West Side that would both protect natural resources and allow development to move forward.

The Hellbranch Protective Ordinance

  The BIA and CBR are now embarking on a very important lobbying challenge at City Council and with the Coleman Administration. It will determine the future of residential housing growth, and indeed the City's economic development pattern, for years. The outcome will also decide whether the City, and indeed the region, will be able to accommodate the 400,000 new residents that are projected to relocate here between the year 2000 and 2020.

  With the issue unresolved, it is an open question as to whether the real estate industry will build housing to respond to this projected job growth, or whether it will go somewhere else because we are not allowed to prepare for this job growth.

  The issue is how development will occur in the western portion of Franklin County, along what is known as the “Hellbranch Sliver.”

  The Hellbranch Sliver encompasses the areas along the Clover Groft and Hamilton Ditches and Hellbranch Stream itself, from inside Hilliard to a location just west of Grove City. The area is not as wide as the Darby Watershed itself, but the question of how development will proceed in the Sliver will also impact what will be allowed in the greater Watershed.

  Last fall, real estate industry representatives, along with experts from OSU, The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy and others, held numerous meetings with the Columbus City officials to discuss Hellbranch development. The goal was the establishment of a zoning overlay for the portion of the Hellbranch Watershed in which the City plans to provide water and sewer services.

  The City's original proposal for this overlay would have greatly retarded reasonable building and even moderately priced housing because it required 40% open space in every development.

  It also precluded any construction in the floodplain and mandated extensive stream buffers.

  In response, the BIA proposed an aggressive system of stream protection that is based on real environmental quality control, and a stream buffering strategy that would match buffering requirements to stream width, rather than arbitrarily prohibiting development.

  The BIA plan calls for aggressive stormwater management and filtration in four-stage vegetated basins that are appropriate in this area. This treatment program would provide both qualitative and quantitative controls that would result in no significant increase in flows during storm events.

The Challenges Ahead

  The City's most recent draft of the Hellbranch Ordinance that will be sent to City Council for consideration contains several provisions that make it unreasonable.

  The first issue is the requirement that any stream, no matter how small or intermittent, must be buffered by 25 feet on either side. This is unacceptable because it would mean that extremely small depressions in the earth, that may only contain water after one heavy spring rain, would necessitate 25-foot buffering.

  The most recent draft also prohibited all stream crossings, except for arterial streets. This is inconsistent with state and federal regulation, and since there will be no arterials in this area; it means that all stream crossings would be prohibited.

  This provision would actually create the building of more and longer roads to get around watercourses and will make the Ordinance unreasonable.
The toughest challenge on the Hellbranch Ordinance will be withstanding the shrill cry for 40% open-space land set-asides in all developments in the area. The argument for this level of open space is simple — more is better and more open space equals greater environmental protection.

  These are bogus arguments. There has never been any scientific evidence or EPA guidance that says arbitrary open space protects the environment better than active filtration of stormwater runoff and vegetative buffering on the land closest to the watercourse.

What's At Stake

  A recent analysis done by a BIA member clearly demonstrates why calls for arbitrary open space are really a smoke screen for no growth.

  An affordable housing subdivision approved and built under existing law on the West Side includes 13% open space, and 323 lots on roughly 70 acres. The average developed lot cost is $28,000, and the builder can produce houses at an average price of $140,000.

  If the 40% open space requirement was applied to this same site the number of lots would go down to 204, the average lot price would go up to $40,000 and the average house would cost $200,000.

  This would price many people out of an entry level home in the Columbus Public School District and, because there is not a broad enough market for housing at this price and location, the subdivision would not be built.

  Thus, the debate about 40% open space is a great illustration of what is at stake on this issue. If people who make their living from the building and selling of houses ever needed an example of what their associations do to earn their support on the lobbying front, this is a great case study.

  This battle between affordable housing and excessive open space will be difficult because it will be emotional.

  It is relatively easy to use fear to stop growth. It doesn't cost anything to practice the big lie by repeating over and over that all development degrades streams. It is much harder to solve real environmental problems.

  The goal of the BIA and the CBR is to use environmental science and facts. The facts are that engineered, active environmental treatment systems are more effective at protecting outstanding natural resources than arbitrary open space. The fact is that reasonable development and environmental protection can both be accomplished.