11/05/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 11/5/2003 ~, the Scheeff home at city expense City Engineer Durbin said several yeazs ago the ,~~ city had a pipe program where, if someone wanted something more than their driveway piped, they could drop a pipe in the ditch to be filled up. The city would do the work. But there were several problems caused by that because there was no grade, no plan, it was a haphazazd operation. That's what the EPA is cracking down on. The EPA Phase II permit came about last yeaz just before Mr. Deichmann left. He believes Mr. Deichmann recognized this was going to take a comprehensive plan, so he suspended all yard pipe installations in the city because he knew the city would have to come up with some kind of comprehensive plan. The moratorium on yazd pipes has been kept. Driveway pipes will be replaced if needed. The EPA requirements now aze so different than before, it is going to take a considerable amount of planning, checking with the EPA and taking a shot in the dark to see if it's approved. With all the plans like Claque Road, Lessner Road, filling in ditches and doing storm sewers, we have to be careful on how we plan these things now to make sure that we are operating under EPA guidelines. It is going to take considerable planning and work. Councilwoman Kasler asked if the federal mandate demands that a master plan be in place before these projects can be done. Mr. Durbin answered that the city has to develop a plan to handle our storm water, our out-falls to meet the Clean Water Act regulations. A lot of that is to keep water from stagnating in pipes. Basically, the EPA would like to have open ditches, but he knows that is not very populaz. We do need to have that plan in place. Mrs. Kasler said she did not want to see the mandate used as an excuse not to do the work that was promised to the Lessner Road residents. When did the mandate come out? Because if Lessner Road was something that should have been addressed between two and four yeazs ago and it wasn't, would it be grandfathered? Is it something we should have addressed any way because other streets have been done in that manner at the city's expense? How do you deal specifically with Lessner Road at this point? Mr. Durbin said we will have to wait until our comprehensive plan comes out before we can address that. Mr. Deichmann withdrew the policy of inserting pipes for this reason. That is where the moratorium came from. Mr. Miller asked Mr. Durbin if the words "guideline" and "mandate" have been used interchangeably. Is he saying that the EPA has said we cannot do anything on a situation such as Lessner? We must stop completely and not address that problem? If that's the case, how do you address Claque Road? Mr. Durbin said the federal government could possibly cite the city and take us into court. We would be in violation of the Clean Water Act. Mr. Miller said he understands the need for the plan and understands the need to go forward with the plan. However, we also have residents' concerns. He does not believe the EPA says stop everything until you get a plan or you're going to court. We ought to find out, if we don't know, what the EPA's position is on such a situation such as Lessner. We should find out rather than speculate that we might end up in court. Council does not want to tangle with the EPA. But no one wants to see residents, such as Mr. Bouman or the entire Lessner Road area and possibly Claque Road, be impacted and asked to endure a moratorium if we could in fact go ahead. Safety Director Jesse said he had worked with the Chagrin Valley Watershed Conservancy District as a representative from his prior employer. The question was the fact we are basically changing a whole philosophy of water management. For many years, water was thought to be 11