Travis County Commissioners Court
March 16, 2010,
Item 18
>> number 18...
18 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding Travis County's storm water management program and development review program, including: a, adoption of proposed amendments to Travis County code chapters 64 and 82, to implement water quality protection requirements in the Lake Travis watershed and to revise groundwater availability requirements applicable to subdivision proposals in unincorporated areas of Travis County.
b, adoption of a revised interlocal agreement with the lower colorado river authority relating to implementation of the Travis County storm water management program.
i don't have any problem with this.
i'm not sure I understood it, so I thought we ought to get a brief discussion of it in court.
how you doing?
>> certainly.
good morning, judge, Commissioners.
for the record, I'm tom webber with tnr's environmental quality program.
with me is anna bolin with tnr's development services.
on item 18-a, tnr recommends approval of the proposed amendments to chapter 64 and 82 of the Travis County code.
public notice included a hearing here in court on January 12th, newspaper publication in the "austin american-statesman", and an announcement on the county's public website.
in response we received input from the Austin area home builders association and we made several changes to the rule language to address their concerns.
the rule-making in summary, principally these code changes would define existing requirements of Travis County code that were adopted in 2005, the interim water quality rules as they've commonly been called.
these -- we combine many of those requirements with the existing lower colorado river authority highland lakes ordinance into a new section of the rule, 82.211.
almost entirely the requirements in this new 82.211 are the same as our applicable to a development today.
since the person today has to comply with our interim water quality regs and the lcra existing requirements.
the interim rules of the county and the highland lake watershed ordinance of lcra currently have different standards.
some are more stringent than the others.
the new section would supersede the requirements in the interim rule in the watershed of Lake Travis and would apply throughout the unincorporated area of the Lake Travis watershed.
the exception, of course, being the e.t.j.
that we have with the city of Austin because that is under a separate city-county code where that applies.
in a few small areas where the interim rules do not apply, these would be e.t.j.'s of some of the communities out west.
this rule would extend those requirements into those areas, and there's -- in your backup material we listed a couple of the small things that would apply in these little areas.
the highland lake watershed ordinance already applies in those areas, so to some extent, judge, in answering your kind of question about confusion, this is kind of consolidating what we have in two different jurisdictions into one thing.
we have also made other amendments that are proposed as part of this rule making and these would apply throughout the county in unincorporated areas outside the e.t.j.'s.
these proposals include revising the submittal requirements for preliminary plans and final plats, an applicant for a single-family residential subdivision that proposes to use groundwater as a water supply would be required to submit additional information beyond what they might already to the county for review.
and this would substantiate for our review that there is an adequate water supply available.
in instances where a subdivision is proposed in a priority groundwater management area where there is not a water -- ground water conservation district, in other words, where there might be groundwater shortages possible, the requirements would allow and promote the use of rainwater harvesting as a method for securing an adequate supply of water.
we derived that particular protocol from the hays county code.
we also added a requirement for plat notes that would be part of a final plat review that we make that whereby the person who obtained ownership of that land would be given notice that groundwater is a supply and that at times -- I should say historically there has been a shortage of groundwater in these areas.
and it's a little bit of a consumer protection, buyer beware clause for full disclosure.
we propose the repeal of 82.210, and this is to clean up redundant requirements, since there are new provisions in chapter 82 that were passed in 2006 relating to conservation developments that are more specific than what we had in 2010.
so that was -- than we had in 210.
that was cleanup.
and then throughout chapter 64 and 82, we have made some other -- mostly nonsubstantive wording changes, and those are part of your -- your attachments 1 and 2 of your backup had a table that summarized these amendments.
we gave you a marked up version that showed the proposed amendments and we filed with your backup a clean version that showed how the code would appear after adoption.
and I know we just handed out to you even a cleaner version, I guess is what I'll call it.
we made certain additional nonsubstantive and grammatical wording changes to address comments that we received from the county attorney.
tnr supports these wording changes since they improve readability and further perfect the code wording.
the clerk has a copy of this new clean version as well as the order that would adopt these rules should you do so.
and then one final thing related to rule making, there was a map in your backup that we would like your permission to student a more explanatory map for one that's included in your backup.
it would more clearly show the area of the watershed where this rule making -- where this rule applies and it would be a little bit more transparent for the public who might try to look at -- at the applicability.
>> if you can help me out --
>> [ inaudible ].
i was trying to look for the effective dates of the rules.
i have not been able to isolate.
>> it would be effective whenever you want, but the order currently, as it's currently order worded, would make it effective when the court signs it.
>> so it would be today.
>> it would be today unless you all choose to select a different date.
>> okay.
that's what I was kind of concerned about.
i didn't see anything.
but you explained it and because if that is the case, then of course -- I just want the public to be aware of that.
>> Commissioners, one is what steps, if any, did we take to respond to comments we received from the home builders?
>> well, one of their comments was that we could cross-reference other sections of county code or we can cross-reference the highland lake ordinance without actually writing those requirements out in the rule.
we kind of split the difference.
we did go ahead and reference our other sections of county code, but we felt that the public should see the highland lake requirements in our code so it would all be in one place.
so in essence we were able to shorten the rule language of that Lake Travis section from about 10 pages to seven.
so we did quite a bit of cross referencing to address that concern.
they had a couple -- they gave us some good ideas in terms of how to better define a wetland using the corps of army engineer's definition.
we made changes like that.
so there were a few things like that.
there were some things that we did not address because they went beyond the scope of what we were trying to do in this rule making to look at requirements that were adopted in the interim regs that they think might ought to be reconsidered.
we think there's a better forum, more deliberative back and forth forum for us to discuss those bigger changes like that as to whether our buffers are too wide or other things.
>> annabelle la, Travis County tnr.
for some of the issues like buffer sizes, for a decision like that we would really want to engage more segments of the community instead of just one.
so there are some things that we know that we'll be continuing to talk about and bring back after we've had a more full discussion with the communities.
>> second part of a we say to revise groundwater availability requirements applicable to the subdivision proposals in unincorporated areas of Travis County.
so where do we think that means -- what do we think that means in layman's language to the Travis County resident who resides in unincorporated areas?
>> well, that is -- when you look at those requirements, it really requires either a professional engineer or a professional geo scientist to provide a demonstration of a lot of technical information to the county.
this is derived from state law that gives the county the authority to do this all over.
the state.
and if the -- so I guess in answer to your question, it's not really something that I think an individual homeowner would likely deal with.
it would be dealt with during the phase of development when you're developing a preliminary plan or a final plat.
>> the subdivision development by the developer.
>> correct.
if you're a single-family residential homeowner and you want to put a well in, it doesn't effect you in that kind of scenario.
>> okay.
>> inyou've done a great job on this.
i did have a question on clarity on one of the sentences on page 10 of 28, items d and e, and I had asked tnr if they could clarify the last sentence in each of those paragraphs which the sentence is saying, it starts with information on the available supply of groundwater.
i believe they have run this through tnr and also through legal, and I'd like to read -- I just felt like the sentence that was there might be interpreted by some to mean that there was water availability proof on record.
so -- and I don't believe that was the intent that we intended with that -- those paragraphs.
so the language that I would propose or that has been proposed to me and given to me right before court to substitute there would basically say water wells in this area have demonstrated historically that water may or may not be readily available at all times.
information on the availability and quality of groundwater is available at the Travis County clerk's office.
and that would be the statement.
>> in the version that julie handed out to you, we were able to insert that since early this morning.
>> sorry.
i looked and didn't see it.
>> Commissioner, it says -- the last sentence, says information on the available supply instead of information on the availability.
>> okay.
>> that's fine.
whatever legal says it right.
i just wanted to be sure we --
>> I'm sorry.
this is not numbered, but it is 82.204.
>> that's what we were handed today, right?
>> yes.
>> okay.
>> it's in italics in the middle of the stack.
>> I see it.
>> are you okay with that wording?
we can change it to availability if you would prefer?
it doesn't make a legal difference.
>> legally that's fine, then that's fine with me.
>> okay.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 2:10 PM
