Defenders Input on MCC Baseball Stadium

Barbara Day, President of the McHenry County Defenders Board of Directors, read the following letter to the Crystal Lake Planning and Zoning Commission last Wednesday night, (I have split up some paragraphs to make it easier to read on a computer screen.)

Two main arguments are advanced:

  • The precedent it would set for other property in the watershed
  • The lack of attention to improving the quality of MCC’s stormwater runoff.

Here’s the letter:

We are writing to you to urge you to closely question the petitioner, and the City’s stromwater consultant, regarding details of the design for the proposed McHenry County College HWAC development, currently under your commission’s review for a zoning variance.

It is clear that your decision on this request for an increase in impervious cover, from the currently allowed 20% to 50%, will set a precedent for the nature of future development of hundreds if not thousands of additional acres within the watershed.

We feel it is imperative that if this development is allowed to go forward at all, that it be held to both holistic conservation design practices and the highest possible stormwater management standards, so that any additional development within the watershed can also be required to be designed in a manner that will insure that the quality and quantity of groundwater supplying Crystal Lake will not be compromised.

After reviewing the petitioner’s proposal that has gone to your commission, hearing the comments of Hey and Associates on August 1, and reviewing additional materials submitted by the college to the city on August 11, we feel that the HWAC stormwater management designs presented to-date, can and should be significantly improved with regard to effective water quality treatment prior to infiltration.

The stormwater design presented to date appears to be based mainly on achieving compliance with the provisions of City and County stormwater ordinances regarding detention of adequate quantity, and the issue of water quality appears to be, at most, an afterthought.

Given the sensitive nature of the watershed, we feel that the leading consideration in the design of any stormwater management plan for this area must be protecting the quality of water to be infiltrated and recharged.

The present plan design does not comply with the run-off reduction hierarchy in the existing City and County stormwater ordinances, and it is lacking in most of the strategies for water quality treatment and improvement contained in the 2007 draft of the Crystal Lake Watershed Stormwater Management Design Manual, being prepared by Hey and Associates.

The hierarchy ranks minimization of impervious surfaces (which can be achieved through thoughtful conservation design including building up not out, reduced parking lot size, reduced road widths, parking garages and expansive use of natural landscaping over turf grass) and ‘treatment of water where it falls’ (which would include parking lots which drain to internal bioswales and extensive use of rain gardens, curb cuts, level spreaders, filter strips and landscape islands throughout the campus) as preferred practices over the downstream treatment practices found in the MCC plan.

Because the MCC plan does not follow basic conservation design principles which would help satisfy the preferred runoff reduction hierarchy step to reduce impervious surfaces, we do not believe the college has done all that it could to meet Crystal Lake’s requirements to limit the amount of imperviousness in the watershed feeding the lake.

The commission should require the college to address this issue and not grant the requested variance passed on the college’s current plans.

As you are aware, the Crystal Lake Watershed Stormwater Management Design Manual is still in draft form and has not been formally adopted by the city. We also request that the commission not make any decisions on the MCC petition before the manual has been finalized and adopted.

Lastly, unless the petitioner produces a detailed plan for stormwater quality improvement that is truly state of the art, we feel that you should deny the request for variance. The latest plan from the college does not do that.

It relies on a mere 2.28 acres of pre-treatment basins, 2.93 acres of infiltration basins and perimeter swales without any prior treatment for the whole HWAC development. It lists a couple of additional best management practices to be employed but does not provide specific information on how those practices will be implemented.

Given the precedence that the MCC campus design will set for future development in the Crystal Lake watershed, we urge you to not allow this project to move forward until the college has demonstrated that conservation design practices and the highest possible stormwater management standards have been employed.

Very truly yours,

Barbara J. Day


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