I just today attended a Committee of the Whole meeting about the Reconveyance (of Land Inside the Lake Whatcom Watershed) held by members of the County Council.
And Councilor Kershner expressed concern near the end of the committee meeting about the ability of a low impact park trail system to meet the Department of Ecology's need for zero phosphorus runnoff standards... you know, because Ms. Kershner is all about protecting the watershed... and has the utmost concern about what the Department of Ecology thinks.
(I will keep that in mind when I see how she votes on allowing additional development in the watershed later tonight... but more on that another time...)
So, I went home and did some basic arithmetic.
My understanding is that Ecology recommends that no more than 10% of a parcel of land be impervious surface in order for that parcel to function as zero phosphorus runoff (the assumption being that the rest of the land would be kept in a state of "natural forested condition".)
So, lets assume that the Reconveyance will be kept in a state of "natural forested condition". (It's my game, so I make the rules. See how that works? Easy peasy.)
Now, an acre of land is about 43,560 square feet.
10% of that is 4,356 square feet. So that is the maximum amount of impervious surface that might be allowed for trails in an acre of Reconveyed land.
The Reconveyance is about 8,700 acres... that's... 378,972,000....
lets call it 375 million square feet.
Ten percent of that is 37.5 million square feet.
So, it would be possible to build about 37.5 million square feet of impervious trail in Reconveyed land without risking some sort of irreconcilable conflict with Ecology.
Lets also assume that all paths and trails in the reconveyance will be 10 feet wide and be impervious surface. (They won't be that wide, and not all of them will be impervious surface... but I'm going for a wide margin of error here... also it makes the math way easier...)
That's 3.75 million feet of 10-foot wide impervious trail.
And since there are 5,280 feet in a mile...
3,750,000 / 5,280 = just over 710
So, the County could build 710 miles of impervious ten-foot wide trails and paths in the Reconveyed land without exceeding the 10% impervious surface threshold described by Ecology.
The most ambitious park plans on record (all of which were drafted before the Great Recession) calls for no where near 710 miles of trails. Not even half of that.
The most ambitous trail system I saw documented in the committee meeting today was well under 200 miles of trails... (actually it was somewhere in the mid 100s... and again, none of those trails were going to be 10 feet wide... but again... math...)
So, let's assume that the Reconveyed land will call for 200 miles of park trails and paths altogether that will all be 10 feet wide and be entirely impervious... (even though they will be much narrower than that and not entirely impervious...)
That's... about 10,560,000 square feet of trail... so I will round that down to an even ten million square feet. (again... easier math...)
So, my back of (an admittedly large) napkin reckoning suggests that any park plan for the Reconveyance will account for roughly...
10,000,000 / 375,000,000 = .0266666666666667
About 2 and 2/3 percent of the area of the Reconveyed land. In the worst case scenario... it appears that over 97% of the Reconveyed land will be pervious and naturally forested land.
I'm sure that Ecology could be persuaded to somehow sign off on that.
So, don't worry Council... the park will still be able to function as natural forest, even with all of those trails in it.
You need to come up with other reasons why you won't do this.
No comments:
Post a Comment