By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

County regulations define a minimum number of parking spaces each business must have, but that flies in the face of other regulations that limit how much impervious surface — pavement — the business can have, say county commissioners.

It's part of a difficult and potentially expensive problem the county faces as new state and federal laws focus more and more on keeping storm water runoff from flooding and polluting area streams and lakes, and on making sure rainwater can work its way through the soil and replenish the water table.

“We're creating a problem we're going to have to fix years down the road when it comes to storm water runoff,” said Commissioner Greg Dunn as commissioners discussed the county's development regulations last week.

Commissioners approved changes to the regulations, which govern things like the thickness of street pavement and the types of materials that can be used in developments. The Engineering Department and the county Planning Commission have been working on the changes for about a year with an eye to tightening restrictions and requiring higher quality.

But Commissioner Glen Gosa said he wants the department to look into changes to parking lot requirements to allow porous types of paving.

“I'd like something where a certain number of those parking spaces can be filled with gravel or some type of pervious surface,” said Gosa.

“My concern is that we have parking regulations that say you have to have X number of parking spots because that's what the regulations call for,” he said.

State and federal regulators have been warning local governments for years that eventually they're going to be required to capture and treat storm water runoff, a problem that increases as the amount of pavement in the county grows.