By PAT NEWMAN
pnewman@thecitizennews.com

Changes to Fayette County's parking regulations will take considerable research and coordination with developers, engineers and stormwater runoff specialists, according to the Fayette County Planning Commission.

“We're still in the information-gathering stage,” zoning director Kathy Zeitler told the commission Thursday night.

“We've made some good contacts in Atlanta, Chattanooga and Fort Lauderdale,” she added, naming cities that have made progress in reducing parking-lot-generated pollution from stormwater runoff.

The commissioners agreed that they were a long way from making amendments to the county's current parking regulations, and would need to “go through a learning process” before making any recommendations.

At the request of the Fayette County Board of Commissioners, the planning body is looking into ways to cut down on stormwater runoff through various options. One way is to have 25 percent of parking lots be paved with a “pervious” material, a substance that would allow water to drain through it. Another is to set a maximum number of parking spaces allowed.

The county has until 2003 to come up with viable options to reduce pollutant-filled runoff. The Atlanta Regional Commission is currently working on a design manual for counties and municipalities to deal with the issue.

A representative from Georgia Concrete and Products Association Inc. brought a sample of one of numerous porous paving materials that are available. Zeitler compared the sample to a gray rice cake in appearance. This type was intended for parking lots and residential driveways, not for high traffic areas.

An article that appeared in Greenprints `99, a trade journal, states that “Stormwater runoff in urban areas poses significant environmental threats. Water coursing across paved surfaces picks up a toxic soup of pollutants, erodes the landscape, creates turbidity problems that threaten stream bed ecology and fails to recharge underground aquifers...”

Controlling the amount of stormwater runoff is not the only way municipalities are dealing with the ever-growing problem. Managing the water quality of the runoff is another consideration. Porous pavements is one method of doing so, according to Dr. Tom Debo of Georgia Institute of Technology.