On Monday night, I listened to the most informative neighborhood association meeting I’ve ever attended. Tammy Boren-King, a senior planner at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), was invited by the Hayhurst NA to bring it up-to-speed on last week’s Alpenrose Public Works Alternative Review (PWAR) decision. Boren-King is a member of the PWAR Committee, and the NA wanted to better understand what PWAR was all about.
As BikePortland reported last week, the city’s PWAR decision regarding frontages on the proposed 51-acre, 269-unit “Raleigh Crest” subdivision was quite positive. The city accepted (in concept) the developer’s proposal to build a multi-use path (MUP) and bio-swale along the frontage on the west side of SW Shattuck Rd. The MUP will narrow as it crosses a stream to intersect with Vermont, and then split along the short Vermont frontage into a more traditional sidewalk and bike lane. The PWAR decision also described its reasoning for using the Red Electric Trail on the north of the property as an east-west connection which runs at a relatively level grade and with little disturbance of a sensitive environmental area, as well as the potential road connecting the proposed subdivision to the west, into Beaverton.
Admittedly, this is pretty dry stuff. But I see it as an “as-it-unfolds-in-real-time” opportunity to tell a story that I have struggled with for my three-and-a half years writing for BikePortland. Namely, how to explain to a mainly east side audience, with its largely complete street grid, what is involved in trying to get a sidewalk or protected bike lane built in southwest Portland. It’s complicated, and frankly, I’m not going to try to make it seem less so. That it is difficult is my point.
You might not care. Maybe how government works isn’t your thing.
But maybe, just maybe, you are sick and tired of riding on disconnected bike routes. Why are bike facilities, particularly in southwest Portland, so piecemeal? Why can’t Portland just connect things?
PBOT’s Boren-King, in a forthright and expansive discussion, answered a lot of those questions, at least indirectly.
She began by explaining that the City of Portland is organized, “as a series of bureaus that are run independently … we are working on changing that, moving to a city manager form of government. But as a result, a lot of our codes operate kind of independently of one another.” One of the tasks of the Public Works review is to reconcile the code requirements of four different bureaus operating in the right-of-way — PBOT, Environmental Services, Water and Parks.
With questions about PWAR answered, neighbors turned to what is becoming the bigger issue for them: how to get an off-site sidewalk and bike path that continues from the Alpenrose frontage all the way to Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway (BHH) to the north. Shattuck Rd is one of the area’s few north-south connections to the commercial centers and bus routes on BHH, and it currently lacks a sidewalk all the way from BHH to Vermont.
Boren-King responded:
The policy of the City of Portland is that the streets are built at the expense of the abutting property owners. So the goal is that over time, as things redevelop, we will get a complete system. Of course, that doesn’t happen and we end up with capital projects. But for this large of a chunk of land — it feels like we can’t with a straight face say they don’t need to build a sidewalk, at all. So I feel like, I have to require a sidewalk, a multi-path to connect people especially from Illinois, which is a neighborhood greenway, along the frontage of Shattuck and up to the Red Electric Trail.
But this is our shot of getting a sidewalk for this property. Hopefully some day in the future there will be funding available to build the next segment and the next segment and the next segment. But I hear what you are saying, that this is another “sidewalk to nowhere.” I don’t have a perfect answer for you.
Hayhurst NA President Marita Ingalsbe then asked how to advocate for funding and prioritization for the rest of Shattuck Rd. “Is there any chance of the System Development Charges (SDCs) that the developer is going to be paying, [to] have those allotted to the rest of Shattuck? How would we go about that?”
Boren-King said she’s not an SDC expert but that funds from a specific development aren’t necessarily spent nearby. “It’s a priority [project funding] list based on the system-wide plan,” Boren-King explained.
This is just one snippet of an information-dense evening. I’ve been limiting my reporting to Shattuck Rd, but meeting attendees had questions about all the frontages, the crossings on Shattuck, traffic impacts on surrounding streets and more. Boren-King touched upon the legal limits of what a city can require a developer to build on public land and the city’s request for more information in the Traffic Impact Analysis.
That is a lot to understand for your average Portlander who just wants a safe space to commute by bike or on foot. One Hayhurst neighbor, Claudio Mello, captured the frustration of someone who doesn’t want to become an expert, but just wishes everything were more coordinated. Mello wanted to know why, given that the city wanted more people to take the bus, it wasn’t providing the neighborhood with a safe way to reach the bus stop on BHH. Indeed.
But there is good news too. All parties — the developer, the city and the neighborhood organizations — appear to listening to one another and working together. Boren-King, the city staffer, even praised the developer. Neighbors emphasized they were advocating for safe streets, and appeared sincerely interested in, and knowledgeable about, transportation. The developer has submitted early frontage plans which, in some instances, go beyond city requirements. So far, relations appear to be cooperative and free of the animosity that can often arise.
My take on the process, though, is that it eats the time of volunteers. Neighbors should not have to become mini-land use experts to get a sidewalk built. Couldn’t Marita Ingalsbe’s efforts be supported by a representative or three on a city council which is attentive to local issues? I noticed at least one District Four candidate, Bob Weinstein, on the zoom call, and that gives me hope that in the future neighborhood associations might not have to shoulder these issues alone.
The Friends of Alpenrose will be hosting a Community Conversation on June 24th which will be moderated by Metro Councilor Duncan Hwang and State Representative Dacia Grayber. My recommendation to the moderators is that they come prepared. This is a very knowledgeable group of neighbors.
[Correction, 6/13/2024: An earlier version of this story misidentified Tammy Boren-King as the Chairperson on the PWAR committee. That is incorrect. Boren-King is a member of the committee. We apologize for the error.]
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/lid-projects/what-local-improvement-district-lid
Sure, but global warming isn’t stopping on the west side of the river. Oh, and I drive my car into your neighborhood because TriMet hasn’t provided me with another way to get around.
It’s also important to point out that with this development eyeing improvements above what is required (likely an extended shoulder) a LID or city funded capital project would be under no obligation to continue the frontage in line with what is put in place by Alpenrose.
The city’s process is horribly confusing and opaque with a history of ignoring seemingly common sense adjustments (see my article about smaller developments on nearby SW Hamilton). Also note that for a similar type of street there was no requirement for sidewalks, bike lanes, or a multi-use path.
I’m glad to see attention being drawn to this project as it’s doing exactly the things we’re incentivizing which should be unsurprising when compared to projects around the city and particularly in SW. It’s also not necessarily a good thing (subdivisions aren’t going to be affordable, nor will there be any meaningful destinations, and the city will end up burdened by more infrastructure that will cost more to maintain than the resulting taxes will bring in).
I’m not following you in the first paragraph. The city has accepted the proposed “Raleigh Crest” developer’s plan to build a MUP the full length of their Shattuck frontage. I’m not understanding you with the “extended shoulder.” Did you read the quote from Boren-King?
(The way PWAR works is that the city asks the developer to submit an alternate proposal. The city then accepts it or not.)
The neighbors seem to be asking that the city extend the Alpenrose MUP all the way up to BHH, and to fund the project with the money the city will collect from the development’s System Development Charges.
You bring up LIDs, a LID is not an appropriate mechanism for building a network. (Neither is relying on piecemeal frontage improvements from private developers.)
Yes, the quote indicated that was only needed up until the Red Electric Trail. However the city, or property owners on Shattuck if they are asked to pay for improvements (see LID comment below though I don’t know how many properties it would apply to), could try to claim that even though an extended shoulder is incongruent with what exists elsewhere on Shattuck there isn’t enough money available to build something better without waiting decades a la (0.9 miles of) Capitol Hwy. Also the precedent on other similar roads could be used to support this (poor) assertion as it does represent a more costly proposition both in terms of dollars and space.
I recall several years ago hearing from someone and seeing on a map that ~50% of properties in SW, or at least in a few neighborhoods, have a waiver of remonstrance. This means that the developer basically issued an IOU to the city for frontage improvements at some future date to be paid for by the owner at that time. Based on how this would impact a project’s budget it could very well be an important component to getting the city to provide the types of infrastructure that’s needed throughout the area, not just on Shattuck.
This is more a vestige of this area being developed prior to annexation into the City of Portland. Though I do agree that LIDs and private developer improvements one lot at a time should not be considered appropriate mechanisms for building a contiguous network.
My biggest sticking points with this development is that there should be more density and as part of that it should have commercial space to provide actual destinations. 51 acres inside the City of Portland is a massive amount of space and when we overlay the Housing and Climate Emergencies that people claim are important onto this development we have clearly failed if the best we can provide is housing for ~1000 people, a small park, and infrastructure that provides poor connections and will lead to more people on the roads because there isn’t an easy alternative.
Hi David,
I love getting into the weeds with this stuff. Private developers can pretty much do what they want with their property, as long as it meets code. I don’t see that the city or the neighbors have any legal leverage to effect what happens on-site. I’m not saying that is right or wrong, but it is how our laws are set up. And although the City of Portland loves to produce reports on 15-minute cities and other aspirations, they are just that — aspirational. None of it is binding. The late Nick Fish used to ask city staff presenting these reports to council if “anything was binding.” If not, he’d go ahead and vote for it. I remember at one hearing he criticized the PedPDX Plan because he though it was “misleading” to the public about, realistically, what sidewalks could be built.
David Hampsten found an old “waiver of remonstrance” map which BP published. I’m not going to look for it now, but IIRC, most of the waivers were further south, in the low elevations closer to Ash Creek.
Legally, as set forth in the Nollan/Dolan rulings, a jurisdiction is limited as to what they can require private owners to build on public land. My metaphor for this is that you can make a developer frost a cake (build a sidewalk) but you can’t require them make the cake for you (put in the infrastructure a sidewalk requires). SW doesn’t have a formal stormwater system, we are not connected to the Big Pipe. (What did the Big Pipe cost? over a billion? And we all pay for it in our water bills, although SW doesn’t use the system.) I think the solution for SW is the treatment ponds that were built to support Capital Highway–we need to select 5-7 collectors and go after state or fed money to fund building treatment ponds for them so that they can have sidewalks.
As I mentioned in the last post about Alpenrose, my position is that the city is setting the developer up to fail; some pipe is in the wrong place and can’t be covered or moved, some sewer can’t handle the runoff, some sight distance isn’t up tp AASHTO snuff. “Dang.” they’ll say – “and you tried so hard!”
The SDC charges are also a sham; as they are treated as a giant slush fund, SW historically got money siphoned out and never returned (though that might have improved in recent years); the fault lay in prioritising projects based on equity scores as opposed to safety – for the record, I think it should be both: safety first, and then prioritize those unsafe equity sites over others, as opposed to pretending others don’t exist. Even before equity was a focus, this was an issue; the 1990s studies in which SW was promised growth, THEN infrastructure, were widely rejected as naive at best. If connections are not built past this frontage now, it will be decades if they are made, if at all, even if SDC funds remain high (not a given). I wonder, if Rose City Golf Course was to be redelevoped, would the city claim there was nothing to be done, or would they work to ensure safe access to 82nd, even off the lot line? I bet they’d find money somewhere.
Let’s help them out: there should be state and federal monies which could be leveraged to assist here, so I suggest the city start making calls instead of talking about why things are difficult; in fact, this has been a known issue long enough that it is a crime that no-one in city hall apparently thought to put in funding requests to the recent infrastructure bills.
Short of a golf course or LLoyd Center being plowed under, this is the biggest housing project Portland will likely see in decades; if the city bureaus and staff remain paralyzed and unable to see beyond their desktops, leaving the region with snarled traffic, unsafe pedestrians, and no connections to mass transit, they shoud be fired and/or sued. It’s difficult, not impossible. Some bureaus might have to get a bit out of their comfort zone, lawyers told to chill out, but it can be done.
If property owners wanted a sidewalk couldn’t they fund it via a LID? Seems like people frequently want “someone else” to pay for improvements in their own neighborhood. They want it, but only if it doesn’t cost them anything. Don’t get me wrong I like free stuff too but if you really value something you should be willing to pay for it.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/lid-projects
It’s not a matter of small, local streets, or neighborhood streets. It is all the major collectors in SW Portland. We don’t have a storm-water system. Should east Portland property owners have to pay for the projects making their streets safer? Of course not. We all pay for those projects.
Should SW Portlanders have to pay for the regional infrastructure improvements required to make walking and cycling safe? Well?
There have been plenty of safety projects in SW Portland, including the BHH upgrades, the hugely expensive rebuild of Capital Hwy. I don’t think SW is getting the short stick here, it just has a massive problem of poor development choices when these neighborhoods were built. Given the income disparity in the city, and the pedestrian fatality statistics, I don’t blame PBOT for focusing on lower hanging fruit in the areas where more people are dying.
This is untrue. SW has gotten some (very good) Greenways, but look at SWIM: lots of Band-aids like ‘shared streets’ and paved shoulders with a stripe of paint. Read the comments in the 2023 survey; the bulk complain that PBOT has failed to materially address ped safety and is not addressing unsafe areas outside of Hillsdale much at all. When given a chance to improve a major corridor to the state’s largest employer, they REFUSED to allow the work. Capitol Highway was a multi-disciplinary effort to address growth, earthquake resiliency, and reginal flooding that was an issue for 100 years – sidewalks were just along for the ride.
Yes, other areas have greater fatality numbers due to density, state highways, and lack of penalties for bad driving on stroads. Not to mention racism! Much of the issue is due to ODOT, and ODOT has finally tossed the bag of poo to PBOT rather than fixing things out of THEIR pocket (yes, they toss in some cash). All this remediation is expenxive when compared to prevention pf these issues, which is what we’re talking about in SW. You do understand a large portion of development in SW either is or contains equity housing solutions? That many denser areas of SW with unsafe ped/bike have higher minority or financially-distressed populations? We need to fix existing problems of institutional racism on east side, full stop, but your attitude leads to creating NEW ones elsewhere in town, and gives cover to officials passing the buck to the next generation.
I remain interested in the legal knot we’ve tied ourselves into. On one hand, it’s good that the EPA requires sidewalk runoff to be drained away from streams; on the other, clearly if we are going to allow dense development, we should require sidewalks.
I was trying to think of how we could untie the knot, and I thought of boardwalks.
Many trails in wild places have small sections of boardwalk that travel over wetlands or other wet areas. The Bluff Trail at Oaks Bottom has several sections of boardwalk.
The boards are gapped, to prevent rainwater from pooling on the boards; that gap would also allow the rainwater to infiltrate the soil directly, and thus avoid creating “runoff” pollution.
No curb would be needed, as the boardwalk could be raised above street level on joists, with posts at 8’ on center, or what have you.
If the boardwalk is built with steel joists and posts, it could have a very long service life.
This might be more expensive than a concrete sidewalk with a curb… but not if one were to also have to pay for stormwater mitigation.
It’d be unique, but maybe it would effectively sidestep the legal constraints.
Charley, I like the idea of boardwalks too. I think BES used to have a program (“ditch-to-bioswale” or something) of covering the drainage ditches on the side of the road so they could be walked on. It seems like what would be necessary on narrow streets like Dosch. And the Southwest in Motion Plan (SWIM) recommended re-initiating a boardwalk program like what you are describing.
I’m glad to hear someone thought of it!
The engineering and planning of such an effort would be way over my head, but I used to be a deck builder for a living. It’s not hard to imagine boardwalks looking good and working well.
Even gravel paths would be an improvement on some streets.
For that matter, does the paved bike path in Tryon State Park have stormwater runoff treatment? Was it built before the EPA adopted the relevant standards?
And, as I think you’ve pointed out, even a paved shoulder wouldn’t be so bad *if* the walking side was protected by a barrier of some kind (jersey barrier, metal crash barrier).
It just seems like, even if a normal looking curb is impossible, there’s got to be *some* decent way to improve pedestrian access.
Lisa just a thank you for all the work you do. This is dense stuff that can be in the weed, but important for all Portland to understand how decisions and infrastructure is built.
Keep up the great a work!
“The policy of the City of Portland is that the streets are built at the expense of the abutting property owners. So the goal is that over time, as things redevelop, we will get a complete system.”
Except the Administrative Rules introduced by Portland Bureau of Transportation do not require redevelopments to complete the system. Boren-King’s statement is misleading at best or misinformed at worst. Abutting property developments on residential local service streets may pay the less costly Local Transportation Infrastructure Charge instead of developing the right-of-way and providing sidewalks.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/permitting/ltic
TRN-1.26 – Local Transportation Infrastructure Charge
“Under PCC 17.88.090 B, the LTIC will only apply to properties (within a single-family residential zone … up to 6 units) with frontage on unimproved (motor vehicle) local streets.”
The average life cycle of residential housing is 70 to 100 years. If there isn’t a curb already installed, developers are incentivized to pay the LTIC and the clock resets when the abutting property owner will be required to build the street.
This property in 2020 exemplifies how the streets will not be built at the expense of abutting property owners over time despite being within a short walk to the MAX line on Burnside:
https://www.portlandmaps.com/detail/property/32-SE-139TH-AVE/R109507_did/
At the current rate of sidewalk infill, the City will have completed the network across all neighborhoods in just over 200 years. This is not what was promised to East Portland and Southwest Portland when we were annexed in the 1980s.
LTIC wouldn’t apply here, but is a good escape clause for developers of smaller lots. And a trap for SFR builders! A large house on SW Patton was forced to put in hundreds of feet of sidewalk – it was still cheaper than paying the LTIC in their case – but the joke ws that PBOT insisted they put the sidewalk on the tiny side street, NOT on busy and dangerous Patton! Did make them put a handicap ramp in, which was – chef’s kiss –
Also note ‘policy’ can change and CAN BE changed: there are a number of streets throughout Portland that CoP put in; there’s one by Lisa’s house. Not to mention that anecdotally PBOT staff have made various comments in recent years about not doing the ‘sidewalk to nowhere’ in SW any more. Even on projects that required enough new paving to generate a new sewer line, they refused a sidewalk and merely called for a paved shoulder.
I do not think every single street needs a sidewalk, but I am a firm believer that every single street needs a SAFE way to walk it. A paved shoulder might work on my street, but SW Dosch???? Idiocy.
Thank you, footwalker. Down the rabbit hole we go!
One thing that saves me from spending too much time with LTIC is that it doesn’t apply to streets which are designated “Collectors,” only local streets. (Shattuck is a collector.)
Also, the Raleigh Crest development falls under the “Land Use” path through city code, which differs significantly from a lot on a local residential street. The Alpenrose site has had zoning changes, it is a “Planned Development,” it has “Environmental Zones.” All stuff I wish I knew less about.
Amusingly, the Portland Reddit thread on this project is disappointed at the density, with one person insisting it should have “Parisian densities” and cram 8000 people there.
A dollar says they’ve never set foot west of 405 in their lives.
The policy of the City of Portland is that the streets are built at the expense of the abutting property owners.
If it is actually “policy” then it must be written down somewhere. What is the policy number? AR – something something? If they can’t produce a written policy that went through due process then it isn’t “policy”, it’s some random schmuck who happens to work for the city’s druthers.
There is a lot of code about this stuff, I happen to already have a screenshot of the sidewalk ordinance. But yeah, developers have to build the streets for their projects (like all the ones which the developer is building which are internal to the Raleigh Hills project. 269 houses require some new roads.).
Thank you.
So according to this “17.28.030 Notice for Construction of Sidewalks and Curbs.” the City Engineer has the discretion to decide a sidewalk is required where no sidewalk exists and can order the adjoining property owners to build them:(Amended by Ordinances 182760, 184957 and 189413, effective March 6, 2019.)
And according to this 17.28.040 Construction Alternatives. if three or more property owners are noticed by the Dir PBT they can petition for the city to do it as a local improvement.
So certainly still doable if the PBOT Dir (Millicent Williams) can be persuaded sidewalks are required. By the way, according to the this her only discretion is whether or not a sidewalk is required, no other consideration gets to factor in. Yes it is needed or No it is not.
All this still seems totally doable with sufficient pressure applied to Millicent Williams.
You can’t put a sidewalk in without a place for the stormwater flow created by a curb to exit the roadway. (Like a drain, with a pipe under the road, connected to something, like another pipe under the road. It’s called a stormwater system. SW doesn’t have one.) US jurisprudence limits how much you can make a private landowner pay for improvements to their frontage. Stormwater systems are expensive.
Of course you can build a sidewalk without massive stormwater infrastructure, unless there is some other law I’m not seeing. Cities and towns have been doing it for centuries, nothing about this is unique. You can also do half measures like permeable pavement to lessen the impact. I see nothing objectively preventing the PBOT Dir Millicent Williams simply directing three or more property owners to build sidewalks, they petition for it to be made as local improvement, she approves and bing bang boom – sidewalks. Paying for it is going to be a different matter but ability to pay has no bearing on the authority to do.
Oh sweet child …
Is there something in particular that legally or physically prevents building sidewalks with minimal or even no stormwater infrastructure? It appears to be a choice, a choice made at the expense of safety and quite possibly counter to the wishes of the citizens. So find who can make a different choice ( Millicent Williams) and pressure her to do so.
Is there a specific law I’m missing?
It looks like it comes down to another choice, this time by the City Engineer on whether his/her definition of “sidewalk” includes and mandates connection to storm water infrastructure.
” The City Engineer shall maintain general construction and maintenance specifications for sidewalks, curbs, driveways and/or parking strips”
Sorry for the above “sweet child” comment. I get that way late on a Sunday night.
The answer to your question is that stormwater runoff is regulated by the EPA and locally, that policy is spelled out in the Portland Stormwater Management Manual.
I talk about it more simply in this post:
https://bikeportland.org/2021/06/14/sw-capitol-highway-project-breaks-ground-today-333696
Those aren’t laws of man or physics preventing installation of sidewalks. It’s a choice. You can tell by the extensive use of mushy words that aren’t directive like “inspire” and “inform” instead of “shall”. For some reason city employees are choosing not to install sidewalks, with sufficient pressure and supervision they (Millicent Williams) can be pressured to change their choice or leave.
Check the MS4 permit map at BES MS4 Map (portlandmaps.com)
Plenty of stormwater management end to end of Shattuck; at least 14x stormwater outfalls, numerous monitored ditches and several monitored dewatering tunnels, etc. It’s just not the gold plated diamond coated solution.
It’s a choice. Our city employees need to be ordered or pressured to choose otherwise.
Thank you for the link, Patrick, I didn’t know that MS4 map existed.
A PBOT manager once told the SWNI Transportation Committee words to the effect that new EPA rules on stormwater handling and lack of capacity in the sewer sytem meant SW was only ever getting Capitol Highway sidewalks, and that was it for the next 20 years. Period.
BES and PBOT have made (or been directed to make) the decision that the sewers in SW will just about handle all the poop and driveway runoff new housing will generate, but NOT the teeny extra runoff from any associated infrastructures – like sidewalks.
So Patrick is sorta right: a choice was made, and the choice was to allow as much development as possible without new sewers, rather than as much development as sewers could handle WITH sidewalks. The excuse was the housing emergency and equity (as well as being averse to asking for another sewer bond!), but the result is a gift to developers and mortal danger to anyone not in a car.
It isn’t the city employees you need to pressure – though a few should be removed…
I don’t entirely agree. The recent developments I’ve seen treat stormwater run-off from their impermeable surfaces on-site. The Raleigh Crest plans show two large treatment ponds.
The city can require developers to build treatment ponds to service the run-off from their private property. Depending on proportionality, the city can’t necessarily require treatment for stormwater runoff coming from a public facility, like a sidewalk.
But that is not the question here. The question is how to get bike/ped facilities to the north of Alpenrose. How to pay for that.
Calling in waivers of remonstrance seems like political death for an elected. And as a matter of basic fairness, these drain-to-streams folks have been paying into the Big Pipe bond for 20 years.
Except when they do. And it’s almost always an SFR that gets the hit, as opposed to a large develoment. The big house on Patton did work the owners estimated at 10 – 15% of total project cost. And put the sidewalk on the wrong side!
And yes, someone at PBOT has decided or is following directions to not allow sidewalks; one house on Broadway had abutted a ‘sidewalk to nowhere,’ a public stairs, AND was a route to a school bus stop, and PBOT let them get away with a barely improved shoulder… which they park on. Another had enough paved shoulder they had to put in a new sewer inlet for it – THAT shoulder most certainly should have been a sidewalk, as the usual excuse of ‘can’t make them direct runoff to sewers’ was moot.
Big arrow is an existing sidewalk, left is another public stair, right arrow is a different stair and a major Marquam Gulch park entrance.
So the question is not just how to fund it, but halso ow to get bureaus to agree the effort should be made.
It appears the idea that any Shattuck sidewalk would require some massive stormwater is based on a lot of assumptions and “I heard a guy say once…”. With sufficient pressure on Millicent Williams it seems achievable.
Federal regulations require the treatment of imprmeable-surface runoff if that surface area is greater than 500 sq ft, not Ms. Williams. In the type of ground we have in SW, that means either some sort of retention system to settle out the particulates, or putting it in a sewer. There may be other options, but this city spends far more time telling you why they CAN’T do something than thinking about what they can. They’ve winnowed the options down to these, essentially. Makes it easier for them.
At any rate, since Nollan/Dolan, the city attorneys have run around shrieking ‘don’t get us sued!’ and avoiding frontage proportionality ‘takings’ cases at all costs. A consequence of their not developing a reasonable, consistent and defensible metric to apply to projects – like other places did.
No, that doesn’t appear to be correct. See Summary of State Stormwater Standards (epa.gov)
Try this
https://www.portland.gov/bes/stormwater/swmm-and-right-way-projects/determine-requirements
and this
17.38.040 Stormwater and Water Quality Management Required.
and this
Right. NOT Federal regulation.