CIB report balsts proposed buffers

DNREC attempts to appease all parties

By Jonathan Starkey
Staff Reporter

A Center for the Inland Bays report released last week blasted the effectiveness of the proposed buffer regulation within the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s most recent draft of its Pollution Control Strategy.

After receiving pressure from a group of property-rights advocates downstate known collectively as The Coalition, DNREC officials reduced the width and application of required buffers on developed lands from its spring 2005 PCS version.

“It is apparent that the revisions to the PCS have rendered the proposed buffers system poorly effective at its intended task,” the CIB report reads. The Center’s report was prepared following a subcommittee discussion regarding the PCS on Sept. 15 and an analysis performed by Chris Bason, CIB science and technical coordinator and wetlands project leader, available on the Center’s Web site at www.inlandbays.org.

DNREC’s strategy would eliminate direct sources of pollution and regulate septic systems and buffers along the inland watershed to reduce the amount of nutrients entering the bays daily by up to 85 percent.

The proposed buffer regulation in the spring 2005 version of the PCS would have protected perennial and intermittent streams and ditches, tidal and non-tidal wetlands and ponds on developed lands with a 100-foot buffer.

After meeting with The Coalition, officials reduced the buffer’s application and its width to 50 feet, citing potentially serious economic impacts on area property owners. Under the newest proposed strategy, released this August, the buffer would only protect perennial streams and ditches, tidal wetlands and ponds. Requirements for building the buffer are also less stringent with the current proposal.

Bason compared the buffers’ effectiveness in his analysis on Hopkins Prong and Dirickson Creek, two waterways picked arbitrarily according to the report. The proposed buffer regulation in the 2006 version would eliminate 99 percent less nitrogen annually than the 2005 version in Hopkins Prong and 97.7 percent less nitrogen in Dirickson Creek, Bason reported. The numbers for phosphorous load reductions are almost identical.

Kathy Bunting-Howarth, DNREC’s principal planner, said this week that while the CIB report was the most detailed, she has received similar complaints from other environmentalists and environmental organizations.

Bunting-Howarth said that department officials plan to make modifications to the current proposal but she would not comment on the possibility of tweaking the proposed buffer regulation.

“We’ll consider their comments as we balance all the comments we get in at this point in time,” Bunting-Howarth said of the CIB report. “Most of the comments are generally positive with some concerns regarding some pieces. I haven’t looked through them all. It seems at this point people are concerned about the buffers.”

Bunting-Howarth said that DNREC will likely have to push the originally-anticipated late-November public hearing back until at least the beginning of January. DNREC still hopes to have a strategy approved in early 2007, she added, despite pending modifications and an array of contradicting opinions regarding the buffer proposal.

Although Bunting-Howarth said that no one from The Coalition has made further comments, County Councilman and property-rights advocate Vance Phillips (R–5th) argued last week that the buffer proposal covered too much land.

DNREC hopes to achieve a balance and appease both sides of the argument before reaching next year’s public hearing.

“We’re reviewing comments,” Bunting-Howarth said.