Title
Highland Lake Watershed Moratorium, Water Quality Amendments.
Body
The Council will hear a series of suggestions for amendments in various ordinances relating to water quality protection in the Highland Lake watershed from the planning director and town engineer, and which may allow the Council to lift the current moratorium on certain development activities in the watershed. The suggestions for areas of amendment include:
In the Shoreland Zoning Ordinance:
* Requiring new subsurface wastewater systems to meet higher design flows. Current requirements for single family homes are 90 gallons per day, but the Portland Water District requires designs for 120gpd for systems within 200 feet of Sebago, which could be a model here.
* Requiring new subsurface wastewater systems to provide some level of advanced treatment or pre-treatment. It may also be possible to require certain older systems to be replaced with new systems by some point in the future.
In the Surface Water Protection Ordinance:
* Require two methods of erosion control (silt fence, bark mulch or hay etc.) when soil and erosion permits are issued.
* For single family homes, implement a "point system" for various stormwater control measures to ensure higher levels of treatment than currently. An advantage to this approach is potentially saving the need for every project in the watershed to be engineered for stormwater/phosphorous control.
In the Land Use Ordinance:
* Require all local subdivision/site plan projects to meet the DEP phosphorous standard, rather than giving project designers the option of meeting the phosphorous standard or the general standard (treatment for 95% impervious, 80% total developed areas).
* Require all local subdivision/site plan projects to design to the DEP phosphorous TMDL requirements even if the DEP regulations allow applicants to pay a fee in lieu of meeting the standard.
* Require new private roads in the watershed to be designed to treat stormwater, not j...
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