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.

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.

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