Office of Zoning Roundtable

July 12, 2007

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to come and present my thoughts tonight. My name is Rachel Thompson and I represent ANC 3D 04 in the Kent and Palisades area. I want to focus my comments tonight on two areas of concern: First is the lack of limits on impervious surface coverage in residential zoning. And second is a complete absence of inter-agency coordination around zoning and building application review, public space and environmental preservation, and inspection and enforcement.

The acceleration of residential development – both new construction and additions – has had many effects on residents and the environment of ANC 3D, but with no limit on the percentage of a lot that can be built or paved, and little or no oversight regarding the environmental impacts of infill or matter-of-right subdivisions,, one of the most pronounced has been to reduce the available earth area capable of absorbing stormwater.

There are more paved driveways and impervious surfaces such as decks, porches, patios and swimming pools. Bigger houses and other accessory structures mean more roof area, along with more run off and at greater velocity. In addition, trees are often removed or heavily damaged in the course of construction, and the greater use of retaining walls to turn naturally-sloped areas into usable surfaces frequently results in additional erosion and loss of trees.

Theoretical lot subdivisions also result in loss of trees and increased pavement through new private roads, along with a relatively greater ratio of built to unbuilt areas.

What do these changes add up to?

·         Collectively we are inflicting unsustainable levels of day-to-day stress on our natural environment, not to mention its ability to recover from more extreme weather events. In this regard I want to draw your attention to an article in the Palisades edition of yesterday’s Northwest Current, “District officials pledge fix to Palisades flooding woes.” The story reports on a meeting last week between the city administrator, top officials of DCRA, DCWASA and DDOT, and Palisades residents to step up efforts to find a solution for decades of routine basement flooding that in 2001 shifted into catastrophic flooding. One of the warning signs I think we heard from WASA is that increasingly the fix to one problem is becoming the source of another.

·         More and more neighbors are coming into conflict with one another as one resident’s or developer’s ambitious construction causes his neighbor’s yard to flood or her trees to die. In plenty of cases these conflicts also have an element of illegal construction, which regrettably is rarely corrected. But in most cases the builder is simply taking maximum advantage of their right to develop the lot or lots for buyers demanding more and more suburban-style amenities.

·         The same damage –short-term and long-term – threatens federal park areas as homeowners again seek to put to use every square foot of their property.

·         These changes, and this damage if you will, is aesthetic as well as environmental. Both elements, in my observations, contribute to people’s growing anxiety about “loss of open space.” This “open space” is both disappearing within public areas, but our policies are also allowing it to evaporate from the private realm.

Not only do the zoning regulations not address impervious surface coverage, but the agencies that oversee related elements or activities such as tree removal, use of public space, environmental health, and some parts of the building code are out of sync in either their policies, or organizational relationships, or both.

Indeed, according to District law I could now cut down every tree in my front yard and pave it. I might have to get a permit from the Environmental Health Administration’s water protection division that would ensure no silt ran into the street or my neighbor’s yard while construction was occurring, but pratically-speaking there would be no one to regulate the effects once construction was finished.

Then, as long as I didn’t need a new curb cut, I could park in my front yard. That would be illegal, but we have people doing this all over our ANC.

In a rewrite of the Zoning Code, therefore, we need to examine the interaction between zoning and environmental preservation in the residential context. I believe this kind of discussion is taking place around commercial and multi-unit building with new LEEDS rules, but we need to also start looking at residential zoning from this more holistic perspective.

Overlays, where they have been adopted, have gone some distance toward addressing environmental issues. One problem I’ve observed in their treatment by the Board of Zoning Adjustment, however, is that their preamble language – their overall purpose if you will – is hard to defend against the reigning culture of maximalism where regulators seem inclined to approve anything other than those things specifically defined as out of bounds.

Thank you.

Rachel Thompson

ANC 3D 04 (Kent/Palisades)

5835 Sherier Place, N.W.

Washington, D.C.  20016

(202) 364-1384