Archive: Opinions

EditorialIt is interesting to watch our municipalities struggle with new stormwater regulations, and a bit daunting.  Both the Town and Village of Lansing have been scurrying to meet new mandates on reporting, local laws, public education, and have been slammed with lists of additional things they must do.  From the outside looking in, it seems as though smaller municipalities suffer under the new regulations, because they don't have staff or resources to meet the requirements.

Everyone knows about unfunded mandates, and it has been interesting seeing how they affect real people.  In the Village Trustee Lynn Leopold has been saddled with the annual report that is becoming so complicated that the Trustees approved money to pay an engineer to help her.  And the trustees seem positively grateful to Cayuga Watershed Network's Sharon Anderson, not only because she will be installing a rain garden in front of the Village office building, but also because the Village can use that to claim credit for meeting about half of the requirements from the State.

  It certainly makes sense that we all want to protect Lake Cayuga.  We depend on it for drinking water, boating and recreation, and many other things.  If the lake is compromised our communities couldn't be here.  But it seems to me that a one-size-fits-all storm water policy doesn't make sense.  What it is clearly doing is adding to the burden of local legislators and adding to the tax burden of residents even when the requirements don't strictly apply geographically or municipally.

The new storm water requirements are well-meaning, but possibly not well thought out.  From my perspective it seems as though Village officials are forced to create busy-work that will meet these requirements.  Creating work to get credit for doing something isn't the same as doing something.  Ultimately it may contribute to solving the problem of what flows into the lake with stormwater, but it may not.  It seems to me that less writing about it and more doing something about it would be a better exercise.  When someone as knowledgeable about the environment as Leopold is as confounded by the sheer mass of the process as she evidently is, there must be something wrong with the process.

Perhaps simpler reporting and a menu of requirements that can be suited to specific localities would make this more palatable for small communities.

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