| The Home Builders Association of Kitsap Count (HBA) is developing low impact development (LID) standards for the county and the cities of Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Port Orchard and Poulsbo with assistance from a $2,500 grant from the National Housing Endowment, the philanthropic arm of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The grant was awarded through the endowment's Challenge/Build/Grow grant initiative.
The HBA, which has been recognized nationally for the program by NAHB, anticipates beginning the adoption process for the new standards by late 2006 or early 2007.
To date, the Kitsap County builders have reviewed and compared various technical guides for LID and collected data on development from all the jurisdictions in the county. They currently are developing a matrix of all the existing standards, which will enable them to determine what changes in the standards are needed.
In addition, the HBA has modeled a Seattle project, known as Sea Street, that was retrofitted with LID techniques with pre- and post-storm water outputs using the Washington Department of Energy's new continuous flow software to show the large discrepancy between the software modeling and the actual monitoring results.
As part of the LID program, the HBA used the endowment funds to leverage a state grant with the help of Poulsbo grant writer Kathleen Byrne-Barrantes of Grant Solutions, to create a leadership team comprised of the planning directors, public works director and storm water specialist from two of the cities in the project. Also participating are the county's surface and storm water program manager, assistant director of environmental health, fire district representative and builders, developers and development engineers.
In June, the HBA co-sponsored a half-day LID workshop in Poulsbo. More than 70 builders, developers and local citizens participated. |
