Environmental Commission backs administrative variance to skip drainage easements on city parkland, adds Parks Board review

Environmental Commission members voted to recommend an amendment to City Code Title 25 that would let the director of Austin Watershed Protection grant administrative variances so development projects on city-owned parkland would not always be required to dedicate recorded drainage easements.

The commission moved the recommendation by a formal motion read into the record and approved it 8–1 after adding an amendment that requires the Parks and Recreation Department to be given a presentation on the change and an opportunity to vote on it. The commission chair said the law department will still review the final draft before the item goes to the Planning Commission and ultimately to City Council.

The change would add language to the Land Development Code (proposed section 25-7-152(e)) allowing staff to exempt parkland projects from the code requirement to record a drainage easement that traces the limits of the 100-year floodplain. "The current land development code requires that when a piece of land is developed, the portion of that land that's in the 100 year floodplain has to be contained within a drainage easement," said Kevin Shunk, the city's floodplain administrator in Austin Watershed Protection. He told…