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Builders urge broader waivers to Georgia runoff-reduction rules, saying controls cost $7,000–$15,000 per lot
Summary
Home builders told the committee the state's 2016 runoff-reduction manual and its local implementation reduce lot yields and add thousands to lot and home prices; they asked to expand waiver rules to count loss of lots as financial hardship and to approve treatment inside detention ponds as an eligible alternative.
Home builders told the Small Business Development Committee that Georgia’s 2016 runoff-reduction manual and its local implementation are reducing the number of viable building lots and adding thousands of dollars to development costs.
Jay Knight, a Metro-Atlanta developer, said the manual — which counties began implementing as older local stormwater certifications expired — is large and complex and has led local reviewers to require treatment systems that consume land and carry ongoing maintenance obligations. “If you follow that thing to the letter…you wouldn’t develop anything,” Knight said, describing clay soils that do not absorb water and projects that became economically unviable when new treatment requirements were applied.
Knight and other presenters asked the committee to broaden the definition of “financial hardship” in the runoff-reduction waiver process so that loss of buildable lots would qualify as a hardship. Knight said a Jonesboro subdivision he had zoned for 77 lots was reduced to 20 lots after runoff-treatment requirements; he said the project was “$280,000 into it before we had to let it go.”
Builders provided cost estimates for the effects of the runoff rules. Austin Hackney summarized the industry view that runoff compliance adds roughly $7,000–$11,000 per lot in development costs and that those costs translate to about $15,000 more in sales price for the typical buyer. Adam Cornett (division president, Greater Atlanta area) and others calculated that, using those per-lot figures across tens of thousands of annual lots, runoff-related compliance could equate to roughly $400 million in additional home-sale costs annually in the Atlanta market.
Builders also described alternatives. Knight said his company’s office project in Fayetteville used a biofilter installed at the bottom of a detention pond to satisfy water-quality goals without additional land loss. Presenters asked the state to clarify that comparable water-treatment measures constructed inside detention ponds should be eligible for waiver or treated as acceptable equivalents so long as they meet code and achieve required outcomes.
Builders said waivers are possible under the runoff-reduction guidance but that reviewers have denied waivers when reviewers said loss of lots did not meet the manual’s financial-hardship test. “Our engineer told us, on the last 2 he turned in on financial hardship…he was told by the reviewer that losing lots does not count as a financial hardship,” Knight said.
No formal rule change was proposed at the hearing; presenters requested that lawmakers consider statutory or administrative clarifications to how waivers and equivalencies are handled.
Speakers who discussed runoff and waivers included Jay Knight; Austin Hackney; Adam Cornett; and Adam’s colleagues who supplied engineering cost estimates. The committee heard multiple specific project examples that builders said illustrate the economic effect of current runoff treatment rules.
