The Business Alliance for Responsible Development is an oxymoron. The word "responsible" has to be questioned. To whom or for what is BARD responsible?

If one reads the material on the BARD website, it comes across loud and clear that the overriding goal of BARD is growth at any cost. In particular. the goal appears almost singularly to be to keep development costs down, even if the cost of environmental degradation and infrastructure damage is passed onto citizens and their communities.

If BARD were for responsible growth, it would be for a requirement for "maximum extent practicable" measures for stormwater control. Instead of employing lawyers to gut a somewhat better Alabama Department of Environmental Management proposal for the Phase II stormwater permit, a responsible BARD would work for regulations and a permit that requires MEP.

BARD would also support inclusion of "low-impact development" requirements in stormwater permits. A federal court in Washington state recently ruled stormwater measures must employ "all known and reasonable technologies" in order to comply with MEP requirements of the stormwater rule in the state. "All known and reasonable technologies" include low-impact development.

While not as devastating and dramatic as the BP disaster, which was in part caused by shortcuts taken to save time and money, if BARD's efforts to gut improvements in Alabama's stormwater permits stand, they will likewise cause severe water-quality degradation and lasting, and likely permanent, ecological damage.

By responding to BARD's comments on the initial draft of the stormwater permit for smaller cities by largely gutting the permit it had drafted, ADEM is a facilitator of this environmental crime against nature and the people of Alabama. ADEM should grow some backbone and redraft a permit that includes a clear requirement for MEP and "all known and reasonable technologies," including low-impact development. If ADEM won't write a permit that protects urban and suburban watersheds, Region 4 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should insist on a protective permit.

Michael William Mullen

Executive director/riverkeeper

Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper Inc.

Banks

Printed June 12, 2010 in the Commentary section of the Birmingham News.  See online article here.