Delaware Republicans are championing reform to the state’s stormwater management rules.
State House Minority Leader Danny Short made a case for reform in the GOP’s weekly message.
He says the state’s stormwater management regulations have deterred people from starting businesses in the first state.
“A couple weeks ago, we heard in committee from a man who has mortgaged a property to build some poultry houses, gotten all his arrangements fixed up with the poultry industry and then comes to find out that he’s got, not just a couple thousand, but potentially a $100,000 worth of expenses in engineering costs, and plan design, and then construction of the stormwater management requirements on a poultry farm,” said Short.
Short says the cost of complying with the state’s rules can be prohibitive.
And people who have the money can’t afford the time it takes to go through the regulatory process.
State republican lawmakers are backing two bills that would change the state’s stormwater runoff regulations.
Full text of GOP weekly message:
Well this is needed to change because it has put a great burden on people all over county and the state. It doesn’t matter if you’re an individual homeowner, or you’re a developer, or a business person, a simple business person, trying to build a business on the highway or even a poultry farm trying to figure out how you’re going to out your poultry houses on property you’re owned for years.
What the concern is, the financial impact is so severe that we have stifled people that have plans to do certain things that have just given up.
A couple weeks ago, we heard in committee from a man who has mortgaged a property to build some poultry houses, gotten all his arrangements fixed up with the poultry industry and then comes to find out that he’s got, not just a couple thousand, but potentially a $100,000 worth of expenses in engineering costs, and plan design, and then construction of the stormwater management requirements on a poultry farm.
[This is] a young guy -- younger than 30 -- and he’s worried about how his family might survive. They have mortgaged themselves so much to the point that [he wonders if] they can make ends meet while they are trying to get through these regulations. So it’s not just the cost. It’s not just what you have to do on the engineering and construction side, it’s the time it takes to get there too.
So that’s why we’re working so hard to try to get a revised version that works well for everybody.
What they do is one is a Senate bill and the Senate bill actually puts into law the requirements of how the regulations will be implemented, what are the scientific aspects to it to make it far more reasonable as well as the cost factors.
The House Joint Resolution actually says that the two parties need to get together and try to find out how they can put together a program and a plan that is far more reasonable, far more cost-effective and meet a deadline to report back to the General Assembly by January 18th of 2017.
So both of them have great implications because one changes the current law and other one says let’s work towards a reasonable future so we have a long-standing plan that might work for a long period of time that is both reasonable to the agency as well as reasonable to business owners, and homeowners, poultry farmers, and anybody that is going to build or develop in the State of Delaware.
This has become a very bipartisan issue in the sense that both pieces of legislation we are talking about, the Senate Bill as well as the House Bill, were both voted on and passed unanimously with no dissenting votes -- a strong message to a Delaware agency that they need to get their act together and a strong message that we’re willing to help them, if they’re willing to listen.
