Public Works Director John Glascock said Columbia city staff would be ready in 90 days to enforce a complicated ordinance designed to control the flow and quality of storm water leaving new developments.

Tim Crockett wasn’t convinced, however, that developers also would be ready.

An engineer who would have to design developments with the new storm-water rules in mind, Crockett took issue last night with the timeline Glascock aired. Although city staff would begin reviewing storm-water plans by the June 4 deadline, Crockett said, engineers would have to begin including the plans with their documents much sooner, putting a significant strain on developers.

"Will" city engineers "be ready June 4? I’m sure they will be," Crockett said. "However, the design process takes place so much earlier. I just don’t see that the time is there."

After nearly three hours of discussion, members of the Columbia City Council sided with Crockett and voted to approve the rules but delay implementation until Sept. 4. The move, they said, would allow developers and city staff time to further review the changes.

The rules - contained in a 318-page planning document that was drafted by a joint city/county task force - are intended to reduce erosion and help keep pollution out of Columbia streams. Developers have said the rules will drastically increase the cost of homes in the city, and some asked council members yesterday to consider studying the cost of the changes before allowing them to take effect.

Although Glascock acknowledged he did not know exactly how the changes would affect development costs, council and task force members agreed that much of the cost can be offset by fixing storm-water problems early, rather than later.

Joe Bindbeutel, co-chairman of the Columbia/Boone County Storm Water Task Force, said the updated guidelines now mean the city and homeowners will not have to pay to fix things such as basement flooding caused by storm water.

"Some of those costs are going to be shifted and prevented in the future," he said. "We are shifting costs, not creating costs."

Don Stamper, executive director of the Central Missouri Development Council, urged the council to consider conducting a study aimed at determining the cost to developers and the city to install facilities such as storm-water detention areas. He added that local developers do not oppose the ordinance.

"Sometimes we’re painted as being against things," Stamper said. "We should be painted as being very careful."

Mayor Darwin Hindman, who suggested the rules should take effect in June, said the ordinance would provide relief to streams that "have been hurting."

"We have the obligation to stop the bleeding," he said. "I think the best way to do that is to adopt this ordinance."

The ordinance provides developers several options to control the amount and quality of storm water leaving their building sites. Developers also can present alternative plans if they can prove the options also will meet the new requirements, Glascock said. City engineers plan to periodically review and change the rules to allow for new technologies.

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