AFS Cinema
Too Much Impervious Cover
RECEIVED Wed., March 25, 2009
Dear Editor,
Austin is proposing more impervious cover with its Webberville solar panel farm than exists in the whole of Downtown Austin. The proposed 300-acre solar-panel farm includes neither a quality pond nor a detention pond. We need to ask why, and we need to demand an answer. Is the city sidestepping this by granting itself a variance? The city needs to step up to the plate and practice not only what it preaches but what it imposes on others. In short, it cannot be above its own law, law it imposes on small-business owners in the Austin jurisdiction. It cannot grant a variance to itself in the name of sustainability and which it may well try to justify by saying that rainfall will just run off the solar panels onto the ground anyway (so does the rainfall from Austin rooftops).
This 300-acre solar-panel farm will eat up 550 acres of land because of the 65% impervious cover limit and would almost certainly be better outfitted on rooftops, saving 550 precious acres in the process. A total of 5,500 homes with an average roof size of 2,375 square feet would achieve the same thing. Or how about 11,000 homes with 200 square feet of solar panels? Or how about just placing the panels on parking garages (we've got a few of those). If we absolutely have to do this in Webberville, we'd better see some ponds. Big ones. Ponds that are probably not included in the cost approved for the solar-panel farm by the council.
Austin is proposing more impervious cover with its Webberville solar panel farm than exists in the whole of Downtown Austin. The proposed 300-acre solar-panel farm includes neither a quality pond nor a detention pond. We need to ask why, and we need to demand an answer. Is the city sidestepping this by granting itself a variance? The city needs to step up to the plate and practice not only what it preaches but what it imposes on others. In short, it cannot be above its own law, law it imposes on small-business owners in the Austin jurisdiction. It cannot grant a variance to itself in the name of sustainability and which it may well try to justify by saying that rainfall will just run off the solar panels onto the ground anyway (so does the rainfall from Austin rooftops).
This 300-acre solar-panel farm will eat up 550 acres of land because of the 65% impervious cover limit and would almost certainly be better outfitted on rooftops, saving 550 precious acres in the process. A total of 5,500 homes with an average roof size of 2,375 square feet would achieve the same thing. Or how about 11,000 homes with 200 square feet of solar panels? Or how about just placing the panels on parking garages (we've got a few of those). If we absolutely have to do this in Webberville, we'd better see some ponds. Big ones. Ponds that are probably not included in the cost approved for the solar-panel farm by the council.
Jim Lacey
