Montgomery County Road Code

The bill faces two hurdles. The first hurdle is its actual completion, which will take almost another year. During this time, the engineering standards will be written. Like many bills, the Road Code is more like a set of goals than a blueprint. Until the blueprint is completed, nobody can say with certainty how green the code will be; however, it looks promising.

"I think the new The Road Code is a terrific step," said Anne Merwin, Director of Policy for The Potomac Conservancy. She says the Bill has the potential to create large scale changes in storm water management. Montgomery County may become a national leader because of this bill according to Merwin, but she warns "the devil is in the details." Until the engineering standards have been fully developed, unrestrained celebration of this legislation should be banked.

The Executive Branch and The Department of Public Work and Transportation (DPWT) are responsible for engineering standards that will guide the county in how new roads and reconstructed roads will handle storm water. The law requires that these standards be written by July 2008.

The second hurdle is that some of the green streets provisions of the bill are uncodified. A spokesperson from the County Council defined uncodified law to mean "law which can go away," an ambiguous definition, but one that suggests a lack of certainty as to the durability of provisions under an uncodified law.

According to Ben Sturtz, a policy analyst from Council Member Valerie Ervin's office, the council members didn't put some green street provisions into the codified section because they weren't always sure about what was technically possible. Additionally, the Council did not want to dictate too much to the Executive Branch.

Edger Gonzalez, Deputy Director of Transportation for the DPWT, provided some good news for environmentalist about one portion of the uncodified bill that stipulates how much water must be retained or filtered on-site during a 24 hour period (two inches in suburban areas and three inches in rural areas). He said those numbers are already in the current road code.

So far there has been little progress made on writing the engineering standards according to Merwin. "The County is dragging its feet. I would be shocked if they were ready by the July deadline," she said.

The County has plenty of motivation to meet the deadline. Built into the new code is a default set of regulations that will go into effect should the County not meet the July 08 deadline, and DPWT is not happy with this section. These default regulations are described on pages 128-131 of the bill. Gonzalez said the tables included there are "silly, crazy." He said what is included on those pages is "not engineering."

Gonzalez is happier with the rest of the bill. He said originally it was "horrible," but through a series of compromises it became a "good" bill with "outstanding features."

For Merwin the outstanding feature of the bill is that it requires linear bioretention of storm water in the codified section. Page 26 of the purpose statement of the code reads, "A specified quantity of stormwater must be managed and treated on-site, in the road or street right of way, including through the use of vegetation-based infiltration techniques." According to Merwin, improvements in engineering allow for much storm water to be treated on the roadways without causing flooding of those roads.

The effort to get the Council to pass the green streets provisions of the bill was spearheaded by Merwin and Diane Cameron, Coordinator for Montgomery County Stormwater Partners. In March Stormwater Partners made a presentation to Ervin (District 5) who enthusiastically endorsed the green streets proposal. Fellow Transportation and Environment Committee Chair Nancy Floreen (At Large) helped convince other members of the Council to back the storm water provisions.

The Road Code had not been revamped in 20 years. Some portions have not been changed in over 60 years: One section provides instructions for teamsters on how to handle horses on county roads. In 2003 Dr. Glen Orlin, Deputy Staff Director for the County Council, began working on updating a very old code with Floreen. Stutz said Ervin saw the writing of the new road code as an opportunity to help limit the damage that stormwater does to our waterways.

What lies ahead is going to be a tough process according to Stutz: Portions of over 2,000 pages of engineering standards have to be revised by engineers from The Department of Public Works and Transportation by next year.

Merwin said it was relatively easy to get the Council to pass the stormwater provisions because the Council understood that when she and Cameron spoke they were speaking for the entire environmental community.

The effort to get them to pass the process portion of the legislation proved more difficult. In fact the process portion is not part of the law but in a directive in the uncodified section. The directive states, "The County Executive must actively seek the advice of the County Planning Board and affected stakeholders, including representatives of motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists transit users, engineering consultants and other experts, environmental advocates and businesses located in the County." Such inclusion has not been the case in the past according to Stutz.

While Merwin thinks the County is slow in getting the process started, Assistant Chief Administrator Diane Jones from County Executive Isiah Leggett's office said the process is on a fast track. She hopes to hire a technical consultant soon and a facilitator within weeks. Letters will be sent to various stakeholder groups asking them to select someone from their organization to represent the group sometime in the next two weeks. Jones would not comment on which groups will be invited other than saying that Stormwater Partners will be included.

John Mathwin
Sierra Club