Voluntary building standards in Dallas could help to reduce the amount of rain runoff left from significant storms in the city.
The measurements are currently voluntary, NBC 5 reported, but city officials are discussing making the Integrated Storm Water Management (iSWM) standards mandatory. Dallas first approved the rain runoff measures in 2009.
The Dallas City Council environment committee is considering implementing the switch to required iSWM rules as part of the city’s broader environmental plans.
Dallas City Council member Paula Blackmon, who chairs the city’s environment committee, said this is part of looking at building standards on a regional level. They will require buildings and properties to implement ways of slowing down rain runoff that affects city infrastructure.
David Marquis, with the Oak Cliff Nature Center, shared that a regional approach can be beneficial.
“One of the things we have to do is begin to look at some of these things on a regional level. These are regional issues. If water falls over there, it ends up here,” Marquis told NBC 5.
According to Marquis, some Dallas communities are working on measures to keep all the rain that falls on a property from running off. These are called “net-zero runoff” measures.
Marquis shared that the iSWM regulations can help reduce damage from rain runoff during extreme weather events, such as the recent storms that hit North Texas.
“As bigger droughts and harder rains fall, we need to deal with them now on the front end,” he told NBC 5. “And we need to do it not just for ourselves. We need to do it for our grandchildren and future generations because if we don’t, they’re the ones who are really going to suffer.”
Slowing rain runoff is critical in preventing the damage that can come after, according to Marquis.
“Because when you get a lot of water at once, it hits those storm systems,” he explained. “It backs them up. You get floods in the streets, floods in the neighborhood.”
In areas of Deep Ellum, rain gardens on sidewalks have been established to hold back rainwater, NBC 5 reported. In Oak Cliff, the Encina Restaurant has implemented a gravel parking lot to slow how much water flows into the surrounding area.
Marquis claimed, “Economic development is a good thing. A dynamic economy is a good thing. But we need to be smart about it and do it in such a way that we are capable of planning for the future.”
In 2011, when the City of Dallas first began revisiting iSWM building measures, the Oak Cliff chamber of commerce expressed concerns that the new standards could increase building and development costs.
At the time, Chamber of Commerce President Bob Stimson told NBC 5, “You’ve always got to create a fine balance between what is going to be economically feasible and what is going to be good for the environment.”
At the end of August, severe flash floods in Dallas led Texas Governor Greg Abbott to issue a disaster declaration, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Over a hundred homes were damaged in the storms and resultant flash floods.