13.01 - South Oak Street Project

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Page 2 of 5 have been told by the City there are periodic overflows of runoff across South Oak Street. 10. Something that I should have pointed out Monday night was the existing roadside ditch / rough infiltration basin next to the School's existing maintenance building just southwest of the track. We understand that there is water in it periodically and it drains off. The proposed infiltration basin could be seen as an engineered version of this designed with additional capacity. 11. Water in a roadbed minimizes the life of the road pavement. When we look at roadway improvements, we strongly encourage cities to provide roadside ditches or other means to get water away from the road structure and preserve the community's investment. 12. From a bigger picture stormwater perspective, both environmentally and economically, there is encouragement to let stormwater infiltrate as close to its source as possible. As mentioned in No. 10 above, the City (and School) are already doing that. 13. The southwest corner of the School District's property, basically where we want to install the infiltration basin, is within 1,000 feet of Sibley Lake. This 1,000-foot zone is what the State refers to as a shoreland area. State shoreland rules require permitting officials to examine the use of natural drainage ways, wetlands, and vegetated soil surfaces to convey, store, filter, and retain stormwater runoff before discharge to public waters. In a nut shell, we cannot just direct discharge all the ditches and pipes directly towards the lake - we need to promote infiltration along the way. 14. In laying out the roadside ditches on either side of the proposed street improvements, the existing parking area on the edge of the road will be destroyed. While the City is under no obligation to provide parking alongside South Oak Street, with the adjacent School fields, it sees this parking as an overall benefit for the City's citizens. 15. This parking area on the edge of the road presents a lot of, what we call, conflict points between parked vehicles backing up and vehicles on South Oak Street as well as vehicles versus pedestrians in the area. Since Pillsbury Street (south of here) was connected between Highway 371 and South Oak Street, traffic has increased - and the chances of accidents at these conflict points. 16. Safety-wise, and stormwater-wise (due to No. 14 above), moving parking to an off-street location south of the fields with just one entrance/exit (conflict point) was seen as a benefit. 17. There is always the approach to just leave the east side of the new road as a roadside ditch. However, we know a majority of the drainage area to the road was coming from the School's property. 18. Of the almost 28 acres of tributary area, almost 16 acres is from the School District property, just under 11 acres is from other private property owners, and a little over 1 acre is from proposed City permanent easement. 19. During our initial discussions, the School had asked about drainage and what happens if they do future improvements. We have not brought this up to the City's planning and zoning - we were hoping to minimize the layers of government in this process - but in our review of the zoning and City Ordinances, the School property is zoned Commercial. In our review of the Ordinances, within this zone, it does indicate that additional impervious area is allowed if a 11/21/2008