The Darlington County Planning Commission approved sending the Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) Ordinance to Darlington County Council for a vote at Tuesday’s meeting.
The planning department has been working on the ordinance since the beginning of the year.
The IDDE ordinance is intended to cover the third of six Minimum Control Measures in the overall Stormwater Management Plan.
The plan is state mandated for the county to adopt and implement.
“It’s new responsibility for planning,” planning director Doug Reimold said. “The main part of this discussion is enforcement.
“At the last (planning commission) meeting, you all (the commission) were concerned about the planning director being in charge, constantly, of enforcement.”
The IDDE ordinance targets anything that is considered a polluting discharge to the county’s storm drain system, state bodies of water and anything that degrades the county’s water quality.
It gives the county the authority to seek out, find and stop specific non-stormwater dischargers that pollute the county’s MS4 Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Overlay District water.
Reimold said Connie Anderson, the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s compliance manager, met with the planning department in June to review the county’s progress on the management plan and requested that county identify a responsible person designated to enforce the IDDE regulation.
“Since planning is currently the department responsible for the stormwater program, Phyllis Griffitts, our county administrator, designated the director of planning,” he said. “The planning department is getting saddled with more and more responsibility with less time for planning.”
Reimold said Griffitts also instructed him to begin writing a job description to be added to the 2009-2010 fiscal year general fund budget.
The person holding the position would be in charge of the ordinance and its enforcement, if approved by county council in one year.
“It’s a labor intensive program,” Reimold said. “Florence County has a staff designated to it.”
Commission chairman David Dewitt had some objection to this designation.
“It doesn’t make much sense to me because planning is not about construction (or enforcement),” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to send (planning) out to a site when codes and enforcement is already there.”
Dewitt said the planning department is involved with stormwater plan solely during the initial planning state, and added that by having planning enforce the ordinance, it muddies the line between the two departments.
New member Grady Culbertson suggested approving the IDDE ordinance with the stipulation that the job description is identified but the enforcer be designated as the county codes and enforcement office.
The commission also approved vested rights for George Rogers’ machine shop and elected new officers. Dewitt will serve as the vice-chairman and commission member Doug Evans will serve as chairman.
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