News

Another rezoning for development was approved by Durham City Council this week, but this approval came with a win for water quality.

After midnight at Monday’s Durham council meeting, a negotiation between councilmembers and the developer took place that ended with the developer committing to extra measures to ensure construction of the Wake Olive Apartments will not be contributing to the ongoing sediment pollution in the Lick Creek watershed.

“The reason the developer cooperated is because councilmembers heard from the community — that pressure went to council, and the council specifically asked hard questions during the rezoning hearing and that asked that the developer make these commitments,” Samantha said. “Thanks to the effort of those who cared and their engagement, we were able to gain a very important commitment in this rezoning.”

The developer of Wake Olive Apartments, Chris Hodges of Redeeming Development Group, agreed to monitor the turbidity of discharges from sediment basins on the site and add sediment and erosion control measures that would withstand a 100-year storm.

“Even though it’s science-backed, common-sense, low effort of conducting sampling of discharges coming from construction sites before they reached streams, both commitments new gold standard for what we want to see in the Lick Creek watershed,” Samantha said.

Samantha said she hopes this will be the standard that Durham City Council will set for other developers.

“I think there is a growing recognition that more than the baseline needs to be done in Lick Creek,” she said. “We’re working hard to educate folks about the importance of the EPA-recommended practice of turbidity benchmark monitoring. Discharges from sediment basins are contributing pollution to our waterways, so this is a huge step for addressing that problem.”

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