Sustainable Community: Buffer Management Plan

The Buffer Management Plan (BMP)

The BMP's primary objective is to mitigate the effects of Site development. Activities leading to the degradation of aquatic and wetland resources can be mitigated to a large extent through efforts which intercept and redirect the environmental fate and transport processes that carry excess nutrients, mobile contaminants and eroding soil particles to sediment sinks in these natural features (Lowrance et al. 1984; Peterjohn and Correll 1984). Thermal pollution can be mitigated in some instances by simply replacing tree and shrub canopy coverage along stream banks to increase shading of affected streams (PADEP 2005). Damaging thermal hydrologic shocks to aquatic systems that originate as heated storm water runoff from impervious surfaces in a developed plot of land require considerably greater efforts to ameliorate the harmful effects to receiving waters. The SWPPP for the Site is the mitigation tool for addressing storm-related events where channeled overland runoff can be captured and attenuated prior to its introduction to surface waters. SWPPP design is not addressed in the buffer management plan except to identify the proposed locations of SWPPP storm water management basins (SWM), and to identify the extent of a 30 foot buffer area surrounding the draft design wet pool, attenuation basins, and adjacent terrestrial habitat. A standard planting list for SWM wet pools/attenuation basins is also provide in Appendix G. The BMP will focus on reducing sediment, nutrient, and contaminant transport and loading associated with overland sheet flow and ephemeral drainage swales that are not captured by the SWPPP.

Development activities leading to habitat loss are more difficult to mitigate against, and in absolute terms lost habitat is difficult to recover. Wherever possible, existing high quality habitat will be targeted for conservation and insulated from all degrading effects of development (e.g., the approach used for NYSDEC administered Adjacent Areas for wetlands). However, ecological services can be conserved, or alternatively replaced, to varying extents by enhancing habitats that have suffered injury or damage in the past. In this manner the BMP will focus on reestablishing canopy cover for on-site streams and on enhancing aquatic edge and shoreline habitats with a variety of terrestrial and aquatic planting groups.

(Note:All bibliographical references in the text can be located in the Buffer Managment Plan submitted with the Final Environmental Impact Statement dated September, 16 2009)