This commentary is by Paul Bierman, a professor in the Rubenstein School of the Environment at the University of Vermont with an expertise in hydrology, climate change and human-landscape interaction. Since the 1990s, he and students have studied the impact of changing land-use, particularly the loss of green space, on the Burlington environment.
Burlington, a city focused on reducing its carbon footprint and environmental impact, is about to reverse years of work aimed at improving Lake Champlain water quality.
A well-intentioned zoning rewrite aspires to increase housing in the city — a good thing. However, the new zoning approach is deeply flawed because at its core is the idea of infilling, placing more buildings on existing city lots. With more roofs and smaller lawns, less rainwater will soak into the ground. Serious environmental impacts will follow.
With every rainstorm, water will pour onto sidewalks, parking lots, streets and into storm drains. In Burlington, some stormwater is mixed with sewage and flows through the same pipes under much of the city. Already our sewage treatment plants cannot treat all the stormwater and combined sewage overflows result.
During every combined sewage overflow, barely treated sewage flows into the Winooski River or Lake Champlain. The overflows are rich in polluting nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, fertilizing algal and toxic bacterial blooms. This added pollution is a direct affront to state and federal demands to reduce Burlington’s stormwater impact on Lake Champlain. Never mind that lot coverage will increase just as climate change brings heavier rains, which more effectively wash pollutants off city streets, and warmer summers, which promote algal growth in lake waters.
We can do better. The solution is threefold, and it’s simple. Build in places that are already impermeable, build up, and if construction covers greenspace, then use engineering approaches to minimize stormwater impacts. Most infill development does none of these. It simply converts greenspace to buildings and lets the water pour off roofs and into our streets and sewers. The proposed zoning changes will pollute Lake Champlain.
Today, I opened Google Maps, looked for parking lots and abandoned buildings, and dreamed. You can do the same. Take for example, the parking lots next to UVM’s Waterman Building and between South Williams and South Prospect Street. Google maps tells me they cover nearly 200,000 square feet.
If the cars remained on the ground floor and five more stories rose above them (matching the existing height of the UVM Health Center), there’s a million square feet. Assuming 75% is usable space, that’s 750 apartments, each 1,000 square feet and each holding a few people. This one project could house most of the junior class at UVM or more than 15% of the medical center’s workforce. Solar panels could cover the roof. At 15 watts per square foot, they would generate enough power for more than 400 homes. We get these positive benefits and not a drop more of runoff or stormwater. Zoning could encourage exactly this type of development instead of incentivizing the loss of trees and lawns.
Keep looking. There are about 300,000 square feet of surface parking around the Medical Center and the water tower. There’s more on Trinity Campus, where UVM is asking for zoning changes that would consume additional green space. Parking lots in the city are smaller but many are 40,000 to 50,000 square feet. Of course there’s Memorial Auditorium, the former YMCA, the Cathedral, Bove’s and the old filling station on Pearl Street. Make your own list. There’s no need for the citizens of Burlington to accept a new zoning code that destroys greenspace and pollutes the lake. To do so, would be to look backward not forward.
There’s more than one way to skin the “urban density cat” and with the climate warming and rainfall increasing, we need to save every bit of greenspace we can. Nature treats stormwater for free — an ecosystem service for which we will otherwise pay. Grass and trees cool the air at no cost to us. Infill development might have made sense a decade or two ago. Today it flies in the face of reason and accelerating climate change. The proposed Neighborhood Code does little to support Burlington’s focus on sustainability.
Our councilors and mayor know there are issues with the current plan. Just last week, one of them stated, on the record in a public hearing, that both stormwater runoff and infrastructure capacity are not a function of zoning (~4:22). There lies the problem — zoning has environmental and social consequences that so far we are leaving unconsidered. In 2024, we need zoning that supports rather than undermines city services and our collective commitment to the environment.
I urge everyone to speak up and demand refinement of this proposal. Here’s a list of city councilors and their emails. You can pose questions to the city planning office responsible for the zoning code, here. But don’t wait, there is pressure to pass this zoning change before the election in March.
We must do better as a city. Say NO to hurrying the current vision of Neighborhood Code through the City Council and say yes to “smart” growth. We can and should be a city that adds housing and preserves, and yes, even improves, our environment. It’s time to take off the density-or-bust blinders and see the bigger picture.
