By Carol Coultas,Business Writer

Developers no longer have a one-stop-shopping option when submitting plans for city review in the wake of new state rules that are muddying the permitting process.

Both the Lewiston and Auburn planning departments are opting not to update city ordinances to reflect new storm-water regulations adopted by the state Department of Environmental Protection in November. Their decisions mean developers seeking approval for new projects will have to get their storm-water system permits from Augusta, rather than city hall. And that could mean additional time and money.

“I expect it will mean delays,” Daniel Riley, senior project engineer for Sebago Technics, which plans many projects in the area. “It’s another agency, another application fee to add into the mix and that all costs money.”

Locally, there are no projects in the pipeline yet that will be significantly affected by the new rules. But Gary Johnson, Auburn’s assistant city engineer, said he’s been hearing from consultants who are frustrated by the new rules.

“They’re harder to deal with … it changes the way they think about design,” he said. “And they know it will take longer.”

Both Lewiston and Auburn have designated-review authority from the DEP that allows city staff to assess environmental compliance of pending projects. Johnson said once final plans are submitted by a developer, they typically can issue permits within 30 days.

But now that storm-water approvals have to be issued by Augusta staff, it could delay a project by months. And the Twin Cities aren’t alone. Nearly all cities and towns that have designated-review authority are doing the same thing, potentially creating a logjam at DEP.

“It’s a concern,” said Don Witherell, director of DEP’s watershed management division. “It’s something that we’ll have to deal with. Our workloads go up and down continually.”

Witherell expects the detour to Augusta is temporary until the final rule revisions are adopted – perhaps by the end of the year, if revisions don’t have to get legislative approval. He hopes to manage the additional work with existing staff.

The new regulations are intended to improve water quality in Maine, an amplification of the federal Clean Water Act. The new standards try to improve water quality retroactively by calling for more aggressive treatment of storm-water runoff. Part of that requires future development to improve the health of polluted city streams, called urban-impaired streams.

Hart and Jepson brooks in Lewiston meet that definition, as do Bobbin Mill and Logan brooks in Auburn.

Any development that disturbs one acre or more near those watersheds will need more sophisticated water-management systems.

For instance, under the old rules, the parking lot of a shopping center could have a storm-water system that collected runoff through catch basins and channeled it to a retention pond where it would sit before releasing slowly into the ground. New rules require that runoff be treated at the source, before being discharged into the watershed. So instead of catch basins, a developer might have to build “biorention cells” – little oases of vegetation that collect runoff, which purifies as it drains through the ground.

The newer systems are more complicated, and that often means more expensive. Land that could be developed under the old rules might now have to be set aside for a buffer, or used for a filtration system.

Dave Kamila, president of Land Use Consultants and an engineer, said his colleagues are still scratching their heads over the interpretations. He helped draft the new rules before they went through multiple revisions in Augusta.

“Developers are pretty straightforward,” he said. “Tell us the rules, and we’ll follow them.”

Municipalities are also concerned about accountability standards under the new regulations, which require monitoring for storm-water compliance every five years. It’s unclear whether the cities, the state or the individual developer is responsible for that work.

“For us, it’s a manpower issue,” said Johnson.

And there are other areas of concern. Riley said the new rules require city-approved watershed management plans for parcels where none exist now. The impact fee a developer pays in the permit process is pegged to that plan.

“Does that mean I can’t develop until a watershed plan is approved?” he asked.

The DEP met with city staff two weeks ago to go over the new rules. State DEP staff acknowledge that the new rules can be confusing and have introduced a bill that would allow the staff to amend the standards for clarification.

“In theory, (the stricter standards) makes good sense,” said Gil Arsenault, planning director in Lewiston. “We just need to commit to something understandable. The unknowns are frightening.”