222 Church DECISION DAY: April 20th in front of the Board of Commissioners. You are still in time to share your opinion via email or in person at the next meeting with the commissioners. Many have asked me about a summary of the points raised during the April 6th meeting by the residents. The points focused on how the developer's plan is not complying with the Cheltenham SALDO and Storm Water Management Ordinance. The recorded video is also available on the township website :
1. The applicant is requesting that ¾ of the replacement trees (285 to be correct) be located OFFSITE. But the township should require that all the replacement trees required by the SALDO be installed ON SITE due to the crucial role those trees play in stormwater runoff absorption.
2. Section 216/31b of the SALDO states that a minimum of 50% of existing woodland must be preserved in any new development. How can the township evaluate whether the plan would comply with the 50% preservation requirement when the applicant (whose previous calculation ignoring all the 3-inch trees, was already at almost 50%) has NOT submitted an updated existing feature plan, an updated existing trees chart or an updated tree disturbance calculations?
3. Section 290/23E of the SALDO states that “ON SITE drainage facility shall be designed to convey off site safely flows through the development site”, but the applicant’s engineer failed to include stormwater flow from offsite draining through the site in its stormwater management calculations. Therefore, this has to be taken into consideration when looking at the small size of the stormwater management facility that has been proposed.
4. The developer has submitted plans showing an easement for a sewer lateral, which does not exist. Therefore, their plans are deficient, and they do not have the rights to carry them out.
5. The drainage area breakdown and computer software calculations are inconsistent with one another and do not reflect the proposed conditions or breakdowns necessary to accurately calculate the rate control required by the stormwater management ordinance. The failure to provide time of concentration calculations, which determine the period of peak runoff across the site and the way different hydrographs combine, has the effect of altering the projection by a significant margin. Moreover, the manual method of data input into the software program called hydrology studio used by the developer’s engineer is unacceptable. This methodology is inconsistent with best practices as it does not specify which areas of the site have been used to model the overall hydrological profile and, as such, does not permit the final calculations to be verified reliably.
6. Instead of reproducing an existing features plan, the developer is requesting a waiver of the requirement claiming hardship owing to the difficulty of gaining access to surrounding properties. Not only has access never been asked for to any neighbor, but a waiver of the requirement in favor of an aerial photo is entirely inappropriate on a site as topographically and hydrologically complex as this one