Three years of work to make an area along Highway 69 developable are expected to get some sort of resolution this week.
Some city officials are pessimistic about Verona's urban service area (USA) application on what it calls the "southwest area," which would be the likely site of a large Dean Health Systems clinic, a residential subdivision and some other industrial and commercial uses. It was scheduled for a Thursday hearing before the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission, which essentially approves requests for USA, or sewer service, extensions.
CARPC is actually an advisory body for the state Department of Natural Resources, but it is generally entrusted with ensuring that urban expansion does not infringe on water quality in the Madison metropolitan area. With one notable exception, the denial of a 200-acre request last year by the Village of Mazomanie, its decisions have been and generally are expected to be rubber-stamped by the DNR.
The southwest area has been Verona's top priority for expansion for quite some time, and the city has actively pursued it since 2006, shortly after a legal fight with the county and DNR resulted in the city's voluntary two-year, $100,000 study of the Badger Mill Creek-Sugar River area. This summer the city produced a "neighborhood plan" - for what the entire area could ultimately be should it all be developed - and submitted it to CARPC with its fingers crossed.
CARPC, which was created in 2007, five years after the Dane County RPC was disbanded, has shown a stronger lean toward protecting the interests of towns, preserving farmland and controlling sprawl than its predecessor. Almost immediately it enacted policies restricting cities' growth far beyond their previous allotments - Verona went from about 1,800 acres over the next 20 years to about 400.
And the southwest area is at least partially on active farmland, sits on the edge of the metro area and has not gotten the support from the Town of Verona the city had asked for. The Town Board, which has been at odds with the city on several issues lately, discussed the request last week in the context of a general conversation about the process, and some supervisors said the board might best serve its own interests with CARPC by getting involved rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Kamran Mesbah, CARPC's deputy director, said that could make a difference, since intergovernmental cooperation can go a long way toward avoiding water-quality problems in some places, but he suggested it more likely will come down to how well the commission believes the city and developers can keep stormwater from draining off the far western edge of the area directly into the adjacent Sugar River.
That portion - on the Dean land - has some sloping terrain with shallow groundwater in one spot and high concentrations of rock in another other, and there's some question whether standard practices can control the stormwater runoff, Mesbah said. Controlling not just peak flow but the overall volume of water leaving the site is crucial, he said.
"There is recent research that is indicating that what kills the streams is increases in volumes of runoff (and not just pollution)," Mesbah said. "One of the recommendations that staff is making is that the commission adopt a watershed-wide quality standard for stormwater."
That could mean no USA expansions until the commission adopts such a standard, which could take months. Or it could mean that an "interim standard" is applied to this area more stringent than the normal requirement of returning 90 percent of runoff into the ground through infiltration.
Mesbah said the city could help its case by doing some field testing at that location to determine whether controlling the runoff is even feasible there. That would take the results of the $100,000 Montgomery and Associates study the city did - which acknowledged concerns at that location - and dig deeper.
City leaders could also agree to certain contingencies that ensure the stormwater is controlled, and that might help CARPC's decision. Or it and Dean could even duplicate what happened with Epic's request several years ago, and promise something along the lines of underground parking. Mayor Jon Hochkammer, city administrator Shawn Murphy and city planner Bruce Sylvester are expected to be at Thursday's hearing to provide the city's point of view.
"What we don't want is for the city to commit itself to something it doesn't know about," Mesbah said. "It's complicated because this is a sensitive area. It is adjacent to some very high-quality streams."
