Liz Hendricks is a resident of Johnson County who has spent considerable time studying issues related to watersheds, floodplains, and floodways. She is thoroughly familiar with those topics and in addition with the environmental impact of development in these areas.

Liz, who has just finished serving on a Watershed Development Task Force, is particularly qualified to evaluate the proposal by a developer to build homes at the SE corner of 167th and Nall in Stilwell near Overland Park, KS. This tract of land is in a floodplain/floodway and is Master Planned to be parkland.

The following is letter from Liz to the Johnson County Board of Commissioners describing her concerns.

111 South Cherry Street
Olathe, KS 66061-3486

Dear Commissioners,

I am a resident of Overland Park and have just recently completed one year of service on the Watershed Development Task Force for the City of Overland Park. After a year of study, education, site visits and collaboration of differing viewpoints among all the Task Force members, including a number of individuals from the development industry, the Task Force recommended that a stream buffer ordinance be adopted by the City of Overland Park. That ordinance was adopted in early October of this year.

Many of the same issues facing this project (Tallgrass at the Wilderness) were discussed and studied in the Watershed Task Force meetings. Time and time again, scientific literature, studies, and real life experiences in our city and other urban communities pointed to the need to allow streams and rivers the room they need to flow, meander, and respond to various storm events. The floodplain ecosystems surrounding these waterways help to maintain the health and stability of the streams and should be left in their natural state as much as possible. The practice of placing fill in and altering the floodplain has resulted in a living model of poor watershed management in many developed portions of Johnson County.

Land and homeowners with properties adjacent to these urban streams routinely deal with eroding and unstable stream banks, rapidly rising and destructive floodwaters, polluted water and structural damage from shifting soils. During the application process, each project that sought approval for an encroachment into the floodplain was able to demonstrate, using established engineering principles, minimal or no impact on floodwaters and adjacent properties. Unfortunately, the combined and cumulative impact of these individual floodplain projects and the impervious surface they generated has dramatically altered these streams over time. The forces of nature do not always fit neatly into a computer model or calculation. Those forces involve not only soil types and water volume and velocity, but also less easily quantifiable components such as the myriad plant types that sustain the established ecosystem and would be altered for the construction of this floodplain project. These small things may seem unimportant, even negligible, but remember that the impact of altering the floodplain, no matter how small, when combined with other impacts or given enough time will magnify, eventually causing serious harm. Approval of this project would begin the process of altering the hydrology and ecology of the currently stable Blue River and would set a precedent that would encourage similar development, resulting in the ultimate instability and degradation of the river and loss of property for adjacent land and homeowners.

How can I make such gloomy predictions with such certainty? I have lived next to Tomahawk Creek for fourteen years now and watched as development has dramatically altered the stream, sending flood waters into places they were not supposed to go, chewing away stream banks and back yards, and costing my neighbors and the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements to protect property from the water’s destructive force. If this project is approved, the county should be prepared to pay for expensive stabilization projects and/or purchase homes that would be lost due to flooding or structural damage from unstable soils.

Do not be fooled by outdated development practices that have been repackaged and wrapped with “green development” rhetoric. Real green development should preserve the existing natural features of the land and cluster homes outside of the natural floodplain and wetlands in an effort to preserve those areas. Green development does not dredge an established, functional, existing wetland to create fill on which to build homes within a floodway and floodplain. This is not a “model” development that Johnson County or any other community should emulate elsewhere, nor is this “smart growth” for a progressive county like ours. It is instead a step back in time to an era when lack of understanding and limited knowledge of consequences created the unstable, unhealthy streams of northern Johnson County. We know better now and we can do a better job of preserving a wonderful, unspoiled natural resource like the Blue River by making appropriate and wise land use decisions. I urge you to resist the temptation to be lured by the promises and predictions of the developer at this time and take a hard look instead at the history of urban Johnson County streams, the studies that the county is conducting on its watersheds and the wealth of information on watershed management and stewardship available through your own staff, the state, the EPA, universities, and organizations like the Center for Watershed Protection. This is an extremely important issue and it deserves your most thoughtful and informed consideration. Thank you for the opportunity to voice my concerns.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Hendricks

[return to top]