A group of New Orleans based developers, city planners, landscape architects and community members gathered at the Propeller business incubator offices last night to discuss potential changes in city standards for water management.
The event included a panel exploring the pros and cons of a new comprehensive zoning ordinance, or CZO. Specifically how Article 23 of that document would change the city’s storm water, drainage and landscaping rules.
It has been 44 years since the city updated its CZO.
Dale Thayer is a senior planner with the City Planning Commission.
"There has been no stormwater regulations in this city, there has never been any landscape regulations in this city," Thayer says. "We’re going from zero to what we have. It might not be strict enough, it might be too strict."
The updated ordinance would require new construction to be signed off on by a landscape architect.
Thayer says the new plan would also require green stormwater infrastructure, filtering storm runoff through plants and soil.
Support for WWNO's Coastal Desk comes from the Walton Family Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, and the Kabacoff Family Foundation.
