After almost a year of public meetings, open houses and revisions, the Sammamish City Council unanimously adopted an updated Surface Water Design Manual and Low Impact Development code updates at its regular meeting Dec. 13.

The council had a Dec. 31 deadline to update its manual and updates to meet its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit requirements. The design manual and code updates will be implemented Jan. 1 of the new year.

Tawni Dalziel, the city’s senior stormwater program manager, said one of the major changes that will affect future development will be the design of stormwater ponds.

“Early on, we got feedback from many people in the public that our stormwater ponds could use some beautification, could use some more native plants and could look a lot less boxy. So we have incorporated some requirements with any new ponds that are constructed in the city,” Dalziel said. “We’ll have minimum requirements making them curvilinear instead of rectangular in shape. We’ve had some requirements about the slopes associated with them so they’re not all vertical walls dropping down, and then [requirements for] using some native vegetation planting around them. Hopefully these stormwater ponds will look more incorporated into the natural environment rather than an eyesore or an afterthought to the environment.”

For the Low Impact Development code updates, Dalziel said city staff held a number of stakeholder meetings with community members and designers who use the codes, with the goal of gathering feedback on how to make codes more user-friendly.

“The feedback we got from the stakeholder committee meetings was that some of the codes were poorly written and they didn’t have as much flexibility in order for designers to implement them,” Dalziel said. “We created a graduated scale of points and clarified many of our techniques, so we’re hoping with the feedback from the stakeholder meetings that the developers and designers will be more incentive-based.”

Dalziel acknowledged that the process to generate interest and engagement regarding topics like stormwater and development code proved difficult at times.

She credited the Sammamish Stormwater Stewards group for providing feedback that the city otherwise may not have considered.

“We are trying to mimic as much as possible the natural runoff conditions for stormwater and this helps with reducing flooding, improving water quality and thus in turn improving habitat for fish within our lakes and our streams,” Dalziel said.

Cheryl Paston, the city’s deputy director of Public Works, said the reasons to stay current with protecting surface water quality went beyond the city’s ecological requirement.

“It gives us opportunities to educate people on what they can do either personally at their home or at their businesses, and also help educate the kids as they come along. That’s a constant need,” Paston said.