How to kill a Louisville stream? Build a city around it

• A Floyds Fork cleanup plan remains tied up in the bureaucracy, four years after a draft was completed.
• MSD is working on plans to open a large area of southeast Jefferson County to large-scale development.
• New planning effort underway to reach consensus on Floyds Fork area growth and development.
• Parklands of Floyds Fork expects 3 million visitors this year.

Most Louisville creeks and streams have long been in terrible condition.

Some were buried and built over. Others were converted to drainage ditches. Portions of Beargrass Creek flow through concrete channels. 

But not Floyds Fork.

It could be called Louisville's least damaged stream, even with its documented problems of bacteria that could give a kayaker an infection or pollutants that fuel the growth of green slimy mats of oxygen-depleting algae.

"It's worth fighting for," said Ward Wilson, the executive director of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a statewide advocacy group. "We want that stream to be clean ... and people happily playing and frolicking in the creek, with fish jumping," he said.

But "the Fork," which already gets much of its flow from the discharge from sewage treatment plants, is at a critical juncture. Its Clean Water Act protection is stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire — the stream's future tied to the fate of the last, large area of Jefferson County not already fully developed.

Related:Farmers saw statewide threat from Floyds Fork cleanup effort

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One of the surest ways to kill a stream is to build a city around it. Replacing forests and fields with asphalt and roofing prevents rain from naturally filtering into the ground. So it washes off buildings, lawns, parking lots and roads, carrying ecologically damaging fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria and sediment into the water.

After being hit hard by the recession that began in 2007, developers are once again looking to the rural southeast corner of Jefferson County for building new subdivisions. And the Metropolitan Sewer District is actively exploring how to accommodate them, which potentially could allow development of five homes per acre.

Yet despite the city and federal governments spending nearly $1 million of taxpayer money on various Floyds Fork studies going back a decade, there's still no agreement on how to improve the creek's water quality. 

Or how to protect the $125 million investment of public and private funds that built the new and hugely popular 20-mile-long Parklands of Floyds Fork.

More: Parklands reaches 1 million visitors in 2016

Or how to avoid other development concerns, such as traffic congestion.

Consider:

• A $362,000 effort led by Kentucky Waterways Alliance to build consensus on a voluntary plan to manage the Floyds Fork watershed blew up in 2008 when another environmental group, Floyds Fork Environmental Association, sued all participants and claimed it was shut out of the process. The group lost in court.
• A $420,000 water pollution cleanup plan — a road map, of sorts, to show what it would take for Floyds Fork to meet federal clean-water standards — begun in 2007 ground to a halt in 2014 after agriculture interests raised technical questions and turned the effort into a statewide farming concern.
•  A blueprint for development in the area put together with the help of a Philadelphia consultant and area residents proposed limited growth east of Floyds Fork and various town centers. But that $100,000 project was abandoned by Metro government nine years ago, with officials blaming a lack of consensus.

Metro Louisville planners now project thousands of new residents in the area east of Floyds Fork by 2040, a 50 percent to 65 percent increase.

The question is whether that growth will be well-planned enough to avoid the kinds of costly problems that have damaged other local waterways. MSD since 2005 has been forced to spend nearly $1 billion to help make up for the community's past sins in many of those areas, curbing sewage overflows and making urban areas more like a sponge to soak up and naturally filter dirty stormwater.

Some of that spending has also helped Floyds Fork.

"I understand we are not going to shut down development and nobody wants to shut down development," said Dr. Steve Henry, a former Jefferson County commissioner and lieutenant governor whose Future Fund Inc. land trust has protected about 4,000 acres along or near Floyds Fork since the early 1990s through land and conservation easement buys.

"We just need these studies to be done to tell us the best way to proceed," he said. "We need to slow down and watch what we are doing."

More: Final phase of The Parklands opens

New planning effort

Louisville planning officials said they will try one more time starting this summer to reach consensus on development in the Floyds Fork area, with the support of Stuart Benson, a Republican who represents the area on the Louisville Metro Council. That project's budget is $200,000, with $50,000 coming from Benson's discretionary fund.

"We've built so many things in our city without thinking, 'What's this going to do?'" Benson said. "You only get one time to do something right."

Benson explained why he believes there's been gridlock.

"There are a ton of people who have lived out there forever, and they don't want to see anything change,"  Benson said. "And you've got a lot of people with different views."

Jeff Frank, a former president and executive director of Future Fund, said there is a lack of trust in local government's checks on development and the state's commitment to follow through on clean-water planning.

"There are firmly held beliefs and deep respect and love for this place that a lot of us call home," said Frank, who in June formed a new group, Friends of Floyds Fork, to build a coalition and press for a waterway cleanup. "It's founded on the fact that it's not an urban jungle. We have night sky. We have wildlife."

He said there are ways to build that "won't kill the creek," while observing that elsewhere, Jefferson County has a lot of experience "overbuilding and paying the price."

More: The Parklands now boasts canoe rentals

Land-use attorney Bill Bardenwerper, who frequently represents developers, said growth was always envisioned to occur along with the development of the Parklands of Floyds Fork. He said it can be done in a responsible way, under the tougher rules that exist now compared to the past.

He also said Louisville needs to confront growth threats from Southern Indiana now that the new Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Ohio River is open. He said he'd rather see that additional growth and the tax revenue it brings staying in Kentucky.

Develop Louisville Director Deborah Bilitski said the goal for the Floyds Fork area is "appropriate development harmonious with nature."

Cleanup plan stalls

The 62-mile-long waterway begins in Henry County near Smithfield and winds its way through eastern Louisville to the Salt River near Shepherdsville in Bullitt County. Its watershed drains 284 square miles in six Kentucky counties, and state officials are quick to point out what happens in all those counties — not just Jefferson — affects its water quality.

Louisville resident Mike Bukayo first fished the Fork 30 years ago and now frequently paddles through the Parklands of Floyds Fork.

"When we are out on the water, there is the solitude of being in nature," he said. "You don't realize you are in Jefferson County, the most populated county in the state. It's just me and some friends ... with the blue herons and the turtles.

"It would be great to see people continue trying to get all the waterways, starting with Floyds Fork or Beargrass, to where people in the community can enjoy the water and all it has to offer," he said.

Federal clean water rules require that the Kentucky Division of Water — or the EPA working with the state — prepare cleanup plans for waterways that fail to meet their designated uses, such as swimming, wading, boating or fishing.

Those plans are called TMDL's and calculate a waterway's "total maximum daily load" of pollution — a budget, of sorts, needed to keep or restore water quality. These plans have few teeth but can be used by state officials in setting pollution limits at sewage treatment plants or other facilities.

Pushed by the threat of a lawsuit in 2010 from Henry's organization that argued such a plan was long overdue, the EPA in 2011 announced that it had hired the consulting firm Tetra Tech to help figure out how much pollution Floyd Fork could assimilate without causing problems.

The plan to address bacteria was completed, and Peter Goodmann, the division of water's director, praised MSD for getting rid of poorly performing neighborhood treatment plants and the often-overflowing Jeffersontown treatment plant. He said other counties in the watershed are also working on their own measures to cut water pollution that eventually makes it way to Floyds Fork.

"We are trying to make that stream whole," he said.

But six years later, a review by the Courier-Journal of hundreds of pages of emails, meeting minutes and other government documents obtained under the Kentucky Open Records law and the federal Freedom of Information Act, shows that a second, vital cleanup plan for stream-damaging nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus screeched to a halt by 2014 after agriculture interests turned it into a statewide concern for farmers.

Those nutrients cause algal blooms, which can mess up nature's food web and deplete life-giving oxygen.

"Floyds Fork was a target, in our opinion, of setting a precedent" for waterways around Kentucky that could unfairly hurt farmers, said Spencer County farmer Scott Travis, who is active in the Kentucky Farm Bureau and followed the process closely. He said farmers wanted to make sure the Floyds Fork plan was done properly and contended that the computer modeling done for the plan by Tetra Tech was flawed.

Tetra Tech did not respond to requests for comment by email or phone. 

Goodmann agreed that the computer modeling for the plan was flawed, but also said the numbers were showing effluent from sewage treatment plants — not farms — as the more significant problem. 

Still, in an interview, he said the Tetra Tech model had been abandoned with the consent of the EPA. But after the Courier-Journal sought corroboration through open records requests and the EPA, Goodmann later in an email softened his criticism of the model, saying the EPA was revising it. The model is to be turned over to Kentucky later this year for completion, he said.

Others defended the effort.

"I hate to question motives, but if somebody is not wanting to go forward, the model is the easiest thing to attack," Wilson said.

Growth constraints

Part of the state's struggle has been staffing, the records show.

And Goodmann acknowledged the division he oversees still has nobody equipped to do that kind of technical work. But he said a staffer will be sent out for training this summer.

Frank said he believes the delay was in large part because the modeling has revealed the seriousness of the pollution problem and how it could potentially limit growth.

"The real answer is (the state) didn't like the model's results," he claimed, adding that Friends of Floyds Fork wants to make sure the state and EPA complete what they started after the Future Fund lawsuit.

Even though the state has not released the work done by Tetra Tech, partial summaries of it have been posted on websites. Frank's assessment is that Floyds Fork cannot afford any increase in nitrogen or phosphorus, and in fact, large reductions of those pollutants from sewage treatment plants will be needed.

University of Kentucky's Lindell Ormsbee agreed. He is director of the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute and oversaw a public engagement process for Floyds Fork while the EPA was working on its cleanup plan and is familiar with some of the Tetra Tech data.

For the Courier-Journal, Ormsbee and a student in June conducted a new analysis of pollution sources and limits for Floyds Fork.

While there is still a lot of uncertainty, Ormsbee said "the reduction (of nutrients) needed would likely be significant" and that "increased development is likely to put additional pressure on the watershed."

While farm run-off generally gets a pass under the Clean Water Act, sewage treatment plants don't.

That likely means more pressure on MSD, even as it seeks to accommodate more growth, including the prospects of a nearly 1,400-home subdivision with 18 acres of commercial development in the rural area east of Floyds Fork near Fisherville that has no sewer service.

The cleanup plan would help dictate how and whether that can occur and at what cost to MSD customers, said Brian Bingham, MSD's operation's chief, who said the agency would like the results "much sooner than later."

He said developers are interested in building in southeast Jefferson County, which is now zoned for one home every 5 acres.

With sewers — and MSD has a pumping station planned along Floyds Fork that could make that happen — the zoning would automatically change to five homes for every acre absent of any new requirements that might come out of new Floyds Fork area planning.

A planning and zoning process determines growth patterns — not MSD, Bingham said.

"We intend to allow development to occur and treat (sewage) to the highest level possible," he said. "We will do whatever we need to do to work with the state to bring that watershed into compliance."

Park as growth magnet

Larger rivers are better able to absorb the treated discharge from sewage plants, and MSD explored a long-term solution of joining with other surrounding counties to construct a big, regional sewage treatment plant in the Fort Knox area on the Salt River near the Ohio River.

But a 2015 study found its $561 million to $643 million price too costly. Benson said he believes a plant like that will need to be constructed some day to accommodate growth and protect the Fork.

"We just have to keep on plugging along," he said. "We need to make sure we can get rid of all our waste."

Developers of the big proposed development, called Covington by the Park, pulled it from consideration by Metro Louisville planners last year. But Bardenwerper, who represents the developers, said he expects to refile at some point. 

"We've always been assured by MSD they can address this issue," he said, adding that in the long run, sewage treatment is better than private septic tanks now used by homes across that southeast Jefferson County landscape.

No institution perhaps has more to gain or lose as 21st Century Parks, whose Parklands of Floyds Fork expects to attract 3 million visitors this year. The Fork is the park's spine. Dan Jones, the chairman and chief executive officer of  21st Century Parks, declined a request for an interview through a spokeswoman.

In a written statement Jones said "we will continue our conservation efforts" and "work that supports the ecology of both Floyds Fork and the lands surrounding it." 

The Parklands itself is a new growth magnet, said Peter Bodnar III, co-chair of the Floyds Fork Environmental Association. "There will be increasing pressure to build in front of every park entrance."

He described his association's lawsuit that stopped watershed planning as "water under the bridge. We don't revisit it at all."

Others still bring it up, however, saying its sting was strong.

Goodmann acknowledged it's been hard to find common ground.

"It's a complicated mess of people who work together or against each other to try to get something done," Goodmann said.

He said the state has a long-term commitment to Floyds Fork and encouraged people to take a long view.

"We have this modern American view that you just turn on a switch and everything changes."

He said "enormous progress" has been made over the last couple of decades. "And we are about to make more progress," he added.

"We are at a tipping point," countered Frank. "It's not like Floyds Fork is yuck, toxic or beyond saving," he said. "But if we build the way we've been building, we will kill the creek."

Reach reporter James Bruggers at 502-582-4645 and at jbruggers@courier-journal.com.