Breaking Down the Barriers to Low Impact Development in Colorado

The KICP study has included development of a questionnaire that has been circulated to municipal staff, engineers, developers and other parties involved in the development review and approval process. As a part of the study, KICP has developed a checklist for use by developers and by municipal staff reviewing plans to identify potential opportunities for LID and to be sure that the relevant factors that can lead to success or failure of a LID approach are considered in the development review process. Checklists were applied to several proposed development projects to refine the checklists and to identify additional barriers to LID based on real world projects. This paper presents the results of the KICP study. Major components of the study discussed in this paper included the following: 1. Identification of potential barriers to design and implementation of LID practices. This was accomplished through a series of several meetings in which participants identified barriers they had encountered and through interviews with planners, engineers and developers. 2. Development of questionnaire based on barriers identified by the group. The questionnaire was distributed to municipal staff involved in KICP as well as to engineers and developers working in the KICP watersheds. The Homebuilders Association (HBA) of Metropolitan Denver also distributed the questionnaire to members of its water quality committee. 3. Identification of conceptual level strategies to address barriers identified as a part of the study.