BRADENTON BEACH – The City of Bradenton Beach will continue designating swimming pools as impervious surfaces, but city officials are working on an exception for properties that lack the space required to install a pool that’s fully compliant with city code.
Impervious surfaces don’t allow rainwater to drain downward through them. Pervious surfaces do and they play an important role in a property’s ability to retain, filter and discharge rainwater without overflowing onto adjacent properties.
The city’s Land Development Code (LDC) allows a maximum lot coverage of 40 percent. This means no more than 40 percent of the residential property can be covered with impervious surfaces. Impervious surfaces include the house or primary structure, paved driveways, parking pads, sidewalks, concrete patios, sheds and other accessory structures.
City code also requires 30 percent of the property to be left as open space and at least 17.5 percent to be used for stormwater retention.
In February 2018, the City Commission voted 3-2 to designate swimming pools as impervious surfaces. Commissioners Jake Spooner and Ralph Cole opposed the decision, but Mayor John Chappie and Commissioners Marilyn Maro and Randy White felt it would help reduce the size of the vacation rental homes built in residential neighborhoods.
At the time, Spooner said developers would still find ways to install pools, but residents who wanted to add pools to their existing homes would be prevented from doing so. Chappie scheduled the Jan. 22 work meeting discussion on impervious pools in response to Spooner and Cole’s requests to revisit that 2018 decision.
“This would be an exception for existing properties, where they cannot put the pool under the building.” – Steve Gilbert, Bradenton Beach Building Official
During the work meeting, it was noted that developers often install pools underneath the new elevated homes being built, which means they don’t count as additional impervious surfaces. Pools or portions of pools built outside the building footprint count as impervious surfaces when calculating lot coverage.
Spooner said installing pools underneath houses creates an echo effect and produces more noise for neighbors. Cole said the evaporating pool water contains chlorine that corrodes the building materials and the additional moisture is conducive to mold.
Regarding stormwater retention, the concern is that pools can fill up with water during heavy and prolonged rains and then overflow onto neighboring properties.
Building Official Steve Gilbert and City Engineer Lynn Burnett said the impervious pool designation could be maintained with an exception that allows property owners with limited space to install a pool if additional stormwater mitigation steps are taken. Gilbert said this could be accomplished by requiring the installation of an underground infiltration and drainage system next to the pool.
“This would be an exception for existing properties, where they cannot put the pool under the building. This would be an exception that lets them mitigate that by doing additional infiltration as necessary for new construction or as necessary for existing construction,” Gilbert said. “Pools are impervious, except if open space and poolside infiltration system requirements are met.”
Reducing impervious space
Gilbert and Burnett said property owners can also be issued a building permit for a pool if they reduce existing impervious surfaces. This can be accomplished by replacing paved driveways and parking areas with driveway strips that allow drainage in the unpaved areas between the strips. Sidewalks, concrete patios and pads and accessory structures can also be removed to create more pervious space.
“We’re not asking them to meet today’s code. We’re asking them to reduce the non-conformity to the extent possible,” Gilbert said.
“As long as they’re decreasing the non-conformity, then we can issue a permit,” Burnett said.
When asked, Gilbert said no pool permit applications have been denied because of last year’s impervious pool designation.
Gilbert and Burnett share the opinion that the LDC does not clearly define what open space is and what type of landscaping materials should be used in the required open spaces. They feel this also needs to be addressed.
“This seems like it will work. People are going to be able to retrofit a pool and the drainage is going to be improved overall,” Spooner said of the proposed changes.
The commission directed Burnett to continue working on this issue and Gilbert said it would be two or three months before the proposed changes are presented to the commission for final adoption.
