There is a new danger to Greenville’s water system if development occurs and runoff goes directly into the waterway called Bruce Lake, an impervious surface that does nothing to clean the pollutants but only conducts these pollutants down stream. This is in direct violation of an existing Bruce Lake covenant prohibiting certain types of development.
Frank Holleman, Senior Attorney at Southern Environmental Law Center, walked the property to evaluate the natural resources on the proposed building site. Naturaland Trust just secured title to 8 plus acres that runs through the middle of the apartment complex on Old Buncombe along a stream down to Nora Drive. It has populations of Bunched Arrowhead on it. That area is just 2000 feet away from Bruce Lake.
Bruce Lake is a largely undisturbed ecosystem consisting of more than 15 acres of wooded buffers with stable, wetland-type habitat and emergent vegetation, including alder, buttonbush, cattail and rushes, according to a survey conducted by The South Carolina Native Plant Society in February. More than 3000 feet of wooded lake buffers surround the lake, providing spawning and rearing habitat for fish, amphibians, birds, invertebrates and microorganisms. In freshwater ecosystems like this one, each plays a role in filtering out pollutants and contributing to clean water downstream from the area.
The destruction of vegetative shoreland buffers will remove natural barriers essential for wildlife habitat and water quality. The inevitability for dead zone conditions on and around the Bruce Lake waterway is likely to occur when major rain events coincide with the warmest temperatures and stormwater runoff.
The Bruce Heights Community could begin petitioning the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to limit storm runoff into Bruce Lake. The petition is for a determination pursuant to 40 C.F.R. § 122.26 that discharges of stormwater contribute to violations of water quality standards in the water system and requires permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”). The facts and the law, as developed by the EPA, require that unpermitted discharges must be subject to regulation under the NPDES permit program in order to restore and protect the water quality of Bruce Lake and downstream water systems.