At their meeting on Monday, City Council gave approval to a plan to daylight Butterfly Branch, a spring-fed stream that has been piped underground through the neighborhood for decades. An important part of the Northside Initiative, plans call for the creek to run through the neighborhood from VCOM to the proposed site of the new TK Gregg Center, currently the location for Oakview Apartments.
Ninety percent of funding for the project would come from the Federal Aviation Administration, as part of the environmental impact mitigation required by the City's planned runway extension at the Downtown Memorial Airport, which will require a nearby creek to be piped and covered. Federal wetlands protection regulations require the City to mitigate the impact to this stream by purchase of mitigation credits or by the construction of a qualifying offsite stream protection project.
What does all that mean? Today on the podcast, we've got City Manager Ed Memmott on to give us the details. Listen below and enjoy!