The City of Cartersville is soliciting proposals from design-build firms to design and construct the Walnut Grove Trail Reroute behind the Cartersville Water Treatment Plant. The project is to include 8-feet wide, 5-foot thick concrete trail with approximately 2,010-feet long, along with a footbridge across Pettit Creek. Trail will maintain a 75-foot buffer from the creek. Footbridge will consist of 60-foot x 8-feet wide timber boardwalk with HDPE decking and concrete abutments. Project will include all clearing, grading and finishing work with erosion control. Our future trail will be located in the floodplain and a bridge will be required to crossover a floodway. This will need to be addressed and permitted correctly. The project and bridge installation will need to meet the requirements found in Chapter 7.5 Development Regulations of our Municode. Article VI of this chapter is our Floodplain Management/Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance. All items regarding the floodplain/floodway can be found in this section. However, other items such as general design, soil erosion and pollution control, stream buffers and post-construction stormwater management are found in varying articles within Chapter 7.5. I think it would be a good idea to put text that addresses that all work and design are to meet the requirements found in Chapter 7.5 of our Municode. For Floodway requirements with a bridge, see the section below found in Article VI: (e) Floodway encroachments. Located within areas of special flood hazard are areas designated as floodway. A floodway may be an extremely hazardous area due to velocity floodwaters, debris or erosion potential. In addition, floodways must remain free of encroachment in order to allow for the discharge of the base flood without increased flood heights. Therefore, the following provisions shall apply: (1) Encroachments are prohibited, including earthen fill, new construction, substantial improvements or other development within the regulatory floodway, except for activities specifically allowed in subsection (e)(2) below; (2) Encroachments for bridges, culverts, roadways and utilities within the regulatory floodway may be permitted provided it is demonstrated through hydrologic and hydraulic analyses performed in accordance with standard engineering practice that the encroachment will not result in any increase to the pre-project base flood elevations, floodway elevations, or floodway widths during the base flood discharge.
