so a month and $3000 later, the stupid drainage plan is done. This has been fantastic. Talked to city's engineer and despite the fact that our house is not more than 20% of the land we're putting on it, essentially the reason i got we needed a drainage plan was "because reasons."
Two civil engineers later, both of which said we did not need a drainage plan. Engineer 1 did our structural on the house, read the "Design criteria" that the city themselves put out for engineers and responds to me and says not only do we not need a drainage plan, based on the city's own design criteria, he refused to do the work it based on that.
Engineer 2, is straight off the "recommended" list from the city, i call him explain the situation and ask if he has worked with the city before, he says yes and he also says based on what i've told him, we don't need a drainage plan. He says he knows the city's engineer and that he will contact him, city engineer is flaky as fuck and wont answer until continually being emailed and called and he doesnt really give an explanation to my engineer. Moreover my engineer tries to get him to commit to what would be acceptable to the city, and this guy is your typical engineer saying yes or no one word answers to questions that require a longer answer than yes or no. So we do the drainage plan, without any guidance from the city engineer.
City says don't even bother submitting the drainage plan until its approved by the county drainage district. And for the first time in this whole process i found someone that works for a government agency with a brain that can accurately articulate a thought that makes sense. He tells me that the drainage district couldnt give a rats ass about a single family residence's drainage plan. He offers to write me a letter of "Imposed no objection" i accept. He then tells me i dont know why City keeps doing that, we don't require to review drainage plans on single family residences.
Our engineer included in the plans our impervious cover, including a 300ft long gravel driveway to the house, the house, all the covered porches etc we are less than 5% of impervious cover on the 5 acres. So i still stand by my original statement a month ago, fuck city government.
My dad's situation is even worse dealing with a different county and Houston, he was down at the city talking to someone in the drainage department, and the dude tells him based on his lot he's going to need a detention pond.... the catch being the lot itself is like 55x55 at most, its in the city in a neighborhood, there is no where to put a pond, they couldnt even fit a pool if they wanted one. He clearly didnt know how to read the plan and didnt know what the hell he was talking about.
I'm thoroughly convinced based on my dad and I's separate anecdotal experiences and sorry if some of you work for the government but other people are giving you a bad name, that if you can't hack it in the private sector, you go to work for the government.
Im all for following rules and guidelines and my wife and i dont want to skirt and rules or obligations, but the frustrating part is no one can tell us why we need it, and what a good solution would be.