Water + Stormwater

PHILADELPHIA — The city of Philadelphia announced a plan to spend $1.6 billion on best management practices such as rain gardens, green roofs, and porous pavement to manage stormwater and reduce combined sewer overflows, according to an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Botanic Garden produced an online video—Reduce Runoff: Slow It Down, Spread It Out, Soak It In—that highlights green techniques to help manage stormwater runoff. The film showcases green techniques that are being used in urban areas to reduce the effects of stormwater runoff on the quality of downstream receiving waters. The goal is to mimic the natural way water moves through an area before development by using design techniques that infiltrate, evaporate, and reuse runoff close to its source.

Working with a blank canvas for its new corporate headquarters in Chattanooga, Tenn., AquaShield, Inc., is demonstrating a sustainable approach to water management by using various stormwater treatment and water conservation technologies for the new building and site design.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a targeted effort to apply more stringent controls on stormwater pollution in the Charles River watershed in Eastern Massachusetts, where stormwater containing high levels of phosphorus is a chief culprit in dramatic algae blooms—including toxic cyanobacteria—that have plagued the river in recent years. The EPA action will require certain industrial, commercial, and residential facilities in the towns of Milford, Franklin, and Bellingham, Mass., with two or more acres of impervious area (parking lots, roofs, roadways, et cetera) to operate under a Clean Water Act permit.

Radical changes to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s stormwater program are necessary to reverse degradation of fresh water resources and ensure progress toward the Clean Water Act’s goal of "fishable and swimmable" waters, according to a new report from the National Research Council. To provide meaningful regulation, all stormwater and other wastewater discharge permits should be based on watershed boundaries instead of political boundaries, the report says. Moreover, the program should integrate stormwater management and land management practices, and focus less on chemical pollutants in the stormwater and more on the increased flow of water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is issuing a new Stormwater Multi-Sector General Permit for an estimated 4,100 industrial facilities in 29 sectors to implement site-specific stormwater pollution prevention plans to protect water quality. Facilities are required to install control measures that meet established technology- and water quality-based effluent limits and must develop a stormwater pollution prevention plan.