It’s that time of year again: Abstracts for presentations at StormCon are almost due. StormCon, the North American Surface Water Quality Conference & Exposition, will take place August 1-5, 2010, in San Antonio, TX. The deadline for submissions this year is Wednesday, December 2, 2009-less than a week after the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and a busy time for many people-so here’s a reminder not to miss it.
StormCon 2010 will feature five conference tracks:
- BMP Case Studies
- Low-Impact Development
- Stormwater Program Management
- Water-Quality Monitoring
- Advanced Research Topics
You can see the full call for papers, with descriptions of each of the tracks, at www.stormcon.com, and you can also submit your abstract online. Presentations are 30-minutes long.
Whether you’re planning to speak at the conference, listen to others present, or look around the exhibit hall, you’ll be at the center of many lively debates in San Antonio. Much is happening in the areas of stormwater and erosion and sediment control, particularly with new actions from the EPA that will have repercussions for years to come.
For example, as we’re going to press with this issue, the EPA has just announced its Clean Water Act Enforcement Action Plan, drafted based on ideas the agency has received from the public. The EPA acknowledges that even though large point sources of pollution have been quite successfully brought under control, the problems of nonpoint-source pollution and uneven enforcement are still threatening water quality.
The plan proposes, in broad terms, to target enforcement toward smaller sources of pollution such as animal feeding operations and nonpoint sources such as stormwater runoff, as well as to “intensify vigorous civil and criminal enforcement against traditional end-of-pipe pollution.” It also proposes to make sure states enforce clean water laws more evenly, and to “improve transparency and accountability” so the public is better informed about where water-quality violations are occurring and what’s being done about it. The agency hopes to take better advantage of existing information technology to identify and track problems. You can read more about the plan at www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/cwa/cwaenfplan.html.
This and other regulatory issues-the construction-site effluent limitation guidelines, for one, the final version of which is due to be released in December, and the EPA’s recent proposal to extend the stormwater construction general permit by one year-are sure to be discussed at StormCon: lauded, vilified, and examined from every angle. Make plans now to be in on the action!
