Last month, EPA indicated a change of direction in its long-awaited stormwater rulemaking–namely, that it’s no longer pursuing a national rule at all. The agency is taking other actions instead to work toward some of the same goals it apparently hoped the rule would achieve.
EPA’s own webpage on the stormwater rulemaking summarizes the change: “EPA is updating its stormwater strategy to focus now on pursuing a suite of immediate actions to help support communities in addressing their stormwater challenges and deferring action on rulemaking to reduce stormwater discharges from newly developed and redeveloped sites or other regulatory changes to its stormwater program,” the site states. “EPA will provide incentives, technical assistance, and tools to communities to encourage them to implement strong stormwater programs; leverage existing requirements to strengthen municipal stormwater permits; and continue to promote green infrastructure as an integral part of stormwater management. EPA believes this approach will achieve significant, measurable, and timely results in reducing stormwater pollution and provide significant climate resiliency benefits to communities.”
Based on this statement, it sounds as though EPA will be relying on voluntary efforts by local jurisdictions, rather than on the strong enforcement authority a new rule might have provided. However, much of the emphasis is the same. We’ve covered in past issues of Stormwater and on our website some of the things that were expected to be included in the new stormwater rule, based on comments I’d heard from EPA representatives at various conferences and industry events. At StormCon 2011, for example, an EPA spokesman said that integrating green infrastructure into project designs would be a major element of the rule, and this recent statement indicates green infrastructure is still an important priority. In fact, the 2015 federal budget request includes $5 million, plus additional staff, to support green infrastructure programs.
Finding guidance to implement such measures, though, can be challenging. Acknowledging that no national standard is imminent, Andrew Reese, who has published several articles on green infrastructure in Stormwater, writes, “Various states, regions, and cities are in the throes of trying to figure out what to tell developers and redevelopers to do for proper GI sizing.” His article “Green Infrastructure Sizing Criteria Development” will appear in our July/August issue.
The original impetus for the new stormwater rule was EPA’s 2010 settlement with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to strengthen the stormwater program, and it’s not clear at this point what the legal implications will be with regard to that original settlement. The agency is beset from both sides: environmental groups pushing for a strong national rule, and developers and business organizations opposing much of what such a rule would contain; often these competing interests play out in court. For now, focusing on what can reasonably be accomplished, and concentrating on working more closely at the state and local levels to encourage strong programs, seems to me a worthy direction. The agency’s comments do not, of course, eliminate the possibility of a new rule in the future.
How do you view EPA’s change of direction? Will it prompt effective local action, or ultimately weaken local stormwater programs? Leave a comment below.
Janice Kaspersen
Janice Kaspersen is the former editor of Erosion Control and Stormwater magazines.
