Shortly after joining the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District (CCSWCD) in Maine in May 2016 as the stormwater program manager and district engineer, Aubrey L. Strause, P.E., would come to help administer one of her largest and most visible projects and the first of its kind in the United States: the Long Creek Restoration Project in Maine. The Long Creek watershed encompasses 3.5 square miles in a commercial and retail district located in four municipalities: Portland, Scarborough, South Portland, and Westbrook. The urban stream does not meet Class C water-quality standards.
In 2009, EPA exercised a rarely used Clean Water Act provision, the Residual Designation Authority (RDA). “The RDA required stormwater permitting for designated discharges in the Long Creek watershed with one or more acres of impervious cover,” says Strause. “This led to the establishment of the Long Creek Watershed Management District [LCWMD] through a very proactive public-private partnership between landowners and stakeholders, and developing a corresponding annual impervious cover fee.”
Today, nearly 140 participating properties are voluntarily engaged with the shared goal of implementing restoration efforts to achieve water-quality standards within Long Creek.
What She Does Day to Day
The CCSWCD serves as staff for the LCWMD, performing inspections of private property, providing focused education and outreach to participating landowners, coordinating routine maintenance such as street sweeping and catch basin cleaning in the watershed, and monitoring Long Creek water quality. “We also coordinate the design, permitting, construction, and maintenance of stormwater best management practices owned and managed by the LCWMD,” notes Strause.
Many of those BMPs were shared during the American Society of Civil Engineers/Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s International Low Impact Development Conference in Portland, ME. Strause also supports the Interlocal Stormwater Working Group, a coalition of 14 greater Portland communities permitted under the Maine municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) permit. As the district engineer, she supports many Cumberland County communities with training, planning, inspection, and technical tasks, developing or reviewing erosion and sedimentation control designs for residents and road associations around many of Maine’s famous lakes.
What Led Her Into This Line of Work
Strause spent a great deal of her childhood on her family’s dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. “I saw directly how upstream land use and activities impacted this critical water body,” she says.
Her interest in the value of preventing water pollution through good practices instead of merely mitigating it once it occurred led her to get two bachelor of science degrees in bioresource engineering from Rutgers University.
She worked for 15 years in private consulting, then formed her own company, Verdant Water, in 2013. Her consulting work included design of infrastructure repair and replacement, construction management, and stormwater compliance, primarily with MS4 permits in New England. From May 2012 through March 2016, Strause was a facilitator of the Central Massachusetts Regional Stormwater Coalition, a group of 30 Massachusetts communities subject to the Massachusetts MS4 permit.
She worked with the towns to identify ways to collaborate for clean water in a way that shared the costs of compliance, improved consistency, and strengthened relationships between municipal leaders and technical staff in the participating communities. “Every project I’ve worked on has provided the experience I use every day here at CCSWCD,” she says.
What She Likes Best About Her Work
“I love working on the Long Creek project: it’s a perfect mix of construction, legal, outreach, design, and monitoring components,” says Strause. ” It’s a dynamic project, different every day.”
Most of all, she likes working with other CCSWCD technical professionals “who are enthusiastic about water quality and dedicated to making a difference in the communities where they live.
“The personalities of our team are incredible. It’s a great fit for me, professionally and personally. I’m so grateful the opportunity became available.”
Her Biggest Challenge
Time management is her biggest challenge. “I work on complex projects with numerous stakeholders at CCSWCD. Keeping up with workload can be a challenge,” she says. “However, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love what I do, the towns and businesses I engage with, and the people I work with.”