New Storm Water Management Ideas Gain Steam

Forget about channeling storm water from parking lots and rooftops into retention ponds, which can become cesspools of bacteria and pollutants.

Forget about installing storm water drains and treatment plants that dump treated water into streams and rivers.

Forget about creating subdivisions with manicured lawns that slope toward wide streets bound by gutter systems.

According to a recent article in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, many experts now believe the key to storm water control is to deal with it where it falls.

“We’ve forgotten how the landscape functions in this whole water-balance thing,” Larry Coffman, president of a Virginia environmental consulting firm, told Brunswick County, N.C., commissioners, developers and members of the Lockwood Folly River Watershed Roundtable at a recent workshop.

Formations such as grassed swales and grassy depressions in the land do a better job of protecting water quality in rivers than the solutions we have engineered over the past 30 years, Coffman said.

Grouped under the banner of low-impact development, these solutions work with natural hydrology and land contours to allow storm water to be absorbed into the ground. Once there, it is cleaned by bacteria and filtered into aquifers and through riverbanks to recharge the environment from which it evaporated in the first place.

This information is particularly important to commissioners and members of the Lockwood Folly River Watershed Roundtable. The group was formed last year to recommend storm water rules aimed at restoring shellfish populations that have been lost to pollution from runoff. Commissioners will try to take the group’s recommendations and shape them into ordinances that make the watershed’s storm water control systems a model for others to follow.

A low-impact pilot project is likely, but it needs to get under way as soon as possible. The Lockwood Folly watershed is currently the fastest developing area in Brunswick County, with more than 25,000 homesites already approved.

Low-impact techniques can be retrofitted over engineered storm water controls, but there’s likely to be debate over who will pay the additional cost.

Developer reluctance shouldn’t be a problem in up-front low-impact development, though. While it may require more planning before the land is purchased, it is less expensive than engineered storm water controls, and the landscaping it creates is a selling point to potential buyers.

Even existing state and federal regulations, which are written to require engineered storm water controls, might be ready for a new direction, said Todd Miller, executive director of the Coastal Federation, which helped to organize the roundtable efforts.

Existing regulations already allow alternative controls with special approval, he said, and the Lockwood Folly project is using Environmental Protection Agency funds to develop a new way to protect water quality.

What’s important now, Coffman said, is to get developers and regulators together to agree on solutions all are comfortable with. And to educate the public to see the new controls as a better way for the future.

Source: Myrtle Beach Sun News