From L to R: Kim Jones, Andrew Reese, Gordon England, Scott Taylor, Michael Bloom
August 3, 2010 - As part of a special opening general session of the recent StormCon conference held in San Antonio, Texas, AAWRE Diplomates Gordon England, P.E., D.WRE, Andrew Reese, P.E., LEED AP, D.WRE, and Scott Taylor, P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE participated as panelists to discuss the current state of issues in stormwater, stormwater regulations and management, and the future of stormwater. Other participants on the panel included Professor Kim Jones, Ph.D., Chair of Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Michael Bloom, P.E., CFM, BCEE, CPSWQ, senior engineer at PBS&J. The special panel discussion was moderated by Glenn Rink, President of AbTech Industries, Inc.
Gordon England has over 31 years of experience in stormwater management in both the public and private sectors. His experience includes stormwater master plans, modeling, stormwater utility creation and management, and grant acquisition. His 10 years as lead engineer with Florida’s Brevard County Stormwater Utility and tenure as senior engineer for the Bahamian Ministry of Works gives him a thorough understanding of municipal operations and perspectives. Gordon is a recognized leader in the selection and design of innovative stormwater BMPs and serves as an editorial advisor to Stormwater magazine and on several task committees for the Environmental Water Resources Institute.
Andrew J. Reese, principal engineer and vice president, AMEC Earth & Environmental Inc., has over 30 years experience in a wide variety of stormwater management, water resources, hydraulic and hydrologic engineering, and management roles. He earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Cornell University and has master’s degrees in business administration from Boston University and hydraulic engineering from Colorado State University. Mr. Reese has worked in all 50 states, responsible for assignments covering highly technical modeling and criteria development to stakeholder group facilitation and stormwater utility implementation. He is known as a leading expert in municipal stormwater program development, NPDES permitting, LID and green infrastructure design and planning, and stormwater program and funding implementation.
Scott Taylor is a senior vice president with RBF Consulting, headquartered in Irvine, CA. He earned a BSCE from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona and an MSCE from California State University at Long Beach, both with an emphasis in water-resources engineering. With over 24 years of experience in flood-control engineering and surface water quality, he has taught undergraduate courses in hydrology and hydraulic design at the University of California at Irvine and California State University at Long Beach as well as continuing education courses in BMP design for the American Society of Civil Engineers. He additionally serves as an instructor and course coordinator for a P.E. license review course.
PREAMBLE: Without leading the witnesses and to get things rolling let’s start with a very open ended and broad question...
QUESTION 1: What do you believe the future of stormwater management will be in the United States?
Andrew Reese: We can’t be all that smart because we agreed to be up here. Somebody out there has more insight about any one thing we will talk about and should be up here.
Culturally appropriate designs - there will be 30 million new Americans. Architecture will shift somewhat and we need to be able to shift BMPs to match and embrace more diversity in our own membership.
There will be 10,000 new residential dwelling units - is it really appropriate to put them all on one acre lots and convert 10,000 acres to SFR? The right measure may not be percent impervious per unit but total imperviousness per capita. We are a lot-by-lot culture but this cannot continue.
Climate change will involve more extreme intense rainfalls - yet this conference barely talks about flooding as if it were passé - it is not passé in Nashville right now, not in Somerville MA, etc.
Gordon England: Stormwater pollution control has 3 program components.
Kim Jones: Regulatory enhanced emphasis on non point source pollution control. Regulatory enthusiasm to fund innovative projects and demonstrations seems improved. Good approach but sustained funding will be needed. Partnerships between EPA, DEQs, communities, developers, land owners and universities will be essential. Innovation in BMPs, commitment, model development, regulatory flexibility will be essential. Call for hiring more hydrologic scientists and engineers within regulatory agencies; we still need biologists and chemists but scientific diversity will stimulate cooperative teamwork, reasonableness in objectiveness, innovation. Move away from Phase I and Phase II permitties acting alone-they can work together to form a coalition for watershed based permitting and water quality objectives– increased market for critical SW management technologies, diffuse these challenges and burdens and economy of the partnership.
Michael Bloom: Additional unfunded federal mandates. More stringent permit conditions. Lack of local resources. Some uncertainty about what is needed to address water quality concerns and what really works. I anticipate that we will continue to sort of muddle through, which is a lay person's description of adaptive management.
Scott Taylor: In a word, expensive, at least in the near term. We are on a regulatory path that is not sustainable, focusing on the end of pipe and minting TMDLs at an ever-increasing rate. We view regulations as the way to make things happen, but ultimately they are not flexible and constrain creativity. Currently we are attacking the urbanizing fringe with ever more prescriptive requirements, certainly not a comprehensive approach because the real problem is the built environment, and that is next. The urbanizing fringe solutions are not affordable in the built environment. We need to maximize the utility of existing assets in our fixes. We will need some comprehensive forward planning to get us affordably to our goals. Some of the elements that must be included in this planning:
PREAMBLE: After receiving some critical feedback on the state of their stormwater program from the General Accountability Office (GAO) and environmental groups, EPA commissioned the National Research Council to undertake a review of the program. The NRC published a 600 page report in the fall of 2008 with recommendations for substantial changes to the program, including the use of numeric benchmarks, increased monitoring, increased implementation of low impact development or green infrastructure, regulation of flow, and regulation of impervious area. Against this backdrop, the EPA announced in December, 2009 its intent to enter into a rulemaking process to establish a comprehensive program to reduce stormwater discharges from new development and redevelopment, and make other regulatory improvements to strengthen the stormwater program. There are many approaches being considered by the EPA to improve the program, including expanding the coverage of the beyond the census urbanized area boundary, establishing specific requirements for control of stormwater from new development and redevelopment, consolidating the Phase I and Phase II stormwater programs, requiring structural retrofit of treatment control BMPs, and establishing additional requirements for areas tributary to sensitive waterbodies.
QUESTION 2: If you were EPA, how would you choose to regulate stormwater?
Gordon England: National Research Council said current NPDES program is not working. True. Because stormwater is NONpoint and can not be regulated like point sources. EPA was told by NRC report reviewers at the time that an NPDES approach would not work.
EPA is trying to regulate stormwater under Section 402(p) to use a Residual Designation Authority to expand current program with numeric nutrient criteria, national construction effluent standards, national design criteria, etc. This is far exceeding the authority Congress intended in the 1987 amendments to Clean Water Act. NPDES methods of effluent controls at end of pipe only works is a legacy program from WWTP days, but does not work for stormwater. EPA needs to open the Clean Water Act and develop a program for regulating nonpoint sources that have intermittent flows based on rain, not continuous flows like a WWTP. The many diffuse sources of stormwater can not be effectively monitored because we cannot control loadings from the public. EPA should be regulating on a watershed basis, not end of pipe.
EPA’s current program puts the burden of developing and implementing programs for reducing stormwater impacts on local govt. Local government does not have manpower, the dollars, or training for these programs.
Clean Water Act should be amended to require states to implement enforceable nonpoint source programs based upon conditions and climate in that state. For instance in Florida we have wide range of climate from tropical conditions in south to forest in north. EPA is proposing Numeric Nutrient Criteria of .01 mg/L for TP and TN in lakes. These concentrations are lower than runoff from natural land and wetlands. This is bad science. Are we to retrofit our swamps?
A successful Federal program to follow is the Section 6217 Coastal Nonpoint Source Control Program already implemented in 11 states. This program requires states to set up stormwater control programs, not EPA. This type of program should be expanded to all states and require them to set their own programs based on local science and conditions. While EPA’s proposed one size fits all regulations for all states is the easiest method for them to regulate from Washington, it will be a failure and waste if tax dollars because it does not work for the diverse weather and ecosystems across the country. WPA should do the right and fair thing and open up the Clean Water Act to make scientifically sound rules.
Andrew Reese: The days to generic BMPs are passing fast - there will be more and more targeted, holistic approaches that copy Chesapeake Bay type initiatives - look to our Florida bretheren (again) for leadership in BMP designs targeted toward pollution.
We are like in the site detention days. Site based BMPs without neighborhood and watershed frameworks will prove to be less than effective. We need to take a harder look at the thinking of our planners and landscape architects and things like the Transect approach to stormwater design, where we balance percent imperviousness with actual costs of hydrologic mimicry and shift some of the burden to the land uses that can handle it.
Scott Taylor: We must regulate the urbanizing fringe, and I think we are on a reasonable path with LID approaches and evaluating hydromodification impacts. But we need a different approach for existing development. And we need to rethink the TMDL process - it is ultimately unaffordable. If I were EPA, I would invest much more of the program resources in Green Chemistry and true source control. Consider that there are over 23 million chemicals registered and 7 million of those commercially available. Also consider that the US generates or imports 42 billion pounds of industrial chemicals - per day. We cannot win this battle at the end of the pipe, or one chemical at a time through the TMDL process.
True source control is eliminating or replacing chemicals that become pollutants so that they do not end up in the environment. Replacing or eliminating key chemicals in the modern economy using tools such as green chemistry will be very costly - but ultimately much cheaper than a TMDL replicated all over the Country, I am certain of that. An example of this approach is playing out in Washington State and California where bills are either pending or have passed to ban copper in brake pads. Up to 50% of copper in urban area stormwater runoff can be attributed to vehicle brake pads. Changing the formulation will be much cheaper than installing and maintaining BMPs at the end of pipe to remove copper at micrograms per liter.
Kim Jones: Regulators can help by striving to be more flexible and stimulate innovation (I have noticed a slight shift change in working with TCEQ here in Texas over the years) but more is needed with more hydrologic scientists and engineers in the agencies - some ideas for consideration: air quality metrics for non attainment must occur over several years, not one grab sample. I thought that the flex air permit for some refining operations granted by TCEQ in Corpus Christi was innovative and, as a researcher, it helped me promote air biofiltration as a potential tool for low cost air treatment, where 99.99% removal would not be needed. Now EPA is revisiting all of that. I’m confused on that issue; we are getting mixed messages on that point.
There must be more strength of rule, enforcement for all NPS sectors to implement BMPs. 99% of those groups are part of the community, want to participate and do the right thing. But what about the big corporation like “Clucky’s” Chicken Farm?
From the EPA perspective, keep moving forward, help communities innovate and be cost effective in their approaches to water quality improvement.
Michael Bloom: I would keep it local and flexible and in conformance with EPA's current statutory authority.
Question 3: What impacts on practitioners, MS4s, consultants, vendors, do you anticipate seeing from these possible regulatory changes?
Gordon England: A lot of money will be made by consultants. They will have to model and permit pollutants as rigorously as they do for hydraulics in floodplains. This will require a lot more training. More costs and higher taxes for cities to:
Vendors will need to move beyond sediment devices and build better mousetraps to treat nutrients.
Scott Taylor: More work. This is a time a great flux in our industry. It is why I enjoy it. People that can innovate and collaborate will be the most successful. Let me give an example. Hydromodification is the latest ‘issue’ to be addressed in our MS4 permits. Cities and Counties are busy responding to permit provisions to develop ‘hydromodification management plans (HMPs)’ that will dictate what you must do on your development site to comply/mitigate – another pond.
What is needed is a new development model that integrates drainage, water quality, a biologist, environmental groups and planners to develop multi-objective solutions. And we must recognize that the solution will be different in existing urban areas as compared to the urbanizing fringe - for example providing mitigation in-stream. As I said, we need to use our existing assets in the development of solutions, not apply a one-size fits all regulation.
Andrew Reese: Regulatory creep seems to be happening from several directions. The Chesapeake Bay initiative followed closely on the heels of the Federal requirement under Section 438. Right behind that is the Washington DC draft MS4 permit. Other states have taken the course of meeting TMDL requirements through MS4 permits complete with mandatory implemention plans, volume-based requirements, and boutique BMPs tailored to deliver certain effluent standards for certain pollutants.
Now there is a move afoot in congress to bring back the Clinton era TMDL, implementation requirements apart from other permit machinery. In addition, Green Infrastructure mandates seem to be popping up everywhere.
Kim Jones: Opportunities will exist for “redevelopment” of urban land - one estimate 42% of current urban land use will be redeveloped by 2030 - pervious paving and other methods should develop an improved market. Development of LID approaches that are robust, low maintenance and renewable after the “the big event” will be a priority. BMP development focused on reduced NPS flows should receive increased emphasis and improved market share, but sediment and nutrient removal will remain a priority. Expanded datasets and improved models for LID approach evaluation for decision makers should be developed, as monitoring funding will become more scarce. Effluent trading or “water quality trading” or cap on a group of dischargers is an innovative concept and incentive based policy worth consideration for a watershed.
Michael Bloom: LID techniques are different and are more technical than traditional designs. Consultants and plan reviewers will need a bit more technical know-how to implement these approaches. Continuous simulation runoff modeling will become more widely used - if not directly, then indirectly - through the graphs or look up tables derived from continuous simulations.
Question 4: How do you see the effluent limitations guidelines for the construction and development point source category being implemented?
Scott Taylor: Everyone not holding an NPDES permit loves numbers. They are easy to administrate. In many ways, they are the future, and we should spend more time developing how we would like to comply rather than fighting their use - though that is important too.
For construction - numerics are here for turbidity (within 5 years everywhere), and that means you need to become an expert at erosion control. Sedimentation BMPs are fairly ineffective in controlling turbidity. Erosion control is the answer. Passive application of ‘green’ soil binders and amendments will be the only nearterm solution to comply with the ELGs. In the long term - let’s see what professionals working in a collaborative arrangement can come up with.
For development - We will need to develop alternative ways to comply with ELGs. Eliminating the source of a constituent will be one way. How many diazinon or lead TMDLs would there be nationally if these products were not phased out (or mostly for diazinon) of commercial use? We will need to develop regulatory approaches that allow programs to be in compliance with an ELG as long as they are actively implementing true source control or green chemistry approaches. For other more intractable issues, such as sanitary quality, we are going to have to look for more regional solutions.
Andrew Reese: We are also at the “10-year storm” level of volume-based hydrology with “one inch” and “90% storm”. We discovered then, we had better tools and took two steps - better on-site analysis and masterplanning of neighborhoods. We MUST make the shift to continuous simulation when we go to volume-based stuff. But we do not have to make each person do it - big brother can do it and derive simple approaches for the simple sites.
Preamble: Oscar Wilde said, “Public opinion is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and elevate it to the dignity of physical force.” In the past ten years we have managed the impossible. We have made stormwater management “sexy”! Before, it was a 30-day lesson in post-flood recovery and then years of neglect. But with the advent of the magic word “sustainable” and its less-educated cousin “green,” we can hitch our wagon to a supercharged electric car and ride off into the sunset knowing that what we do is relevant and able to be talked about at an LA cocktail party. At least we think so. But does the public agree? Can we deliver on the promises made?
Question 5: How would you describe the current or future level of societal support for stormwater management efforts? Will society eventually “get it”? Does it “get it” now?
Gordon England: Depends on where you are. Coastal states have better programs because the public sees the benefit of clean water on their fishing, swimming, and wetlands. Inland states don’t see and don’t care unless they have a lot of lakes like Michigan. This underscores the importance of the public education component of NPDES permits. People can become more aware and change. Look at the green movement in grocery stores with the little green bags.
Scott Taylor:I think society gets it now, but they are not willing to pay for it. The problem is that no one directly sees most of the problems, they are abstract. A zinc TMDL in an ephemeral stream is a hard sell to the public and to politicians. It is up to us to put things in terms people can appreciate. We all have dioxin in our bodies, every one of us. Is it harmful? We don’t fully know. We ultimately need to show that any pollution in the environment is harmful to us, and provide an affordable program to correct the problem - no one is interested in an unaffordable program, and I think everyone is interested in doing the right thing.
Kim Jones: MS4 permits require public education and outreach - this presents an opportunity for increased community involvement, programs for teachers, and classroom visits - Adult education is lacking. Can grass roots support cause improved implementation of SW management? Mid 1990s “Save our Springs” initiative in Austin, Texas was eventually supported by the Austin City Council.
I like the model of our A&M Kingsville University–LRGV cities partnership with schools, the Arroyo Colorado Watershed Protection Partnership. Maybe the kids speak to the parents, maybe they don’t, but our students from University can act as leaders and role models. Still have a long way to go, but the persons and communities are committed.
Michael Bloom: I don't think the public thinks storm water and water quality protection are sexy - yet. I'm pessimistic because I don't see and feel evidence of an engaged public. That said, I'm optimistic because they do care about carbon and climate change and energy use. I know change in public attitude can occur because it has happened with carbon. No one was talking about their carbon footprint a few years ago, now many people are.