Keeping Them Clean

Installing stormwater BMPs is only half the battle. Progressive communities build sound maintenance programs to keep those facilities functioning properly

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Stormwater NPDES permits require post-construction runoff controls for new developments. Getting those Best Management Practices (BMPs) in place can be a challenge, but it can be even more difficult to meet another permit requirement: inspecting and maintaining those BMPs to make sure they keep doing the job.

 

Forward-thinking municipalities have developed programs to keep BMPs clean and functional on public as well as private properties. For example, Montgomery County, Md., hires contractors to maintain BMPs on public land and follows up to make sure private landowners take proper care of their runoff-control facilities.

 

Meanwhile, the City of Red-mond, Wash., inspects BMPs on private lands to ensure compliance, and uses the city’s own maintenance crew to maintain publicly-owned BMPs. Both approaches have proven effective in extending the life of BMPs and helping to reduce runoff pollution.

 

Importance of care

NPDES permit requirements state that each permitted municipality must develop, implement, and enforce a Stormwater Manage-ment Program to reduce pollutants entering receiving waters. The program must include six minimum control measures:

• Public education and outreach

• Public participation/ involvement

• Illicit discharge detection and elimination

• Construction site runoff control

• Post-construction runoff control

• Pollution prevention/good housekeeping

 

Post-construction runoff control includes the installation of structural BMPs, such as wet ponds, constructed wetlands, underground detention and manufactured practices. Pollution prevention/good housekeeping included the inspection and maintenance of the structural BMPs.

 

In July 2008, the Center for Watershed Protection released Managing Stormwater in Your Community – A Guide for Building an Effective Post-Construction Program (EPA Publication No. 833-R-08-001), written by David J. Hirschman and John Kosco, P.E. This guide helps municipalities develop their storm-water management program.

 

“A great deal of effort is involved at the front end of developing a stormwater program,” the authors state. “Getting stormwater BMPs included on design plans and constructed properly in the field is a major accomplishment, but it is only the beginning of the actual life of the BMPs.

 

“Ongoing maintenance is needed to ensure that the BMPs will continue to perform as designed. In fact, lack of adequate maintenance is the primary shortcoming for most local stormwater programs across the country ... (A)s with any infrastructure, deferred maintenance can increase costs and negatively affect receiving waters; unmaintained BMPs will ultimately fail to perform their design functions and might become a nuisance or pose safety problems ... Therefore, developing and implementing an effective maintenance program is essential.”

 

The center has also identified several challenges that limited municipalities’ ability to establish effective inspection and maintenance programs. The challenges include:

• Lack of funding

• Uncertainty about the physical locations of BMPs

• Inability to track responsible parties

• Lack of dedicated inspection staff

• Designs that are not conducive to easy maintenance

• Lack of compliance and enforcement authority

• Owners unaware of their maintenance responsibilities

 

Despite these challenges, muni-cipalities across the country are establishing effective inspection and maintenance programs.

 

Different approaches

Montgomery County has 4,082 structural BMPs, of which 1,506 are maintained by the Department of Environmental Protection and 2,576 by private entities. “All of our inspection and maintenance work is handled by a contractor,” notes Amy Stevens, stormwater facility maintenance program manager. “We've been doing maintenance on privately-owned facilities since about 2003 when the program was started.”

The county maintains BMPs in rights-of-way, on county properties (such as libraries), on public school grounds and in local parks, along with residential BMPs that have been transferred to the county for structural maintenance. Two contractors handle all that maintenance, one covering facilities above-ground and the other underground.

 

“We issue work orders to them for maintenance, and they get paid under the stormwater utility,” says Stevens. “The remaining facilities are privately owned and privately maintained. When private contractors are paid by the private owners of the facilities, all we do is follow through to make sure the facility is brought back as close as possible to as-built standards.”

 

The City of Redmond is also at the forefront with its maintenance program for privately-owned storm-water systems. The city has 1,238 public and private stormwater facilities to be maintained. “Since the program started, it has been limited to private stormwater systems — the ones the city doesn't own — to keep the private systems up to city standards,” says Andy Rheaume, environmental planner.

“The city does the inspections and requires the owners to have the maintenance completed. We inspect and verify that the maintenance work was done, and we also receive a dump receipt from the maintenance contractor. We have one full-time employee who has been with the inspection and maintenance program since its inception in 1995.”

 

Counting benefits

Inspection and maintenance procedures for post-construction structural BMPs are prescribed in each municipality’s NPDES permit and therefore can vary. In Montgomery County, Stevens observes, “For all belowground stormwater facilities, we recommend that they are maintained on an annual basis to ensure structural integrity. We then do an inspection of the maintenance once it is completed.

 

“We only do a full inspection every three years. Once-per-year maintenance is pretty rigorous. It provides for better water quality, especially in a very urban environment. We found that once per year is what we need to do. It also ensures that any repairs needed get completed.”

 

Redmond requires inspections and maintenance for private systems twice a year. “For public systems, we must inspect every single catch basin by the permit cycle (five years) and clean them as appropriate,” Rheaume says. “All permittees are required to inspect and clean all the flow and water-quality treatment facilities on an annual basis, or more frequently if they recognize that they need to have them cleaned after major storm events.”

 

Both entities have seen a number of positive trends as a result of their efforts. “Our number of inspections is going up, and we would expect that, but our actual amount of repairs is going down,” Stevens says. “We believe there’s a direct correlation with the fact we’re doing routine maintenance.

 

“We’ll always have to do maintenance — it’s like any other kind of infrastructure, to ensure that it doesn’t depreciate. You want the BMPs to keep their value, so they have a long lifecycle. If you do the maintenance, you ensure the facilities have a lifecycle that is indefinite. If you don’t do the maintenance, the facility will fail, and then you will have to completely rebuild it or abandon it.

 

“A lot of jurisdictions are beginning to realize that when you put a stormwater facility in, you have the initial up-front capital costs. But if you don’t do your maintenance on a routine basis, your upkeep will far exceed your capital costs, because you will ultimately have to rebuild the facility, or you’ll have to abandon it. So you keep your costs lower if you do it on a regular basis. Then you get the added benefits: you see your water quality improving.”

 

Staying with it

Stormwater BMP maintenance is an ongoing process. Even established programs continue to enhance and refine their scope to meet water-quality objectives. “Next year, we’re going to have a formal schedule of maintenance of public systems, and an inspection program to go along with that,” Rheaume says. “We’re tracking everything on GIS now, and that has been helpful.

 

“The private system inspection program has been limited to commercial, industrial and multi-family properties up until now. We're going to expand that to include single-family, and essentially any other land use that has stormwater infrastructure that is not owned by the city. A lot more smaller projects are triggering stormwater controls and facilities that need to be inspected and maintained at an appropriate level.”

Montgomery County is fine-tuning, as well. “Right now, we’re learning about how we can access the facilities so we can do the maintenance,” Stevens says. That includes providing access to the facilities so that maintenance workers can get their vehicles into position.

 

A successful inspection and maintenance program addresses each of the challenges identified by Hirschman and Kosco. The challenges can be systematically addressed over time.

“To start a program like this, you need to have an adequate funding mechanism that can increase as the number of BMPs grows,” Stevens says. “You need adequate regulations, codes, ordinances and manuals that support what you do. Your guidance is then established. You need data, such as maps, drawings and plans, to know where the facilities are located.

 

“A lot of times, this information is kept with the engineer and then transferred to the property manager. We require that drainage areas are drawn on the plans, obtain copies of all plans for all stormwater facilities that are released to us, take GIS coordinates of facilities to map their location and a drainage area, and always require as-built plans. Data management is your unglamorous aspect of this job. You can’t do your work without the supporting documentation.”

 

Rheaume identifies education as a critical component of program success. “Most property owners don't know they own a storm system, let alone that they have to maintain it,” he says. “When you create a program, you have to be accommodating to that lack of knowledge of what stormwater is and where it goes.”

 

Stevens notes that education of contractors is an ongoing issue. “Educating contractors was ex-tremely crucial for us,” she says. “People doing the maintenance work have to know how to do it. You have to educate the landscape companies, too.”

 

Curtis Mitchell is an account manager with BMPClean.org, a company in Raleigh, N.C., that maintains a directory to help municipalities and property owners locate stormwater inspection and maintenance contractors. He can be reached at 919/665-4186 or CMitchell@BMPClean.org.



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