#118 You, Me, and Stormwater
January 8, 2009
The City of Charlottesville, along with Albemarle County, UVA, and PVCC, are all submitted renewal applications for the Virginia Stormwater Management Program (VSMP) General Permit for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4’s). The permit describes how these entities will manage stormwater in their jurisdictions, but much of the management really rests on you and me and how we manage the stormwater that we create because of our modern lifestyle.
Chilling, cold, welcome, seasonal. These words could all describe the precipitation of the last couple of days. Cold and chilling, as temperatures hovered below freezing, icing roads and dusting the Blue Ridge white. Welcome, and seasonal, since we rely on wintertime precipitation to keeps our rivers and wells flowing, our groundwater replenished, our reservoirs full and to hold off the press of drought.
But this water – mostly clean as transits from clouds to earth – becomes something else once it hits our streets, yards, and houses. It becomes storm water – and it is hardly benign. Rather than infiltrating the soil as it does in the forests, stormwater rushes to creeks and to the Rivanna, carrying litter, oils, pet waste, and dirt, rushes in such volume and velocity that stream banks are continually scoured and the Rivanna runs brown after even a modest rain.
Environmental professionals characterize water pollution sources as either “point” or “non-point.” Point sources are discrete – water from a single point or conveyance, such as the waste treatment plants at Moores Creek, Camelot, Lake Monticello, discharges from which are highly regulated with increasingly stringent controls.
Non-point sources are simply the opposite – pollution that enters our streams from a diffuse or general area, such as excess water that travels across agriculture or playing fields transporting pollutants such as excess fertilizer or manure. Rainwater that traverses urban parking lots and roads into storm “sewer” systems might be considered non-point because it is a collection of water (and all that is carried with it) from– my yard, my street, my neighbor’s yard, the street around the corner.
But the Clean Water Act defines this kind of stormwater also as a point source – because it is conveyed through separate storm sewer systems (such as maintained by Charlottesville or Albemarle County in the urban areas) – and through ditches and channels that direct the water, untreated for the most part, before it enters the river.
And as a point source, it too is regulated by the Clean Water Act, with permits required by the state of Virginia for urban areas, industrial sites, and construction activities. In the second phase of permitting, since 2003, Charlottesville, Albemarle, UVA, and PVCC are defined as operating Municipal Storm Sewer Systems, or MS4s. The five-year reapplication process is underway right now – applications in which these entities show how various programs are reducing the discharge of pollutants from areas and facilities under their jurisdiction to the maximum extent practicable.
Now, I have read the permit application from the City of Charlottesville, and it includes descriptions of how the City will maintain structural controls, such as curb inlets and retention basins; and how it will maintain public roads (and try to minimize pollutants coming off of them). I’ve read how Parks and Rec. will minimize use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. How the City will permit and monitor erosion and sediment control practices on construction sites. But the bottom line is this: much of the pollution that ends up in stormwater results from how we citizens live our day-to-day lives. After all, you’d have to keep a fleet of street cleaners busy 24 hours a day to keep most of the street wastes out of the storm sewer system – to say nothing of the grease and oil dripping from our cars and trucks.
So here’s something to think about: if where you are right now is NOT in the forest, if you are, for example, driving on a road, or sitting under a roof, then the precipitation that falls is quite likely to end up as stormwater, and as stormwater it is almost certain to carry some form of pollution towards the Rivanna. So let’s be willing to ask ourselves some questions to see how willing we are to manage our own stormwater.
My personal questions are these: Am I making sure that my car is properly tuned and leaks no oils or grease? Am I careful with the kinds of lawn treatments I use – and do I use them only when I am confident that a thunderstorm or rainfall will not wash most of it in to the streets? Have I found ways to keep the rain that falls on my property around for a while, retaining it in rain barrels and rain gardens? And might I consider these challenges perhaps as opportunities that give me a way of helping my neighborhood, my city and the Rivanna River? I wonder what your challenges are for the new year.
Copyright 2009 Leslie Middleton