#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.
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cted the action in segments clipped by a row of young arbor vitae planted along the edge of the court. Above me, bats streaked through darkening air, criss-crossing over the water partaking of misquotes. The sound of Emmet Street traffic was constant, but the longer I sat, the more it started to blend with a new sound – one of flowing water from somewhere beyond a large English boxwood leftover from a former landscape.