Critical Times for Municipalities and Stormwater as Draft MS4 Permit is Released by PA DEP
These are critical times for municipalities and stormwater - especially if you are one of the about 940 municipalities in Pennsylvania designated by the federal and state governments as “MS4.” (Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System). StormwaterPA has been commenting here on the new draft general permit recently released by PADEP. Various groups are coming together to ask questions and offer comments (see last week’s comments) to help PADEP fine-tune this critical next step in Pennsylvania’s stormwater management program. For example:
-The Draft Permit refers to Maximum Extent Practicable - what exactly is meant by Maximum Extent Practicable? MEP is supposed to be “…iterative, dynamic, flexible…” which sounds good in theory, but what does that mean in practice?
-How will MEP integrate Low Impact Development concepts?
-How will all of the preventive Non-Structural and mitigative Structural BMPs (all of which embrace Low Impact Development) in the BMP Manual be incorporated into this draft general permit? There are references to the BMP Manual but the interface between the Manual and this draft permit and the program behind it are not especially clear.
-How will Minimum Control Measures be assessed across the state? Is the program adequately measurable? Have quantitative benchmarks been included? Approximately 940 municipalities are going to have to create 940 programs costing in total millions of dollars. The MS4 programs has suffered from flaws thus far - it’s critical that we try to refine the program at this juncture.
-TMDLs - this portion of the draft general permit deserves special and separate treatment (stay tuned!), though the major issue here focuses on a seeming lack of relatedness between water quality problems (the identified TMDLs in place) and the required TCMs - TMDL Control Measures. Although the 7 TCMs are generally excellent practices, how do they magically connect to TMDL pollutant load reduction, given the array of TMDLs?
-And what about monitoring of TCMs?
-How does the model ordinance which PADEP has released fit with this draft general permit? The announced position by PADEP is that municipalities either have to adopt the respective Act 167 Plan model ordinance, if applicable, or adopt PADEP’s new model ordinance. But not only does there seem to be some disconnect between this new draft general permit and the PADEP model ordinance, but the ordinance seems quite removed from the BMP manual…
-What are your questions and thoughts? We want to hear from you…. so add your comment today!
