From the PA Environmental Digest…

Two Adams County farms are benefitting from federal stimulus funds made available through the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority, helping the farmers install conservation measures that will aid their farms’ sustainability and profitability, while improving the water quality in the area.

My wife and I started our 250-acre dairy farm in 2000. Today “Circle Creek Holstein” has grown to a herd of 265. Our entire family is involved including our children Emily, Cody, Caleb and Paige. We have invested our time and money in conservation efforts, but this program allows us to do even more to protect water quality. It’s a good idea and a good program, without it we would not be able to afford these improvements.

–Terry Inch, owner of Circle Creek Holstein.

The Inch farm is one of 44 farms statewide receiving support to install conservation practices through a $14.2 million PennVEST grant to Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  Get the complete article here>>

For a look at another Agricultural Operation that’s looking out for the Bay, check out the Miller’s Farm Case Study. They’re Farming with Water Quality in Mind>>

admin Stormwater BMPs agriculture, BMPs, Chesapeake Bay, economic stimulus, Nonpoint source pollution, PennVest, stormwater best management practices, stormwater runoff, water quality, watershed protection

The number of native fish and aquatic insects, especially those that are pollution sensitive, declines in urban and suburban streams at low levels of development - levels often considered protective for stream communities, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

When the area of driveways, parking lots, streets and other impervious cover reaches 10 percent of a watershed area, many types of pollution sensitive aquatic insects decline by as much as one third, compared to streams in undeveloped forested watersheds. We learned that there is no ’safezone,’ meaning that even minimal or early stages of development can negatively affect aquatic life in urban streams.

–Tom Cuffney, USGS biologist

As a watershed becomes developed, the amount of pavement, sidewalks and other types of urban land cover increases. During storms, water is rapidly transported over these urban surfaces to streams. The rapid rise and fall of stream flow and changes in temperature can be detrimental to fish and aquatic insects. Stormwater from urban development can also contain fertilizers and insecticides used along roads and on lawns, parks and golf courses.

Stream protection and management is a top priority of state and local officials, and these findings remind us of the unintended consequences that development can have on our aquatic resources. The information has been useful in helping us to predict and manage the future impacts of urban development on streams and reinforces the importance of having green infrastructure to control stormwater runoff and protect aquatic life.

–Tom Schueler, Chesapeake Stormwater Network

USGS studies examine the effects of urbanization on algae, aquatic insects, fish, habitat and chemistry in urban streams in nine metropolitan areas across the country: Boston, Mass.; Raleigh, N.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; Birmingham, Ala.; Milwaukee-Green Bay, Wis.; Denver, Colo.; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Portland, Ore.

These USGS studies also show that land cover prior to urbanization can affect how aquatic insects and fish respond to urbanization. For example, aquatic communities in urban streams in Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Milwaukee did not decline in response to urbanization because the aquatic communities were already degraded by previous agricultural land-use activities. In contrast, aquatic communities declined in response to urbanization in metropolitan areas where forested land was converted to urban land, areas such as Boston and Atlanta.

Comparisons among the nine areas show that not all urban streams respond exactly the same. This is mostly because stream quality and aquatic health reflect a complex combination of land and chemical use, land and storm-water management, population density and watershed development, and natural features, such as soils, hydrology, and climate.

These USGS studies represent an integrated approach to understanding urban streams that includes physical, chemical and biological characteristics associated with urbanization. This is critical for prioritizing strategies for stream protection and restoration and in evaluating the effectiveness of those strategies over time.

For more information, listen to USGS Corecast Episode 127.

The full report and extended video podcasts are available at the National Water Quality Assessment program urban studies website.

admin Research aquatic life, development, green infrastructure, Nonpoint source pollution, pavement, stormwater, stormwater best management practices, stormwater runoff, urban development, urban stream, water quality

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council-published pamphlet “MAINTAINING STORMWATER BASINS on Your Property ” is now available for download through StormwaterPA.

The guide is intended to help residents, businesses, and other individuals perform routine inspection and maintenance activities to ensure stormwater management basins on private property are in good shape and functioning properly.

If there is a stormwater basin on a residential or commercial property you own, either individually or under common ownership, it may be your responsibility, as the property owner, to regularly inspect the basin and perform periodic maintenance. When basins are not maintained, they will fall into disrepair, which can lead to severe flooding and pollution of creeks and streams.

The publication is provided to help the non-engineer understand basic inspection procedures, and includes tips for improving basin performance and appearance.

Most stormwater basins in Pennsylvania are privately owned; as such, individual property owners are responsible for operation and maintenance.

If there is uncertainty about the ownership of a basin on or near your property, contact your municipality to verify ownership and maintenance obligations.

If there is uncertainty about basin design or function, if damage or malfunctions are observed, or in the event a more in-depth inspection or assessment is needed, the owner should secure the professional services of a licensed professional engineer.

Most stormwater basins in Pennsylvania were designed as dry detention basins. This publication focuses on inspection and maintenance only of dry detention basins, or “dry ponds.”

Download the Pamphlet here.

admin Stormwater BMPs basin inspection, BMP Maintenance, dry detention basin, dry pond, flood control, Nonpoint source pollution, stormwater basin, stormwater best management practices, stormwater runoff, volume control, water quality

Highlights of PennFuture’s 7^th Annual Watershed Workshop

With a clear focus on Philadelphia’s remarkable new stormwater management program, including its relatively new stormwater management regulations for new/redeveloped projects as well as the revolutionary new stormwater fee rate program, PennFuture hosted a large audience at the Quaker Friends Center on Saturday April 17.  The platinum LEED Friends Center is itself testament to “new wave” stormwater thinking, with its vegetated roof, rain gardens, and runoff cistern storage/toilet recycling of captured rainwater.

Speakers included an array of leaders from the Philadelphia Water Department, including Christine Marjoram who outlined the new stormwater regulatory program and Joanne Dahme who described the stormwater fee rate program.  Dahme also detailed Philadephia’s unique Green Cities, Clean Waters effort to achieve dramatic progress in combined sewer overflow pollution reduction through “green infrastructure,” rather than the conventional gray structural systems.  Senior Attorney Brian Glass chaired the event; Pennfuture’s Rachel Vassar closed the conference with a summary of Marcellus Shale issues and challenges.

StormwaterPA’s just-released video on Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters program is receiving accolades. It’ll be available soon on our Volume Two DVD (learn more about Volume One here if you haven’t seen it yet), but you can check it out here now:

Green City, Clean Waters from GreenTreks Network on Vimeo.

admin green infrastructure green infrastructure, green roof, LEED, rain gardens, rainwater collection, stormwater best management practices, stormwater legislation

As noted in mid-March, we’ve been reaching out to experts for contributions on key issues — and are looking forward to featuring their commentaries as they come in.

As always, feel free to comment, and/or get in touch with us if you’d like to join our team of Guest Contributors.

Guest Commentary, submitted by

John A. Miller, P.E., CFM
Water Resources Engineer
Certified Floodplain Manager

To be perfectly blunt, I am very glad that some site engineers did not become structural engineers.  Why?  Because, if they had, we would have buildings, bridges and other structures falling down around us.  Too many site engineers do not consider Factor of Safety.  Let me explain.

Factor of Safety in structural engineering is used to compensate for variations of materials, oversight in production and assembly, construction workmanship, simplification in design and future unknown loads that a structure may experience beyond its initial design.  Think of a commercial building, where a room is converted from office space to file storage.  The dead load or weight of the contents of the room dramatically increases with the addition of dozens of file cabinets, filled to bursting.  In most cases this change of use does not lead to failure, as the original design anticipated, using a Factor of Safety, that an alteration might be made at some time in the future.    (NB: As a professional engineer, I suggest that if you are making this magnitude of change, you consult a structural engineer to verify the structure’s ability to support the increased load).

A site engineer may say that using a Factor of Safety in stormwater management design is “over-engineering,” since the consequences of failure or partial failure are not as significant.  And to boot, I have often heard a site engineer testify that his or her design produces “better than before conditions” when meeting the applicable regulations (unfortunately, for many reviews I have conducted, in truth, the design doesn’t even meet the minimum standards.)

There are a number of consequences for failing to design stormwater management systems with a proper Factor of Safety.  For structural engineers, injury or death and major financial loss can occur at the design site.  “Luckily” for site engineers and their clients, the consequences may be less clear.  Stormwater runoff is not so easy to see as a building falling down, and the damage can occur further downstream, maybe in another municipality or even another state.  Unintentional results such as stream channel erosion, degradation of water quality, or a drop of the groundwater table can all arise from disregarding the incorporation of a Factor of Safety.  In the most extreme cases, flooding can result in death and major financial loss on downstream properties.

To design with a Factor of Safety, the reviewing agency or board would be more confident with the inaccuracies in the Curve Numbers or runoff coefficients, time of concentration, the accounting of the change in soils with construction compaction and other variables used in modeling the design or the modeling technique itself.  One has to ask, has the engineer considered changes in rainfall intensity and totals and antecedent watershed conditions?  Is the design fully mimicking the preexisting conditions for peak runoff, water quality treatment and groundwater recharge through the range of future precipitation?  And what about excess runoff volume - has that been managed?  Is there sufficient Factor of Safety if one or a few of the engineer’s generalizations is off the mark or misunderstood?

So, the next time you hear testimony, even by a licensed professional engineer, that the design is “better than current conditions,” take a moment and ponder if sufficient Factor of Safety is built in to make that so.  Don’t take the regulations for granted.  Ask yourself and then the engineer - does the design adequately consider and mitigate the water resource impacts from the current proposed and future land use changes and variability in precipitation?  Is there a Factor of Safety incorporated into the design to protect the areas downstream of the site?

John A. Miller, P.E., CFM is an Associate Water Resources Engineer with Princeton Hydro, LLC in Ringoes, New Jersey.

admin Guest Commentary BMPs, peak rate, stormwater best management practices, Stormwater Regulations, stormwater system design, volume control, water quality