Congress should direct the Environmental Protection Agency to revise its combined sewer overflow policy to require municipalities to adopt stormwater regulations and encourage “green” water management infrastructure, a city official told a House subcommittee March 19.

“We really need a mandated stormwater ordinance in every township in the United States,” Howard Neukrug, director of the Philadelphia Office of Watersheds, told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

Neukrug, who testified on behalf of the city and the National Association for Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), said EPA also should focus on green infrastructure strategies that reduce impervious surfaces and the volume of stormwater to curb pollution.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the issue of sewer overflows “has been long neglected.”

Runoff patterns have changed, with more paved shopping centers, urban sprawl, and climate change, he said. “Stormwater may be an issue which we cannot dig our way out of using traditional tools. The adoption of green infrastructure is a promising alternative approach.”

Central to all green infrastructure technologies and approaches is the use of the natural environment to manage stormwater by capturing and retaining water, infiltrating runoff, and trapping and filtering pollutants, Oberstar said.

Examples include green roofs, downspout disconnection programs, urban tree planting, adding green space, permeable pavements, and curb cut-outs.
A water infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives March 12 included funding for storm and sanitary sewers. Oberstar called upon witnesses to contact their senators to pass the bill.

The legislation (H.R. 1262) would authorize $18.5 billion over five years to improve water quality. Of this, the bill would authorize $2.5 billion over five years to control combined and sanitary sewer overflows, and it would provide a uniform, national standard for notifying the public of these overflows (47 DEN A-13, 3/13/09).

Neukrug said Philadelphia and other cities are studying a watershed-based permitting structure. The city's green infrastructure approaches reduce costs for managing the city's stormwater. These include strong stormwater regulations that require developers to return land parcels to a condition closer to how nature intended, he said

“If we are going to rebuild the drainage systems of America's cities in order to harvest rain water and prevent stormwater from commingling with sanitary sewage in the first place, then the law needs to be revised to recognize the significant impacts land-use policies have on local water quality,” Neukrug said.
Laws mandating better stormwater control are often incomplete or conflict with state or local programs, he said.

Issue Called Challenge for EPA

Michael Shapiro, acting EPA assistant administrator for water, called stormwater pollution from point and nonpoint sources one of the nation's most challenging water quality problems and a significant contributor to the impairment of streams, rivers, and watersheds.

Many older cities have combined sewage and stormwater pipes, which periodically overflow due to precipitation, he said.

Two years ago, he said, EPA began an enhanced effort to promote green infrastructure in conjunction with several partners including NACWA, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators. They developed an action plan, but officials still face challenges, he said.

Cities with successful green infrastructure programs have had to thoroughly review their codes and ordinances, according to Shapiro.
Financing is another challenge, he continued, but financial incentives can generally offset the reticence to adopt new technologies. He called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Pub. L. No. 111-5) provisions that set-aside money for green infrastructure projects through the clean water state revolving fund a “great first step.”

Ordinances encouraging green infrastructure are largely local and county planning decisions, Shapiro said. EPA can provide localities with tools and techniques, he said. The agency is not directly engaged in communities but is more involved in pilot programs. “We are looking very closely at our existing authority,” he said.

EPA Urged to Do More

Nancy Stoner, co-director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Water Program, however, said: “EPA has quite a bit of authority it has not used” to set technology-based standards. She said green infrastructure could create jobs and save money spent on treatment plants, pipes, and other “hard infrastructure.”

Stoner noted that Congress will consider a surface transportation bill, and runoff from roads is a significant source of pollution.

NRDC in conjunction with leading academics recently conducted a study in California incorporating analyses of land use, water supply patterns, and energy consumption. Implementing green infrastructure at new and redeveloped residential and commercial properties in certain areas can potentially save more than 130 billion gallons of water each year by 2030, according to Stoner.

Stoner cited barriers, including lack of familiarity with green infrastructure techniques, lack of integration and coordination of water and wastewater management at the watershed level, lack of aggregated monitoring data, and ineffective integration of green infrastructure into EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program.

She said EPA still has not set technology-based standards for the construction and development industry. The agency also has indicated it does not propose to set any such standards for post-construction stormwater discharges from development “despite the fact that green infrastructure techniques have been demonstrated to be effective” and that the most cost-effective way to implement those controls is to integrate them into new construction and redevelopment rather than to retrofit existing buildings and streets.

Timothy Richards, stormwater committee chairman with the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies, however, said the association believes green infrastructure should neither be prescribed as the preferred tool for addressing stormwater nor regulated. It may be an appropriate response to urbanization in some regions and communities, but not others, he said. In addition, he testified, the “financial burden” of green infrastructure could be much greater than conventional storm water management. Richards is deputy city engineer with the city of Charlotte, N.C.

By Linda Roeder