Storm Surge
April Showers Bring May Flowers: They also bring toxins and trash from streets, rooftops and lawns into our rivers and lakes.
Most of us greet spring rains with anticipation of the fruits of the season – greenery and growth, flower buds and the awakening of the world around us. But there are a few, like Waterkeepers, who cringe. This stormwater will pick up pollutants from roofs, roads, and lawns and carry them into our streams and lakes on a massive scale.

Stormwater runoff is widely recognized as the single largest threat to water quality in the United States, whether in rural or urban settings. Rain is not the problem. But the pollution that rainwater picks up as it runs over manmade surfaces closes our beaches and poisons our drinking water. Surges of rainwater that are channeled directly into our waterways through stormdrains increase the magnitude of floods, and the severity of droughts. Stormwater runoff alters the amount, quality and temperature of water in our rivers and lakes. Stormwater runoff fundamentally changes the natural circulation of water – the hydraulic cycle that most people learned in elementary school.

Slowing Down Water into Lake George
For centuries people have traveled to upstate New York to Chris Navitsky’s waterbody, Lake George, to escape the pressures of the city and enjoy the beauty of the lake and its watershed. The lake drives a thriving regional economy, and the development pressure for homes and commercial space is enormous. But the impact of runoff from these new buildings and roads is a huge threat to Lake George.

Twenty years ago a study by US EPA concluded that the water quality of Lake George was exceptional. At that time less than 5 percent of the area around Lake George was developed. However, EPA warned that unchecked development in the watershed would cause a significant decline in water quality within a twenty-year period. The 1983 study recommended that public officials, developers and homeowners take steps to reduce the impacts of development by using structures that keep rainwater closer to where it falls for longer – this is called stormwater management. The study’s predictions were proved correct in the early 1990’s when public beaches on Lake George were closed for the first time during the peak summer tourist season due to high bacteria counts.

The water in Lake George gets there by one of three routes. Some falls directly onto the lake surface as rain or snow. Some soaks into the soil and seeps slowly through the ground into the lake. And some rainwater or snowmelt flows over the surface directly into the lake. The amount of water falling directly into the lake doesn’t change. But development can drastically reduce the amount seeping into the groundwater, diverting into drains and streams. This is runoff. When water flowing over the surface picks up pollutants from the ground, now you have polluted runoff.

Rainwater rolls quickly off roads, parking lots, roofs, lawns and other developments. In fact, these structures are usually designed specifically for that purpose. Construction sites can be the most disturbed landscapes and the largest contributor to the problem – nearly everyone has passed a construction site and seen thick muddy water running off the site into a city drain.

Natural landscapes slow water down, holding it close to where it falls, and allowing it to seep into the ground. This isn’t just wetlands but the complex natural depressions, sponge-like soil and vegetation of a natural forest floor, meadow or any undisturbed area. Trees and plants take up much of the water.

The rule of thumb is this: slowing the rate of surface runoff allows more of the rain water to infiltrates into the ground and be absorbed by plants. The slower the flow of water, the fewer pollutants the water picks up and the cleaner downstream rivers and lakes remain.

First Flush in Northern California
Over two days Don McEnhill, Russian Riverkeeper, measured sediment levels in Foss Creek, California. Then, in less than an hour, as a brief but heavy rainstorm passed through the area, the turbidity of the water spiked over 1600%. The clear stream water turned a choking murky-brown. Driving around the upper portion of the creeks watershed, McEnhill found the source of the slug of mud in the creek: failed erosion controls at a construction site.

The brown muddy water running off construction sites is not an unfamiliar sight anywhere in the U.S. But the consequences are more severe than most people usually consider. The sediment flows downstream, settling into the spaces between the gravel and smothering the fish eggs. In the case of Foss Creek, this includes endangered Steelhead Trout and Chinook and Coho Salmon. It clogs the gravel that serves as the natural drinking water filter for over 700,000 residents of this watershed in Northern California. The sediment-laden stormwater runoff also carries nutrients that cause nuisance algae blooms in the Russian River.

The first rains after the long, dry Northern California summer are critical for water quality. That’s why each year, Russian Riverkeeper and hundreds of volunteers conduct the Russian River First Flush. This region-wide stormwater monitoring survey measures pollutants at 36 urban creek sites. The First Flush project trains volunteers to monitor streams for 22 pollutants associated with stormwater runoff. What they find is astonishing. In 2002, they measured the pesticide Diazinon exceeding EPA toxicity criteria in 33 out of 81 samples taken. In 2003, they measured the nutrient Phosphate at 2 1/2 times the water quality objectives in more than half the samples, and saw dissolved copper exceeding objectives more than a third of the time.

There is no heavy industry in Healdsburg, known for its quaint town square, rolling vineyards and wineries. But the stormwater runoff reaching local streams is as dirty as discharge from an industrial plant. Monitoring water quality is a crucial step in making people aware of just what pollutants are reaching their streams. “When I moved into our new office on a side street last fall, I watched an employee of the florist next door dump a pail full of liquid fertilizer down the storm drain,” says McEnhill. “I asked her if she knew that it was less than 25 feet from that drain to Foss Creek and showed her the “no dumping” plaque on the storm drain. She got the point and we smiled.”

Muddy Water In Alabama
Educating public officials, developers and the public on the need to reduce the impacts of stormwater runoff is one of the biggest challenges Waterkeepers face. Just ask Michael Mullen. Mullen is a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control. He is also the Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper.

The Choctawhatchee River runs through Lower Alabama and the Florida panhandle. As Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper, Mullen patrols the Alabama portion of the watershed. The biggest threat to water quality in the watershed is excessive sedimentation. The sediment in the water is coming from bad agriculture practices (any local farmer will tell you that soil shouldn’t wash off of fields every time it rains), poor forestry practices, unpaved rural roads, stream bank erosion, and construction site runoff. Although only a small portion of the land area in the watershed is urban, development in these areas causes significant impact to the Choctawhatchee River and its tributaries.

Mullen first became interested in stormwater while he was standing in a light rain storm watching muddy water run down the street from a neighbor’s newly built home in 1999. As he began to look around with a critical eye, he noticed that erosion and sediment controls on construction sites were rare, and even where they did exist they were generally poorly employed and inadequately maintained.

It wasn’t long before a new subdivision, Prospect Ridge, started on an extension of his street. Mullen says that from the initial land clearing activities, Prospect Ridge was a small-scale environmental disaster. “At the start of the project little was done to catch the water running off the newly cleared site on the street where it entered storm drains and nearby Big Creek. Inadequate silt fences were erected to catch sediment-laden water before it reached stormdrains, but they were not properly located or maintained. Over the course of the project the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) issued warnings, and issued several violations against the developer. However, little if any improvements were made on the ground.” For several years, the site remained in noncompliance with its construction stormwater permit. And after each rainstorm the streets near the project were filled with sediment and muddy water.

Finally, in January of 2004, ADEM issued an administrative order that included a civil penalty of $4000 against the developer. But by this time the first phase of the subdivision was almost entirely complete. In the end, the penalty was substantially less than it would have cost the developer to implement needed erosion and sediment control measures throughout the project. The developer did install devices on storm drains to address remaining problems, but Mullen says even this was done improperly – with gravel filters that were too small to work properly

Turning the Tide on Stormwater Runoff
The good news is that preventing polluted stormwater runoff is well within the grasp of every community in the United States. Stormwater management is a growing field that is gaining currency with city officials, public health experts and developers.

In the late 1980’s engineers started to recognize the importance of slowing down stormwater and began designing structures patterned after natural landscapes. These new designs are often called “Smart Growth.” These designed landscapes and structures more closely mimic nature and the natural flow of water. For example, instead of installing curbs that collect stormwater and send it flowing over warm pavement into a drain, runoff can be directed into grass swales that allow infiltration into groundwater, removing pollutants through contact with vegetation, and reducing the temperature of the runoff.

Mike Mullen says, “Construction sites are not difficult to stabilize at relatively low cost if the developer utilizes appropriate and widely used erosion control technologies. Unfortunately, too many projects don’t do anything to stop erosion and control water and sediment from running off the site into nearby waterways.”

In housing and commercial developments runoff can be managed using basins, retention ponds or constructed wetlands that keep water on the site. These structures give sediments and pollutants time to settle out of slow moving water. They allow time for the biological activity of plants and bacteria to clean the water of nutrients, pollutants and even toxic metals. Water is filtered slowly back into the water cycle – through groundwater, into streams and back into the air by evaporation from the surface and from plants.

As with any project, the best stormwater management plan on paper will only be as good as its design, construction and long-term maintenance.

Fortunately, the Clean Water Act offers everyone a remedy. Citizens can petition state environmental agencies to require developers to get stormwater permits that make clear what technologies they must use to control polluted runoff from a site. They can also file suit in federal court.

As for Foss Creek, McEnhill presented pictures of the problems to the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s enforcement office who promised to follow-up with the developer to fix their erosion controls. Three months later the developer had not taken any action to fix the situation at the site. Polluted runoff from the site continued to exceed water quality criteria by several hundred times. McEnhill spoke with the regulators again and was told that because no strict numeric water quality criteria exist, it would be difficult to enforce against the developer that polluted Foss Creek. “It’s like having a speed limit posted as ‘Don’t go too fast’ instead of ‘65 miles an hour,’” says MacEnhill. “It is difficult to hold a speeder accountable to such undefined limits.”

That’s why McEnhill is pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt numeric water quality criteria for construction stormwater pollution. Waterkeeper Alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council recently sued EPA for failing to adopt such requirements.

Meanwhile, residents in upstate New York continue to enjoy the stellar clarity of Lake George. On a sunny day the bottom can still be seen clearly 28 feet down. Lakekeeper Chris Navitsky’s challenge is to change the attitude of many who believe that this tough old lake can continue to take care of itself, as it has for years. Navitsky knows better. He will continue to educate his neighbors. He will draw on the successes and experience from across the Waterkeeper movement to convey the message that if we take clean water for granted, we can lose it and all that it offers our communities.
— Chris Navinski, Don McEnhill & Mike Mullen contributed to this story.

Polluted Stormwater Runoff Is …
America’s number one water pollution problem. EPA reported in 2002 that 45% of our waterways are too polluted to support basic uses such as swimming and fishing. In 2004 the Congressional Research Service (Congress’ in-house scientific experts) reported that 50% of water pollution problems in the U.S. are attributed to stormwater runoff – pollution from agricultural lands, forests, construction sites and urban areas that is washed from the air and land in rain or melting snow.

Slow but Steady
The damage caused by stormwater runoff is largely incremental – not as evident as the brown water pouring from an industrial pipe or black smoke from a power plant. There is usually no single project, no single polluter to blame. The best solution to stormwater runoff, then, is to address the problem where it falls.

What’s In Stormwater Runoff?
Pollutants in stormwater runoff are substances that accumulate on paved – or impervious – surfaces during dry periods and are washed
into waterways by rainfall:
• Oil, gas, grease and other residues from automobiles and gas stations, including cadmium from tires and asbestos from brake linings
• Metals such as copper, lead, and zinc from abandoned mines, industrial sites, building and paving materials, and industrial farms
• Chemical spills and chloride used to deice roads
• Animal and human waste from leaky sewage and septic systems
• Fertilizers and pesticides
• Sediments and soils washed from construction sites, farm fields, lawns and river banks
• Trash

A Little Goes a Long Way
The National Academy of Sciences attributes 85 percent of man-made oil pollution in North American oceans to consumption-related spills, largely leakage at automobile refueling stations and improperly maintained cars and trucks.

Bigger Floods, Longer Droughts
Disturbed landscapes can increase the flow of water during a storm two to five times compared to the flow from natural areas. Greater volumes of water traveling at greater speeds mean the water carries with it more sediment and pollutants. Faster water causes damage to stream banks and downstream structures. In addition to the more dangerous floods, come more severe droughts. The reduction of natural infiltration into groundwater reduces the water table – the steady source of most streams during dry weather. More of the water that falls upstream rushes downstream with the storm surge, leaving less for plants and reducing the natural reservoirs of water that ensure a consistent supply of clean water. These impacts, along with the warming of water (which any trout fisherman recognizes as a major problem) also destroy aquatic habitat.

April 4, 2005, in Lambertville, NJ
While bureaucrats blamed the flooding in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in early spring 2005 on snow melt and Mother Nature, most of the damaged structures were located in floodplains. Respecting the floodplain of large rivers is even more important with increasing development. When you strip away plants and trees, rain that once soaked into the ground now races off the land, swelling the nearest waterway. Floodwaters rise higher and faster than they used to, making larger floods from smaller storms.

City Stormwater Systems
Most stormwater that falls on city streets, building roofs, and yards is diverted into stormdrains that run directly into natural streams. Unlike sewer water, which is piped to a treatment plan, polluted stormwater runoff is connected, through a pipe to a stream – essentially the highest reach of every river, lake and coast.

A Thousand Solutions to Stormwater Runoff
There is an extraordinarily wide range of tools available to prevent or reduce polluted runoff. Each tool fits a particular problem. When a stormwater expert says “best management practice,” they are talking about finding the best tool we have for preventing polluted runoff from a particular source. The tool can be a physical structure – something as simple as a hay bale used to block sediment from leaving a construction site, or as complicated as a filter to remove petroleum from water. It can be a practice – like picking up after your dog on a walk, or your town’s street-sweeping program. The tool can be the design features of a building and it’s landscaping. The toolkit of these practices continues to grow as new ways of addressing this problem are developed.

Waterkeeper Sues Over Construction Stormwater Rules
Waterkeeper Alliance and partner NRDC have filed a lawsuit challenging US EPA’s failure to issue regulations to reduce stormwater pollution from construction and development sites. Runoff from construction sites and newly paved developments is one of the leading sources of water pollution in the U.S. EPA decided last year to not issue regulations to control this pollution, claiming, in an Orwellian twist, that it was complying with its legal obligation to issue new rules by not issuing rules.

What can I do about pollution caused by stormwater runoff?
Stormdrains collect rainfall and carry it directly to the nearest waterway. This water does not go to a treatment plant; it does however collect an assortment of pollutants and trash on the way. This pollution flows directly into the nearest river, stream, lake, estuary, beach, harbor, or ocean. Even a simple act can have a large impact on what ends up in that waterway the next time it rains. Here are some simple things we can all do to help prevent stormwater pollution:
• Never tip oil, paint or chemicals down the stormdrain – it takes only one quart of oil to contaminate a thousand tons of water.
• Animal droppings contain bacteria that can make you sick. Always pick up droppings left by dogs to prevent them from washing into waterways and onto beaches.
• Don’t litter. One burst of rain can wash plastics bags, food scraps, cigarette butts, cans and other litter into the stormdrain – and into your stream.
•Recycle used motor oil and other hazardous household wastes.
•Sweep sidewalks and gutters rather than hosing them down.
•Avoid using chemicals to wash your car. Try a brush and a little elbow grease instead.