PEC Blog: Helping Municipalities Comply With Stormwater Permits

By Susan Myerov, PEC Watersheds Program Director

The PA Environmental Council has a long history of involvement in stormwater management issues affecting our state.

Persisting issues include providing municipal stormwater management education and training opportunities, providing regulatory and policy recommendations, and advocating for innovation in financing green stormwater infrastructure projects.

One of my roles as watersheds program director is to develop and implement programs that help our municipalities in Southeast Pennsylvania meet the public education, community outreach, and municipal good housekeeping objectives specified in their municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) permits.

These permits require a stormwater management program that address six minimum control measures designed to reduce polluted runoff and illegal discharges. The six include:

-- Public education and outreach;

-- Public involvement and participation;

-- Illicit discharge, detection and elimination;

-- Construction site runoff controls;

-- Post-construction stormwater management; and

-- Municipal pollution prevention and good housekeeping.

In Pennsylvania there are over 900 designated MS4 communities across the state with varying capacities to implement and fund stormwater management programs.

PEC attempts to either directly provide technical assistance to our municipalities or link them to resources they need to successfully meet their permit obligations.

These activities can range from providing printed and web–enabled materials, to hosting training workshops for landowners on how to build rain gardens, transform lawns to meadows or manage streamside properties, along with training municipal staff on properly maintaining their own facilities.

We also help promote activities such as stream clean-ups and riparian buffer plantings organized by our watershed partners. One of the best resources we offer is our stormwater and water resource brochure series.

These informative and easy to understand brochures provide illustrations and suggestions on topics such as detention basin retrofits to caring for streamside properties. These can be posted on websites or given out at events.

PEC distributes copies to organizations at no charge and we maintain the web-version on our website.

Feel free to check out our brochures and if you need hard copies and please feel free to contact me directly by sending email to: smyerov@pecpa.org or call 215-545-4570.

(Reprinted from the PA Environmental Council Blog.)