Sustainable Stormwater Management

Hunt Valley, MD – December 12, 2011 – Theodore E. Scott, PE, CPESC, LEED AP, Executive Vice President and Founder of Stormwater Maintenance, LLC, was invited by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, spearheaded by Chairman, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, to testify at a hearing entitled “Our Nation’s Water Infrastructure: Challenges and Opportunities” on December 13, 2011.

The purpose of this hearing is to examine the challenges associated with the nation’s aging water and wastewater infrastructure; to discuss the importance of water and wastewater infrastructure to our nation’s waters and safe drinking water; to explore potential approaches to water and wastewater infrastructure improvements, including effective best management and financing strategies; to understand the potential value of water and wastewater infrastructure investment to economic growth and job creation.

“This is a tremendous venue to educate government officials about the challenges facing our nations’ water infrastructure and the resultant business opportunities that lie ahead”, stated Scott.

Mr. Scott applies his more than 20 years of expertise to addressing the issues with existing stormwater infrastructure.  This is his third invitation to speak in Washington.  Stormwater Maintenance LLC is an industry leader providing turn-key engineering, maintenance and full construction capabilities for organizations that own or manage stormwater  infrastructure throughout the Mid-Atlantic.   To obtain additional information, including an overview of Stormwater Maintenance’s capabilities and completed projects, visit www.swmaintenance.com.

As a follow-up to Ted Scott’s recent Capital Hill Congressional Briefing, he has been invited to present directly to interested staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington DC.  His presentation will expand on the Capital Hill talk, including discussion on some of the challenges associated with designing Green Infrastructure.

From YouTube Science Astronomy Physics Spaceflight Cosmology Channel via Sailing Anarchy:

Accompanying text:

Where Will the Debris from Japans Tsunami Drift in the Ocean?

The powerful tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes. What this model predicts about the tsunami debris can be seen in this simulation.

The debris first spreads out eastward from the Japan Coast in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. In a year, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument will see pieces washing up on its shores; in two years, the remaining Hawaiian islands will see some effects; in three years, the plume will reach the US West Coast, dumping debris on Californian beaches and the beaches of British Columbia, Alaska, and Baja California. The debris will then drift into the famous North Pacific Garbage Patch, where it will wander around and break into smaller and smaller pieces.

In five years, Hawaii shores can expect to see another barrage of debris that is stronger and longerlasting than the first one. Much of the debris leaving the North Pacific Garbage Patch ends up on Hawaii’s reefs and beaches. These model projections will help to guide clean-up and tracking operations. Tracking will be important in determining what happens to different materials in the tsunami debris, for example, how the composition of the debris plume changes with time, and how the winds and currents separate objects drifting at different speeds.

Even before the tsunami, the World Ocean was a dump for rubbish flowing in from rivers, washed off beaches, and jettisoned from oil and gas platforms and from fishing, tourist, and merchant vessels. Marine debris has become a serious problem for marine ecosystems, fisheries, and shipping. The presentations given at the recent week-long 5th International Marine Debris Conference in Hawaii, at which Maximenko had organized a day-long workshop, are a testimony to the magnitude of the ocean debris problem. The massive, concentrated debris launched by the devastating tsunami is now magnifying the hazards.

Maximenko’s long-standing work on ocean currents and transports predicted that there are five major regions in the World Ocean where debris collects if it is not washed up on shores or sinks to the ocean bottom, deteriorates, or is ingested by marine organisms. These regions turn out to be “garbage patches.” The North Pacific Garbage Patch has become famous, the North Atlantic Patch was fixed some years ago, and the South Atlantic, South Indian Ocean, and South Pacific patches have just been found, guided by the map of his model that shows where floating marine debris should collect.

This research was supported by grants from the Japan Agency for Marine-Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), NASA, and NOAA.
http://files.khnl.com/news/a_maximenko_tsunami_debris.pdf

Animated Simulation:
http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/users/nikolai/2011/Pacific_Islands/Simulation_of.

Founder of Stormwater Consulting, Inc. and Stormwater Maintenance, LLC, Ted Scott, was hard at work on Capital Hill in Washington DC this week.  On Tuesday, American Rivers hosted a Congressional briefing with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), and the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and invited Ted to be a guest speaker. He joined two others to speak to about 60 Senate Staffers, EPA employees, and NGO staff.  Ted introduced the issues related to urbanization and resulting environmental impacts, the paradigm shift towards green infrastructure, and the positive business impacts he has seen.

For the full story, check out:  American River’s page covering the event here and ASLA’s page here.

Ted’s presentation follows:

We will have a booth at the 2011 Maryland Engineers Conference.  Come visit us!

For more information visit:

www.mdspe.org

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Thanks to Tom Schueler for forwarding this info to us.  This important question is often raised – should stormwater sediments be treated as hazardous waste?

A study was recently conducted to evaluate the toxicity of sediments accumulated in the forebays of 30 wet ponds and wetlands across the state of North Carolina.  The sediments were sampled and tested for metals including: cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, nickel and zinc.  The full report can be found on Tom’s Chesapeake Stormwater Network website.

The results from the study show that the sediments dredged from forebays meet US Environmental Protection Agency Standards for land application of biosolids.  However, 17 out of 30 sites exceeded sediment guidelines for aquatic health.

This study emphasizes the need for routine forebay sediment removal.  Sediment removal is typically performed to increase the capacity of the forebays, which tend to fill with silt over time, reducing their effectiveness for pretreatment.  However, as shown in this study, an added benefit of removing the sediment may be increased aquatic health of the stormwater facility.  This study also verifies that it is acceptable to spread spoils on the land nearby as long as they are stabilized with seed and mulch or matting.

Forebay sediment removal can be included in a routine maintenance program for your site.  When performed on an on-going basis, the costs are much lower than waiting for major accumulation.  Once sediment accumulations, costs for removal and disposal increase dramatically.