Sustainable Stormwater Management

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:

http://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.

An amazing satellite photo taken on 9/13/11 from NASA shows an incredible sediment plume from the recent record rainfalls flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.

Link to original:  http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=ChesapeakeBayWatershed.2011256.aqua.250m

9/13/11 Sediment Plume

Join us for the upcoming Trash Bash at Nick’s Fish House in Baltimore.  It is a great time, fantastic food, and the event supports a good cause. Purchase tickets here.

Blue Water Baltimore is entered in Tom’s of Maine competition and could win $50,000 or $20,000. You can vote one time from each computer one time per day. Have you voted yet today??? ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT!!! Vote on every computer you have and do it with every browser you have on each computer every day. They are are in 8th place, and need to get to at least 6th place to get $20K. So keep voting and remind your friends to do the same.

Do it now: Just go to www.50statesforgood.com and click on Blue Water Baltimore.

Last week we were involved in a pavement removal project at a school in Hampden to help out Blue Water Baltimore.  Post on that coming soon.

Now they have the opportunity to win money to do it more:

Blue Water Baltimore’s campaign to de-pave our city school grounds has been selected as a finalist in Tom’s of Maine 50 States for Good competition.  If they win, they get $50k!  Five runners up get $20k each.  It would be would greatly appreciated if you could vote for BWB every day from now until Sept. 13 at www.50statesforgood.com.

Even better, please help BWB go viral by sending this out to any and all business associates, friends, family and by posting on Facebook, Twitter, etc.This could mean big press for Baltimore greening efforts, and a lot more projects that will dramatically reduce  stormwater runoff and transform parking lots into vibrant outdoor  classrooms.

We are presenting this webcast August 11, 12:00-1:30pm in conjunction with Tom Schueler of the Chesapeake Stormwater Network as part of the Chesapeake Bay Stormwater Training Partnership.

Sign-up here.

Description:  Concerns about maintaining LID practices are a recurring theme among stormwater managers and professionals alike. The comprehensive webcast will address how LID maintenance problems can be reduced through improved design, construction protection, installation methods, and final inspection and project acceptance procedures. In addition, the webcast will feature tips on how to modify local stormwater maintenance programs to meet the future maintenance challenges associated with an increased number of distributed LID practice. The webcast will include a guest speaker, Ted Scott, who operates a private stormwater maintenance company that manages hundreds of stormwater facilities across the Chesapeake Bay. The webcast will also go over a newly released CSN Technical Bulletin on LID maintenance to assist designers and local stormwater managers on this important topic. Presenters: Ted Scott (Stormwater Maintenance, LLC) & Tom Schueler (CSN)

We have been helping out Blue Water Baltimore on their latest Baltimore City School Greening project dubbed the Pavement to Prairie Party – located on 36th Street in Hampden.  We’ll be there Monday for a huge event that will include musicians and crews from the Warped Tour that will be at Merryweather Plost the next day.  Should be quite an event.  Come join us!