EW: Environment & Water

AimeeN
Jul 25th, 2011

For stormwater management in general, this field has become increasing complex as regulations increase (and are rapidly changing). In order for a stormwater designer to be successful they need to understand not only hydraulics and hydrology but also chemistry and soil mechanics. Also with highway stormwater management, it is critical to integrate stormwater management into a the highway design. In other words, this field has become increasing complex and some designers are struggling. I would suggest creating spreadsheets that would walk a designer through the process of determining how much is treated or not and what is required for a project. I realize every state is different but I think generic worksheets can be setup to help a designer. I would also add a word of caution to the runoff treatment and flow control sections. Sometimes there is confusion between what areas have to be treated or controlled compared to what is treated or controlled. For example a project may only require 15000 sqft of PGIS to have runoff treatment but if the entire 30,000 sqft of the project drains to the BMP, the BMP has to be designed to treat all the runoff draining to it regardless of whether it is PGIS or not. This is actually an excellent opportunity for retrofit credit.