Managing outfalls as assets rather than afterthoughts represents a fundamental shift in how municipalities approach stormwater infrastructure. For many communities, outfalls are only addressed when something goes wrong, such as erosion, structural failure, or a visible discharge issue. By that point…
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Stormwater asset management is one of those concepts that sounds technical and abstract, yet at its core it is simply about knowing what you own, understanding its condition, and making informed decisions before problems turn into emergencies. For municipalities responsible for miles of pipe, hundre…
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Dry weather outfall screening is one of the most effective and defensible tools available to municipal stormwater programs for identifying illicit discharges. Under MS4 permit requirements associated with the Clean Water Act and the NPDES stormwater program, municipalities are required to implement …
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A well managed stormwater program depends on accurate and complete information about every outfall in a community. Outfalls are the final discharge points where stormwater leaves the municipal system and enters a stream, lake, wetland, or other receiving water. Because these locations represent the …
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A complete and accurate stormwater map is one of the most important responsibilities for any community that operates as a Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System, or MS4. These maps are not created merely to satisfy a regulatory checkbox. They protect waterways, support field crews, reduce liability, …
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Field inspections of catch basins, manholes, culverts, and outfalls form the foundation of responsible stormwater management. These routine checks give municipalities an ongoing view of the condition of their drainage network and allow crews to identify issues long before they become flooding hazard…
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*The screenshots used in this article are from Roadwurx, an asset management software created for road maintenance departments. Managing a town’s stormwater system can quickly become overwhelming when maintenance and inspection records are scattered across clipboards, spreadsheets, or dusty fi…
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Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permits rest on a simple idea: you cannot manage what you have not first documented. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines an MS4 as any publicly owned system of drains, pipes, ditches, or similar conveyances that carries runoff to waters of th…
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What is a stormwater outfall? A stormwater outfall is the point where a storm-drain system, whether pipes, ditches, or channels, discharges runoff to a receiving water such as a stream, wetland, lake, or the ocean. Regulatory guidance clarifies that simple cross-road culverts, which only pass flow b…
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(In the photo above, the silt fence has been improperly installed, as you can see it was placed in loose, already excavated, soil.) Why Construction Runoff Matters A single acre of bare earth can release 10 - 20 times more sediment than the same acre in cropland, and up to 2,000 times more than a fo…
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What exactly is an SWCD? Created under state law in every state and most U.S. territories, nearly 3,000 locally led Soil and Water Conservation Districts now cover almost every county in the nation. Their boards, typically a mix of farmers, municipal officials, and at-large residents, design and del…
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Why We Need a New Approach Annual (or even quarterly) MS4 refresher courses are mandatory under the NPDES Phase II program, yet completion logs and pop-quiz scores often reveal that municipal crews quickly forget key practices such as spill-response or best management practice (BMP) housekeeping. En…
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