Hastings Green Infrastructure Tour

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Stormwater Management Team and the City of Hastings will be hosting a Green Infrastructure Tour.

When: Friday September 16, 9 am - 12 pm
Where: Highland Park/Hastings Museum Parking, 1330 North Burlington Avenue, Hastings, NE

Registration is $10 per person and is due by September 13.  For more information, please contact Katie Pekarek at kpekarek2@unl.edu or (402) 643-2981.

EPA Withdraws Proposal to Revise Numeric Turbidity Limit for Construction

For those of us waiting for "The Number", it appears the waiting game must continue.  On August 17, 2011, EPA stated that additional research regarding treatment performance from construction and development sites is still needed before a final number would be provided. No new timeline was offered.

Navigate to this link to read a nice write up from Bureau of National Affairs on the news release from EPA.

Is this good news or bad news?  It depends on who you are asking, right?  Regulators and MS4 managers could have looked to the numeric limit as the clear indication of whether a construction site was protecting water quality or not.  The BMPs, for all intents and purposes, become secondary as long as the numeric limit was achieved.  Not having The Number means the regulations continue to be a greater challenge to enforce.  Now we are all required to continue enforcing and overseeing a "more flexible" standard that relies on the full cooperation and understanding between the Applicant, Municipality, Design Engineer, Construction Engineer, Project Manager, Contractor, Subcontractors, Third-Party Inspectors, and others.  Those in the field know how challenging this task is.

For Applicants and those in the construction and development industry, it would appear to be good news.  The lobby against this numeric limit has been very strong.  Significant questions were raised about the number's legitimacy and implementability.  These, for now, seem to have been enough to push back the decision.  So what to do in the mean time while additional research is gathered?  Wait? Do a better job of implementing the non-numeric conditions of the permit? Perhaps. The likelyhood of a number in the future is strong.  A good suggestion would be to take samples of discharge from time to time and see how clean your BMPs are getting the stormwater running off your project.  No one says they have to be samples that are reported and you may want to know if your efforts are good enough before The Number is put down on the permit.

What messages do you take from this extended delay?  Is it good news or bad?

Kearney Rain Garden Workshop

On Thursday, September 15, from 9am - 4pm the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Stormwater Management Team and the City of Kearney will be hosting a rain garden workshop and training in Kearney.  The event will include classroom instruction followed by a hands on installation.  


When: September 15, 2011
Where : Harmon Park Activity Center, 3100 5th Ave., Kearney


The workshop is free, but you must register by September 13.  Please contact Andy Harter (308) 233-3273 to register.

NDEQ Invites Nonpoint Source Management Proposals

Invitation for Nonpoint Source Management Proposals

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INVITATION

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is inviting proposals for funding under the Nebraska Nonpoint Source Pollution Management Program authorized through Section 319 of the Clean Water Act as administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Funding eligibility, criteria for prioritization, application format, and special conditions are outlined in these procedures. Proposals must be on the FORM PROVIDED HERE and be received in the Lincoln office of the NDEQ no later than 4:00 p.m., Central time, Tuesday, September 6, 2011, to be considered for funding. 

Please direct any questions you may have to:

Elbert Traylor, Coordinator Nonpoint Source Pollution Management Program Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality P.O. Box 98922 Lincoln, NE 68509-8922 Telephone: (402) 471-2585 E-mail: Elbert.Traylor@nebraska.gov

Questions must be received by 4:00 p.m., Central time, August 24, 2011. Responses to those questions will be posted on NDEQ’s website,http://www.deq.state.ne.us, by August 30, 2011.

Proposals are to be submitted via e-mail in Word (.doc) or Adobe PDF (.pdf) format, with a subject of: NPS Proposal to:ndeq.nonpointsource@nebraska.gov

What is Agriculture Community Doing to Prevent Non-point Source Pollution

I've given countless presentations about the importance of urban stormwater and construction stormwater runoff protection.  I would have to try very hard to think of the number of times nobody raised the question, "what is the agriculture community doing to prevent non-point source pollution."  It is almost automatic.  I can see the twinkle in their eye when they raise their hand to ask the question.  It is a valid question, but it is also a little bit of a cop-out.  One one hand, it does water-down the message that controlling erosion at developments on the city edge is important when the farm field across the road doesn't appear to be doing their fair share.  I hear that argument.  I do.  That farmer is certainly not held to the same NPDES permit requirement as the commercial land developer is.  On the other hand though, we can only control what we control and defer to others to control what they can control.

So to everyone that has ever asked, "what about all that sediment and pollutants leaving the farmer's field up the road", I share a link to a video that starts to answer that question.  The Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative or MRBI produced This Video to highlight how the USDA-NRCS is working with producers to implement the most cost-effective pollution prevention practices through research.  The effort is strikingly comparable to the International Stormwater BMP Database being populated with independent scientific research about he pollution removal effectiveness of urban stormwater BMPs.

At the 2011, State-wide Stormwater Round Table, we heard that professionals need to stop diluting the message to the public by distinguishing between agricultural and urban non-stormwater pollution and just call it stormwater pollution.  What do you think? Do the research and practice cost-share measures taken by USDA-NRCS help reduce the concern that the agricultural community is not doing their fair share?  Feel free to leave your comments and observations about the topic here.