The Steering Committee has settled on a “structure” for the Ordinance update.  The Stormwater Ordinance will be reformatted to create a series of “upfront” sections that will steer an applicant directly to the applicable regulatory section for the specific development, and specific site characteristics under consideration.  This will be partly in the form of a matrix and partly in the form of text under appropriate front-end articles.

An applicant would first characterize the site he intends to build the project on.  The steering committee approved the following categories that pertain to the site pre-project.

1. The degree to which a site is already “developed”, as indicated by the “Total Impervious Area” (TIA) of the site.  Degrees of development threshold distinctions are contemplated at the less than 15% TIA, 15% to 50% TIA, and greater than 50% TIA.
2. Whether or not a site includes “Waters of DuPage County”.
3. Whether of not a site includes a “Regulatory floodplain”.

Note that a site may be included under more than one category.

Next, the applicant must characterize the proposed project.  The Steering Committee has given a conditional nod to the following project characterizations as a starting point to be used in determining which Ordinance requirements apply.

1. Those not meeting the requirements of the categories below will be classified by one or more of the following:
   1. Change in Impervious area
   2. Grade changes
   3. Modification of existing structures
   4. Construction of new structures
   5. Modifications of existing buildings
   6. Construction of new buildings
   7. Linear Transportation Project-Vehicle and pedestrian facilities in linear land holdings created for that purpose.
   8. Naturalization Project-A project, or a portion of a larger project, whose purpose is
      1. Streambank Stabilization
      2. Wetland Mitigation
      3. Wetland Mitigation Bank
      4. Water Quality Improvement
      5. Stream, Stream habitat, and Upland habitat Restoration; and Forestry management activities
      6. Watershed Plan Implementation Projects

Based on the characteristics of the site, and the characteristics of the project, the applicant will be directed to specific articles that will define limitations, methodologies, standards and mitigation requirements where appropriate.  It is anticipated at that all developments will have certain requirements they must meet, some of them procedural and some regulatory.  Procedural requirements that might apply to all include such things as the form and content of a permit submittal, development security, Maintenance requirements, violations, appeals, variances and the like.   Universal Regulatory requirements might include such topics as erosion and sediment control and incorporation of Best Management Practices.  Within those topics, specific requirements can be tailored to the site and project classifications as appropriate, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.

This concept is a starting point in the Update, and of course will be more fully developed as we proceed.  What do you think?  What problems do your foresee with this approach as applied to your own community?

The Consultant team has been talking to Staff at DuPage County who regularly review Special Management Areas about the idea of creating a special project “category” for projects whose purpose is primarily to improve, restore or protect “natural features” of the landscape.  We will be bringing a fuller discussion of the issues to the Steering committee very soon.   Natural features of regulatory significance in the current ordinance include “Waters of DuPage”, and Riparian areas.  These categories refer to what is on the site pre-project, and do not speak directly to the nature of the project itself.  Not all projects represent degradation of the existing resource, and in many cases the environmental resource is not “better off in a no-build scenario”, compared to its expected condition after a project is built.  Examples of the types of projects we are referring to here include:

• Wetland creation
• Wetland and Steam Restoration
• Streambank Stabilization
• Retrofitting of BMPs to existing development
• In-steam aquatic habitat creation or enhancement projects
• Enhancement of existing degraded wetlands and riparian areas.

There are good reasons why a stormwater ordinance needs to look at these types of projects differently, and it seems advisable to create a vehicle within the ordinance structure to do so.  To date, we have named this category “naturalization projects”.  The need for development mitigation factors like “site runoff storage (detention)” and some other mitigation practices would be applied differently or sometimes not at all to naturalization projects, as the “development” involved in such projects is a form of mitigation for old developments.

Do you see these categories as in need of different requirements from a stormwater perspective?  What other types of projects should such a category encompass?  What sections of the Ordinance, if any, would be applied differently in your view?

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now developed their Final Rules for limiting pollution from construction site runoff.  In discussions with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA), the State has indicated unofficially that they were waiting for the EPA’s final rules before tackling this issue in Illinois.   The federal rules will be phased in, according to the fact sheet.  More information on this federal regulation can be found at the following link:

http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/guide/construction/

How do you think this should influence this ordinance update effort?  Should we try to anticipate the Federal/State rules, or leave that issue for a future update when the State has had a chance to implement this rule making in Illinois?

In looking over the “Erosion and Sediment control” section of the Ordinance, It occurs to me that a lot has changed in this area since the Ordinance was first adopted.  The NPDES requirements for a Stormwater Pollution Prevention plan overlap these requirements, and reference the Illinois Urban Manual for technical specifications on practices.  Many of the provisions of the current ordinance were written because there was no real effective program in place, and acted in the absence of an effective program at the time.  In an effort to reduce duplicative regulatory submittals and coordinate requirements, what do you think of the idea of requiring a SWPP based on the Illinois Urban Manual and IEPA rules for all DuPage County Stormwater permits, in lieu of the requirements of Section 15-117 of the Ordinance?  This would extend the NPDES requirement to sites that are not currently large enough to fall under NPDES (1-acre threshold) but for sites larger than 1-acre the documents required to be produced and maintained for the NOI would be the same as for the Stormwater Permit under the County Ordinance.  Those sites which do not currently have to submit to the IEPA would not have to submit an NOI under this concept, it only makes the design requirements and documentation uniform.  Is this a bad idea?

While DuPage County has from time to time published guidance for certain sections of the Stormwater Ordinance over the years,  there has not been a comprehensive overhaul of the Guidance Manual since it was first published.  There seems to be differences of opinion on the usefulness of the Guidance documents, with some wanting more specific language in the Ordinance and others preferring more general Ordinance language supplemented by robust guidance.  Weaving into this thread is a feeling by some that the Ordinance should be “consistently applied” while others push for more “flexibility”.

How do you see the relationship between an Ordinance and the Guidance document that accompanies it?  Is it “better” to include essentially guidance language in an ordinance, or minimize the language in the ordinance in favor of relegating  the “how to do it” to a separate and non-regulatory document?   Should one try to cover as many specific situations as  possible in the Ordinance, or make the language more general?  What types of situations do you believe the Administrator in each community needs flexibility on?

We received some helpful feedback and comment from a diverse cross-section of engineers and scientists, developers, government officials, businesses and citizens yesterday in a forum whose purpose was to receive just such input.  The following is a summary of a few of the comments/suggestions received.  The full list is posted soon to this website in our “meeting minutes” section.  You can view the “powerpoint” presentation for this meeting as well.  Some of the comments:

• Consider using the wetland hydrology criteria similar to the 80/150 rule that lake county uses to gauge indirect impacts to wetlands.
• Consider providing some form of tax relief for properties that contain wetlands.
• Encourage “positive” practices and Incorporate credit for the positive aspects of “green technologies” like permeable pavers into the ordinance.
• In developing the ordinance, consider the economic well being of citizens, property rights, and the cost of permit reviews.
• Ask for all permit submittals in a digital format.

These are only a few of the comments pulled at random.  If there is something you want us to know about the ordinance, if you have a suggestion, please go to the “Provide Us Your Comments” option to the left of this box.

It appears that the majority of the effects on stormwater quantity and quality can be tracked either explicitly or implicitly through the measurement of the percentage of impervious area on a zoning parcel of land.  In reviewing literature and studies done in this regard, a few observations may prove useful in the ordinance rewrite.

• Total Impervious Area (TIA) is often distinguished from Effective Impervious Area (EIA) when tracking impacts.  EIA is the portion of the TIA that has improved drainage area.  It is similar to concepts like “Directly connected Impervious Area” found in TR-55.  Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of investigation to separate EIA from TIA on a project parcel, and often generalized ratios dependent on description of the land use are used rather than direct measurement.
• An on-going challenge in stormwater Ordinance language is finding language for and descriptions of “Development” that make meaningful distinctions technically, practically and administratively.  One potential way out of this on-going problem is to use the % impervious of a project as a threshold trigger for certain mitigation requirements.  Here is an example:
  • Define any project that is less than 10% TIA as not requiring a site runoff storage facility.
  • Define projects that increase the % impervious area of a project site as requiring a site runoff storage facility to mitigate the change, if the TIA is greater than 10%.
  • If a project can be shown to significantly reduce the EIA,  then a site runoff storage facility may not be required.
  • These are only examples, but consider something like the holdings of the Forest Preserve District, or the trend toward Low Impact Design.
  • The overwhelming majority of studies show that percent impervious can be correlated with the “health” of streams,  with nearly all studies beginning to register stream impairments as low as 10% impervious.  While that is the “bad news”, it also tells us what is and is not likely to further degrade water quality.  Many studies site the percent impervious threshold for characterization of land use as rural/undeveloped less than 10% impervious,  suburban as up to 50% impervious and urban as greater than 50% impervious.  Is a site that has been urban for a number of years, likely to degrade or improve conditions if a new project on the site is approved as an urban land use but at a reduced percent impervious?  Certainly a trend toward a watershed scale reduction in impervious surfaces has already been recognized as a goal by the EPA and as a valid approach to meeting NPDES requirements.
  • What about flooding?  Don’t all developments, of any kind, increase flooding?  The answer is: not necessarily if one considers that the drainage of an existing land use has often been accomplished by existing drainage infrastructure for years.   Consider many of our older “downtown” areas.  While localized drainage problems may exist,  drainage infrastructure out of the downtown area is usually “mature” at this stage, and a new outlet or modification of the existing outlet into a stream is probably not proposed.  If an urban project is discharging to the same storm sewer as the previous urban land-use, is not causing its neighbors additional damages, and has actually reduced the volume of pollutants and runoff volume, doesn’t that embody the trend we desire?  Considering the current push towards denser and more intense downtown land use,  Does a pond or an underground tank really sound like wise use of infrastructure dollars?

Where is this discussion going?  I am wondering if we can’t eliminate the often confusing pages and pages of ordinance language with something more direct, like percent impervious, that is not only more universally recognizable but more directly associated with the impacts we wish to continue regulating.  Can we replace the references to single family residential, multifamily, commercial, industrial, institutional land use with thresholds of percent impervious?  Is that an improvement, or just a new complication?  What do you think?

All Steering Committee members should have received a draft technical memorandum and accompanying tables for the National Ordinance Review, which was conducted to identify successful and innovative stormwater program practices in various locations accross the USA. Please provide comments here if you have observations, questions, etc. Also, if you find specific items within the report that you think should be considered within DuPage’s update process, please let us know which.

The report and tables will be posted to this site soon.

We are conducting a survey on the DuPage County Ordinance, which is designed to help us understand the experience of  “users” of the ordinance.  The survey can be accessed by “clicking” on “Survey” to the left of these posts.  We invite anyone reading this to take this survey, it does not take long and has plenty of places to leave us detailed comments.  We have sent this same survey to 368 people who over the last two years have either been landowners or professionals who have engaged the permit process, so if you received a postcard or e-mail from us, the link on this page is the same survey and you need not take it again.  The survey results are collected in such a way that only the consultants have direct access to them, so there is no need to fear some sort of “repercussions” by taking the survey. Thanks for participating, it is important to all concerned at both the County and the Municipal level that your voices are heard.

How much value is there in re-ordering and re-arranging the various Articles of the Ordinance?  In 1992 when the ordinance was new the most immediate questions were “How does administration of this thing work?” and “Will projects be “grandfathered” from this ordinance and reviewed/approved under the previous stormwater management ordinances?”   The answer to the first question has been with us for a while now and while the update to the ordinance may tweak some aspects, it is hardly new.  The answer to the second question has yet to be widely discussed, and may be much less of an issue this time around.  Arguably,  those two questions dominate the text in 5 of the first 8 articles of our current Ordinance.  We don’t really begin to specify submittal requirements until Article 11, 56-pages into the text.  On the positive side, those who work  in the Engineering/Legal/Development field in DuPage County frequently have gotten used to this system, and any sort of wholesale change in layout and format could cause concern for any number of reasons.  Should we work within the current Ordinance Text format and divisions,  or look at a re-ordering?  If reordering, who should the primary target audience be?