Should Erosion and Sediment Control Requirements Match IEPA and Illinois Urban Manual?
By StormBlog53. Filed in Erosion and sediment control |
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?
Wednesday, November 18th 2009 at 11:04 am |
One of the issues we are dealing with here is that the regulators seem to focus on erosion control and they are theoretically all sending people to check the same site. This wastes every one’s resources. We need one set of rules that everyone feels is adequate and we need a way of allowing for periodic updates in those rules. Not sure I am confortable extending jurisdiciton to sites less than one acre. The current Stormwater Ordinance language seems sufficient. We may need to integrate the BMP language and the erosion control language into one set of guidance/requirements. For a typical small parcel single family home redeveloment what set of rules applies? This implies that having “a one stop location” for each type of development where everything associated with that type of development can be found might be useful. This might duplicate language elsewhere in the ordinance but would improve the “user friedly” aspects of the ordinance.
Friday, February 5th 2010 at 1:20 pm |
What if we implemented the Urban manual/NPDES/SWPP process for sites where NOI is required and kept our current ESC requirements for the smaller sites?
Wednesday, November 18th 2009 at 11:58 am |
I think adopting the IEPA’s rules would help. Then, the COE/SWCD, municiplaites, County would be using the exact same set of documents and inspection by one could be construed as inspection by all. All construction sites are already required to deal with erosion and sediment control, even if a permit is not required. We could look at simplified submittals for sites that are small and below the threshold for an NOI.
Friday, November 20th 2009 at 11:17 am |
The erosion and sediment control portion of the Ordinance was updated in 2005 for compliance with the U.S. EPA’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Phase II permit issued to the County and its co-permitees. The changes mirror information needed in a SWPPP under NPDES however the SWPPP ‘format’ is not required. A SWPPP is required for many projects by the IEPA and the same requirements need to be followed for all developments under the Ordinance regardless of size (even if a Stormwater Permit is not required {Sec. 15-117.2}), so it makes sense to adopt the SWPPP format in the Ordinance. And I agree as stated above “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.”
Tuesday, November 24th 2009 at 2:35 pm |
I think this warrants strong consideration, especially if we all agree that DuPage County does not need to be any more stringent than IEPA’s SWPPP format.
Requiring a similar simplified format for sites below the threshhold for an NOI makes sense, too.
Monday, December 14th 2009 at 1:46 pm |
The soil and erosion control section of the Ordinance was previously updated and a lot of discussion was centered on what should be included in the Ordinance and what should not. The current requirements were included to amend, enhance or clarify the Illinois Urban Manual. A great deal of time and effort went into this endeavor to build a consensus. After exhaustive research and debate a consensus was reached. Collectively the group felt these were the requirements that were needed.
The group specifically ommitted making references to IEPA’s SWPP format. This was done because municipalities did not want to be responsible for administering IEPA’s SWPP requirements and we weren’t following their process. IEPA doesn’t review the SWPP. They only check it upon inspection or when a complaint has been filed. Municipalities review all soil and erosion control plans, specifications, standards, schedules and securities to make sure they comply with the Ordinance prior to issuing a permit.
Changing to IEPA’s format would be a great departure from what the group had previously agreed upon and I think in some ways be a diservice to developers. DPC and municipalities are supposed to provide this plan review service, especially if they are going to asses a fee.
Friday, February 5th 2010 at 1:24 pm |
I am not following the disservice to the developers part of the argument. Currently two sets of documents, for the same purpose, are required. I think if we have more stringent requiremnts they can still apply, what I am talking about is the form of the submittal–making it match that requiried for a SWPP. Is there something about the required SWPP format that is difficult to review?
Friday, February 12th 2010 at 4:37 pm |
I was talking about how they process the SWPPP. They don’t even review it. This I think is a disservice to developers especially when you charge them a fee.
My other comment was just an observation that almost everyone did not want us to have the same IEPA SWPPP requirements built into ours because we didn’t want to be doing their work for them while they were at the same time charging us an NPDES fee. I understood the other municipalities’ arguement and didn’t continue pushing for us to have a SWPPP format.