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?

The current Stormwater Ordinance in DuPage County uses a very inclusive definition of “Development”, and has few distinctions between what is actually required based on the type of project that is being considered.  “Types of development” can draw distinctions between land uses, such as single family residential, multi- family residential, mixed use commercial, commercial, industrial, institutional, or office/research.  Another way might classify development based on what the no-build or current condition of the land is, such as redevelopment, development, or restoration.  We believe that for efficiency of resources, and to focus requirements appropriately,  distinctions between projects should be made.  For discussion purposes these distinctions might be Development (land is currently in agriculture or natural), Redevelopment (land is currently devoted to human use with impervious areas), Restoration (project goal returns area to a condition reflecting a naturalized state) or public open space development (parks and areas of Forest Preserve District holdings developed for passive and active recreation),  and Public Transportation right-of way development (roads, trails).  What do you think of making such distinctions, and what categories would you suggest?

Welcome to the first “official” post on the Stormwater Update blog.  “We” are a team of Consultants, The County Staff, and representatives of the Municipalities within DuPage County.   We are beginning a process, in which we will be looking at and potentially modifying stormwater regulation in DuPage County.    The objective is to retool the Countywide Stormwater and Floodplain Ordinance so that it better reflects DuPage County in 2009 and going forward.  The County places a very high value on the quality of life in the county,  and the current Ordinance reflects this in its’ “Purposes”.   Stormwater Quantity, Quality, and valuable environmental resources fall under the current regulation.  

We want to look at “what we do now”, and “what we should be doing”  from as many perspectives as we can.  Above all,  the commitment to the health, safety and welfare of those who live, work, find recreation, own property, and own and operate businesses in DuPage County cannot be compromised.   That statement though is too broad,  and to be effective the Stormwater Regulations must ask:  What is the “right” level of regulation?   How can the timelines for the processes of permitting be made reflective of and appropriate to the differing levels of complexity that Stormwater regulation implies?  What about new state/Federal mandates?  These are some of the questions that will drive the next 15-months of work. 

We highly value your input and feedback as we move forward.  You will see that each of the posts will be available for comment by representatives of every community that has a role in implementing these regulations.  Just as importantly, all who view this website are invited to comment by clicking on “Provide Us Your Comments” located on this webpage just to the left of this box.   All of the documents that are in their final form will be made available to read through this website, and our goal is to be open and transparent about where this process is headed and what it is intended to achieve. 

We will be reaching out to many stakeholder groups, soliciting comment, and anticipate a lively discussion on many issues.  That is why such a long period has been set aside for this effort.  Like any process,  we have to make sure that the right people are fully engaged at the right time. 

Please follow along with us as we take the first real steps toward shaping Stormwater Management in DuPage County for the future.