The Road to Implementing the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007
Getting the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007 passed was the easy part, getting it implemented in the spirit of the legislation will be the hard part. Diane Cameron, Coordinator for the Montgomery County Stormwater Partners, provided this report on the road to implementing the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007.

As part of the implementation process, the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) has been holding Focus Group Meetings stakeholders . One such meeting was held on January 30, 2008 in Baltimore, regarding the Stormwater Management Act of 2007 and the Environmental Site Design revisions to the Manual. The meeting was very well-attended, with about 80 people present, and roughly a dozen Consortium representatives among them.

Consortium reps and affiliates/ allies present included: Robert Boone; Jen Brock-Cancellieri; Bruce Gilmore, Drew Koslow; Anne Pearson; Steve Dryden (FORCE); Andie Murtha (Land Planner); Alison Mize (Alice Ferguson Foundation); Eliza Steinmeier; Diane Cameron; Dana Minerva (Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership); and Austin Meyerman (Abtech Associates).

About the Consortium:
The Maryland Stormwater Consortium is a network of diverse organizations, including community, watershed, environmental, engineering, and developer groups who have endorsed the 13 Core Principles for implementing the Stormwater Management Act of 2007. Additional signatories are welcomed. The consortium is semi-informal, with a Steering Committee that meets monthly and a Technical Committee headed by Tom Schueler.

Brief Summary

Other than the dozen or so Consortium folks, the rest of the crowd was roughly one-half engineers and site designers, and one-half local officials. From much of the engineering, site design, and local government community, there was a heartening sense of openness and readiness for change that was conveyed during the give-and-take part of the meeting.

Key issues that the Consortium members, allies, and some of the technical and local government representatives brought out were:

  1. The requirement under the law to make Environmental Site Design (ESD) mandatory for all development and redevelopment, which the current draft Chapter 5 does not accomplish; (this is my very subjective take, but the sense I got was that virtually everyone in the room with only a handful of holdouts, was on the same page about this -- both about the law making ESD mandatory, and about the fact that thus far, MDE's draft hasn't accomplished this.)
  2. The need for a statewide ESD process and mandate that is tailor-able to local conditions and that makes no blanket categorical exemptions for any soil type, but rather that requires site-specific soil, vegetation, small stream and Forest Stand Delineation (FSD)/ vegetation mapping as Step One.
  3. The law's requirement for integration of construction phase erosion and sediment control plans with ESD requirements, technology enhancements (including very cheap technologies like immediate straw mulching on bare ground, and clearing & grading restrictions), and much better site inspection and enforcement; and the need to include Redevelopment and Smart Growth as key issues. Redevelopment is required under the SWM Act and yet MDE hasn't addressed it yet; it is anticipated that the 6th Focus Group which has been added thanks to Robert Boone and others, slated for College Park - UM the week of February 11, will address Redevelopment.
  4. Retrofitting as an issue that must be addressed if already-degraded urban rivers like the Anacostia are to have hope of improvement and of progress in TMDL implementation (though it was noted that probably, additional legislation would be needed to accomplish that, since current law doesn't authorize requiring existing properties to capture or treat their stormwater.)

A similar, mid-February MDE-hosted meeting for Prince George's and Montgomery County officials, citizens, and site designers is under discussion with MDE as of 2/5. Please e-mail Diane Cameron for more information, or check the stormwaterpartners.org web site.

Next Steps for the Consortium include:

  1. Ongoing technical research, discussions, and informed debate with stormwater practitioners, site designers, and regulators to document the basis for our Core Principles and especially the four Numeric Site Design Performance Standards that we proposed: Runoff Reduction Volume; per-acre Nitrogen Limits; Per-acre Phosphorus limits; and construction site turbidity limits.
  2. Refining our stormwater messaging and outreach strategy;
  3. giving presentations to a wide ranging audience throughout the next 6 to 9 months;
  4. Enlisting the help of a variety of decisionmakers to support MDE's full implementation of the Stormwater Management Act of 2007.

Members of the Stormwater Partners and watershed groups such as FOSC, FORCE, NNWB and others are encouraged to become involved in local outreach, education, and advocacy around this crucial new stormwater law.

Environmental Site Design is the green design that Realtors, Developers, Construction companies, and other firms are now promoting. The question is, will it be defined in a way that will make a difference for the Bay and our streams? We say, Yes it will be so defined -- if MDE does the right thing and uses the Core Principles as proposed by the Maryland Stormwater Consortium to establish Environmental Site Design protocols. (For more information, please see Core Principles and Flow Chart.)

Diane Cameron, Co-Chair, Maryland Stormwater Consortium and Coordinator,
Montgomery County Stormwater Partners Consultant to NRDC and Audubon Naturalist Society
in front of Montgomery Park, MDE Headquarters.