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Municipal Cooperation
TCWA is working with our thrity-three municipalities, two counties, numerous state and federal agencies, and other partners to provide better information, improve operations, and reduce expenses in the following areas:
Stormwater Managment - is one of the biggest water quality and quantity problems we face, both in the Turtle Creek watershed and across southwestern Pennsylvania. Stormwater is the largest contributor of non-point source pollution, as well as being the source of growing problems with combined sewer overflows (CSOs), sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), drinking water source contamination, erosion, flooding, habitat destruction, low water tables, sedimentation, and streambank destablization.
Costs for these problems are huge - and increasing steadily. They are borne, not just by individuals whose property is directly damaged, but by all of us as municipal, county, and state taxpayers, as water and sewer authority ratepayers, and as insurance ratepayers.
New federal and state requirements designed to reduce the incidence of these problems places new responsibilities upon our municipalities, and exposes them to new liabilities. Water issues do not start and stop at political borders, nor will the solutions. By working together, we can resolve many of these issues.
To learn more about these issues, common sense solutions, and what you can do, look at the links below:
DCNR Landscaping with Native Plants Brochure
DCNR Native Plant List
Municipal Stormwater Primer title pages
Municipal Stormwater Primer
Native Plants and Hydrology Benefits
Rain Garden instructions - West Michigan
Rain Garden information - TCWA
Rain Barrel information - TCWA
Stormwater - Issues & Solutions: 2007
3rd Turtle Creek Watershed Stormwater Management Leadership Forum flyer
Act 167 Plan Update - In the late 1970s, a state law was passed paving the way for comprehensive stormwater planning as a way not just to address associated environmental problems, but to protect health and safety. This planning would be done on a watershed basis and would include such features as release rates for different land uses as well as model ordinances each municipality was required to adopt.
Work would be funded 75% by the state and 25% by each county planning department. Updates would be required every five years, but with the same fudning strategy.
In 1991 the Turlte Creek Watershed's Act 167 Stormwater Management was completed. Due to the loss of funds on the state and county levels, no updates were ever accomplished. However, there is some state funding now available. In order to create a valid document, we need to look at factors other than just revising release rates. A channel assessment to identify our problem sites and all the sources of these problems will incorporate the real world data needed to complement the engineering data.
While state funds are available, county funds are not. To compensate, other local watersheds have succeeded in banding their muncipalities together, signing mutual support agreements, and providing proportional shares of the remaining 25%. These communities recognize the benefits they will see individually and colllectively will far exceed their cost shares.
We hope to accomplish the same achievements here in the Turtle Creek watershed so that our communities may also benefit from the state funds before they are no longer offered. TCWA invites our municpal partners to take lead roles in this work.
NPDES Phase II Compliance and the MS4 Program - are federal programs that came from the Clean Water Act designed to improve water quality by addressing many pollution sources on a local level. Recognizing that stormwater provided substantial amounts of water contamination, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II program was authorized in December of 1999. Like the Phase I program before it that was aimed at large cities with storm sewer systems (and at certain industrial processes), Phase II was aimed primarily at municipalities with more than 10,000 people (plus certain industrial entities) and with storm sewer systems.
As a key part of the Phase II program, the MS4 program (municipal separate storm sewer system) requires municipalities and other MS4 operators to comply with a variety of measures to gradually improve water quality by more effectively dealing with the excessive stormwater runoff we see today.
The links below will provide more detailed information:
Clean Water Act, NPDES Phase II, and MS4 Basics
MS4 Six Minimum Control Measures - as part of the NPDES Phase II Program to create safer drinking water sources (and stormwater is the ultimate source of most of our drinking water), municipalities and other MS4 entities are required to address provisions konwn as the Six Minimum Control Measures (6MCM). These six and examples of ways to meet them are:
1. Public Education and Outreach - provide opportunities for residents to learn more about stormwater isses, whether from programs, flyers, websites, or other venues, and what steps they can take to help resolve them.
2. Public Participation and Involvement - provide activities such as storm drain stenciling projects, erosion control or rain garden training sessions designed for scout troops, contractors, home owners, garden clubs, or science classes.
3. Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination - municipalities need to map all discharges, then determine which contain substances other than stormwater. Those made up of more than groundwater must be identified and the contamination sources eliminated.
4. Construction Site Runoff Control - municipalities must improve their ordinances, compliance, and enforcement means to reduce the stormwater volume and pollutant levels at development sites within their boundaries.
5. Post-Construction Runoff Control - typical developed sites contribute execess runoff and pollutants even after construction is finished. Someone must assume full responsibility to insure problems are not created.
6. Pollution Prevention/Good Housekeeping - municipalities have the opportunity to set community examples in the way they manage their vehicles, cleaning products, maintain lands, etc. to protect water quality.
TCWA is grateful to The Heinz Endowments for their support of our mulit-municipal, non-point source pollution work. Identifying and solving our collective water quality and quantity problems is a common goal. When achieved, direct and indirect economic, environmental, and health benefits will accrue to all our communites and their residents.