Potholes & Politics: Local Maine Issues from A to Z
Potholes & Politics: Local Maine Issues from A to Z
The Return of the Stormwater Rangers: Tackling Urban Stormwater and Statewide Solutions
In this episode, Rebecca Squared & Amanda the new kid continue the coversation with Stormwater Super Heros - Giants of municipal water protection activities; South Portland's Stormwater Coordinator Fred Dillon and Portland's Stormwater Coordinator Doug Roncarati and their state level partner Maine Department of Environmental Protection Stormwater Engineer Cody Obropta to tackle issues around development pressures.
Does regulation make development harder or does regulation and planning make development cheaper on the community in the long run? Get the one the ground facts from the front lines and learn about the theory of low impact development versus use of green infrastructure and why those buzzwords are coming to an ordinance near you soon.
Ever wondered about the intricate dance between stormwater law and water quality standards? Using the Long Creek Watershed as our case study, we delve into the stringent mandates of MS4 permits and the herculean efforts required to restore urban impaired stream habitats. Our discussion extends to the significance of maintaining viable aquatic ecosystems and a closer look at the progressively stricter requirements every five years. You'll gain insights into the benefits of educating service contractors, the impact of clearer statewide standards, and the promising potential of green infrastructure projects.
Lastly, explore the innovative ways Portland’s stormwater utility credit program incentivizes redevelopment while addressing pollutant-specific approaches for stormwater management. We highlight how these strategies benefit developers and the broader implications of climate change on future MS4 communities. Tune in to hear about Maine’s unique phosphorus control strategies in lake watersheds and the persistent challenges posed by historical land use and climate change. Wrapping up, we stress the importance of expert consultation and community involvement, all while celebrating the camaraderie and shared humor of those dedicated to tackling these complex environmental issues.
"Urbanized and developed municipalities and other large public entities require Clean Water Act permits to send stormwater to nearby water bodies due to an increased likelihood of stormwater pollutants."
"Stormwater is precipitation that does not soak into the ground. Runoff accumulates in large quantities as it flows off of rooftops, driveways, roads and other impervious surfaces, picking up soil and polluting chemicals in its wake. It then flows into a storm drain, through an underground network of pipes, where it discharges into local rivers and streams, untreated."
Think Blue Maine
https://thinkbluemaine.org/
Map of urban impaired streams: https://maine.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=7f8f40a744ad49f3a6cccc7f1330872a
Welcome everyone to Potholes and Politics local Maine issues from A to Z. I'm your co-host, Rebecca Graham, and we are going to revisit the second half of a cliffhanger episode that we left you with earlier this winter. We're going to follow up second half of a cliffhanger episode that we left you with earlier this winter. We're going to follow up with our Stormwater Rangers and drop Stormwater Rangers, Part 2, Return of the Stormwater, which seems timely given our large rain events that we've had most recently. But don't worry, we'll be back as a team soon, but in the meantime, we hope you will enjoy this episode, Rebecca. Today we are here with some of our favorite or my personal favorite people that we are introducing our colleague to, who is also on this call.
Amanda Campbell:Amanda, you want to introduce yourself. Hi folks, I'm Amanda Campbell, your third co-host.
Rebecca Graham:Amanda's going to have to take over some of the management of this advocacy portfolio and it struck us as an important conversation that we should be having with the public in general to talk about stormwater, stormwater regulation, ms4 permits and a whole bunch of anacronyms with some of my favorite people to hang out with. Today we have with us Fred Dillon, who is the South Portland Stormwater Program Manager. Is that?
Fred Dillon:Coordinator. But yeah, I mean, manager is fine too.
Rebecca Graham:And Doug Roncarati, who is Portland's Stormwater Czar right Program coordinator works just fine, and Cody, I'm going to butcher your last name, cody, can you introduce yourself to us?
Cody Obropta:Yeah, sure thing. So I'm Cody Abrupta. I'm a licensed professional civil engineer working for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in the Land Bureau, and I'm a member of the stormwater engineering team.
Rebecca Graham:Awesome, Cody. We're so glad to have you here too, because the nexus between local, state and federal in this topic in particular is extremely important to try to understand. When we left our stormwater rangers, they were just talking about how difficult it was to get, how difficult it was to get stormwater infrastructure past a budget committee.
Doug Roncarati:Will they succeed? Do they have bright ideas? Let's find out in episode two. And it's a hard thing to do when budgets are tight now. It's hard to say we need to spend some money on this now, when everybody would like to say, hey, we can do that in five years, when things are a little less tight. But five years comes and things are just as tight, if not worse. So it's a hard sell.
Rebecca Graham:And everything in stormwater is hidden, so it's not something that people see on a regular basis in an intimate way like they would a road. There's a catch base in there, but they know when there's a pothole and that becomes a priority versus oh actually, I think this might be a good segue into Andre the Giant's connection with stormwater how we interact with the roads and our expectations as we're riding through South Portland or Portland and how that impacts stormwater and that behavior change Like that's a that's a litigation nightmare too often or use litigation is used as a.
Fred Dillon:Thanks, rebecca, that's an interesting one. And, just tagging on to what Doug was saying, I mean thinking about, you know, modifying behaviors and the other pet waste. That's one thing, but the other way to appeal to people is through, you know, through dollars and cents, right so, versus bugs and bunnies, right so, if there's a way that we can convince people that you can still maintain. So. The reference to Under the Giant is a great one, and I put a slide together for a presentation on fluoride use. And who'd have thunk that salt application and in, uh, in areas of where there are freshwater resources, is a big deal, but it's a big deal. I mean, chlorides can be toxic to the things that live in these fresh waters, and uh, and we, we put way more salt down than we need to, and so there's this misconception that more is better, and if you can't hear crunch underfoot, then it's not enough. And uh, so we're now learning, and it's not rocket science, but there's a, there's some, there's some science behind this that you can, you know, you can apply just enough, still maintain a level of service so people can safely walk into the mall or safely drive down the street and and in addition to benefiting bugs and bunnies. You know, environmental water quality. You can actually also benefit infrastructure and save money in the process, because salt is expensive, and so that's an example of what we're trying to do, and Portland was trying to do it as well.
Fred Dillon:I think we're both kind of dipping our toes into the salty water now to figure out if there are practices that we can use, that our public works departments can use and are willing to use, because there are. I mean. Going back to the public expectations, because people want to be able to you get a 10-inch snowstorm. They want to be able to drive down the main turnpike at 70 miles an hour, you know, within a half hour after that storm stops. So, um, so there are. There are challenges there, but I think those are, I mean. So I like to you know some of the interns that work with me, so that I don't completely bum them out. You know I used to start out with let's make the world a better place. You know now I've kind of come to say, well, let's make the world less worse, but at some point we're trying to make things better, I guess.
Andre the Giant:I just want to make everybody happy.
Rebecca Graham:Can you repair a stream? Is there any evidence that? Not saying that it's not important, but if you have an impaired stream, is there any way to repair that stream? Or is preventing the impairment much easier?
Fred Dillon:Because I've spoken so much. There's lots to say there, but I bet both Cody and Doug have great, great thoughts on that as well.
Cody Obropta:So I'll stop talking, I'll jump in really quickly and I'll just say that you know, when it comes to impaired streams, as little as 10% impervious cover in a watershed can lead to measurable and demonstrable impacts on a water body. If you get over 25% impervious cover in a watershed, most likely that stream is not going to be able to support the type of aquatic wildlife that we really would like to see in a healthy stream. And so, when it comes to, can streams be repaired? Yes, they can be be. However, it's a lot more difficult to do it once the stream has been impacted past a certain point, it becomes very difficult to actually accomplish that type of restoration work and again, like all things, it becomes more and more expensive the more impacts you're trying to repair and respond to. Now, yes, we've absolutely got ways to address this situation. There are watershed-based plans or watershed management plans that are put together to help. It's basically like a roadmap to improving water quality and habitat in an affected water body. We can fund restoration work or implement best management practices, stormwater controls to help address some of the either pollutant loading issues or also other issues to think about with a water body are thermal issues actually, so stormwater. When it's running off of a hot surface, a pavement heats up, a lot more so than grass or forest area does. So when rainwater hits that in the summer, that water is warmed up and those thermal impacts actually it may not seem like a lot to us, but to aquatic wildlife that has different thresholds it can be a big difference. So cooling down that stormwater is another big important point. And then, on top of that, building up the habitat in the actual streams can be a big challenge. But yeah, there are definitely ways to address it. Some of the things we use are specifically our structural BMPs best management practices to capture and slow down the stormwater too. Right Impervious surfaces shed stormwater very quickly.
Cody Obropta:I mean, one of the things that us humans are really good at is paving over a surface and getting water and moving it around really quickly. We're good at directing water to places. The problem is in a natural setting that's not the ideal habitat generating mechanism. You don't want a lot of that. You don't want the stream to go from just normal base flow to completely flooding out in a matter of minutes.
Cody Obropta:Usually in an undeveloped watershed, it takes hours, days for water to travel across that surface and end up in the water bodies because there's all these obstructions, you've got your vegetation cover. Some of that water is infiltrating into the groundwater and so through development we kind of reduce all of that time it takes for the water to run off and we're basically blowing out our streams, for lack of a better word. And so all of those challenges can be difficult to mitigate later on. You know, addressing it upfront and preventing it from occurring can be one of the better ways to address the problem. But again, you know, there is always going to be a development pressure and it's, I guess it's just it's tough to it deal with. But I'll let I'll let Doug talk a little bit.
Doug Roncarati:One thing I wanted to clear up a little bit. There's a lot of talk about urban impaired streams and I don't want to go too far down that road. But I wanted to explain that under the Clean Water Act the state of Maine has developed water quality standards and those standards are essentially to look at a whole host of lakes, rivers, streams, coastal waters and determine what their uses are and determine what their current status is based on the standards that they've set up. So, for example, every water body or large water body has a water quality standard that is the goal for it to meet. It should currently it should be able to meet those standards and provide all the benefits and uses that that go with those standards.
Doug Roncarati:So when you get into stormwater law, that's a separate thing.
Doug Roncarati:That's when you get into the urban impaired stream standard.
Doug Roncarati:So you can have a stream or a lake or a river that doesn't meet water quality standards and then the communities that are part of that watershed have to do things to improve water quality in those water bodies.
Doug Roncarati:But if you have a stream that isn't meeting water quality standards and it is designated under stormwater law as an urban impaired stream, then there are additional things under stormwater management law that you completely separate from the main water quality standards and the infamous 303D list, which is basically the list of all impaired water bodies or potentially impaired water bodies that the state has to submit to the federal government every so many years under the Clean Water Act. For example, you could have a pond in your community that isn't an urban impaired stream, but it's an impaired pond because, for example, too much phosphorus is being dumped into it. It's causing algae blooms, which results in less dissolved oxygen in the water, which degrades the habitat for the fish and all the other aquatic organisms and makes it pretty much miserable for everybody to use. So I just wanted to clarify that type of thing. So there's things that are required under Maine water quality law and things that are required under Maine stormwater law.
Fred Dillon:But one other nuance, doug, to add to that and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it only recently that there's been a linkage established between those two, ie the MS4 permit, which now actually compels us to do something about urban impaired streams, or, as before, prior to this most recent permit iteration? And we didn't mention that these MS4 permits go in five-year cycles, this last one being an exception because there's been some controversy about some of the elements of it. But just assume that there's a five-year permit cycle and each iteration becomes a little bit more strict. And I think prior to this one, the urban impaired stream work that we were doing and that all of us have been doing we call it voluntary, but I mean, I don't think that there was as much regulatory push behind it so that if we didn't feel like feel like developing a watershed management plan, we didn't necessarily have to. What that enabled us to do was to we did this, you know nine step epa, you know kind of approved plan planning process. It made us eligible for the ep319 funding we talked about funding earlier so that we could do some stuff and you know, to restore the stream.
Fred Dillon:So, um, but we try restore the stream, which goes back to Rebecca's original question are all streams restorable? And Cody kind of got at it as well Maybe not. So one quick example is looking and it's not a quick example but I'll try and be quick about it is that both Doug and I are on the board of the Long Creek Watershed Management District, which is a stream system in the main mall area, and Cody mentioned that 10% is a critical threshold, maybe even 8%. We actually start to see degradation of aquatic habitat. Some of the sub-watershed areas in the main mall have 60% impervious area and are those restorable? Maybe not. So you had a question, rebecca, about that. We don't want them to get any worse.
Fred Dillon:So Doug has been a real great advocate on the board and has made the point of in the Long Creek watershed it's about three and a half square miles, I think there's about 700 acres currently of impervious area and of that very small percentage of that we're not small but it's not a big enough percentage that it takes a big bite out of the amount of all the stuff that Cody was talking about the volume, the thermal impacts, the pollutants that come going to improve and one of the other things that I don't think we've mentioned yet, in addition to all the structural BMPs that Cody talked about, is that Long Creek did this really cool in-stream restoration project where they actually went into the stream itself, the stream channel, and put all these natural features in there to try and mimic what was blown out.
Fred Dillon:Cody mentioned all these fire hose effect when you have this heavily urbanized landscape and you get these rain events that just throw all this water quickly at a stream and then just blast it out. But anyway, I know that's a bit of a jumbled jumbled thoughts, but I see Doug's got his hand up and I bet he's got some clarifying points to make.
Doug Roncarati:Yeah, you really get some great points, fred, and you know Long Creek is a great example of how not to manage a watershed.
Doug Roncarati:Essentially, it's not just about managing stormwater, it's the fact that we went in wholesale, destroyed the stream. We moved the stream, we filled the stream, we altered the stream, we filled in all of the wetlands that provide natural treatment and habitat and protection for the stream, and then we put all of this landscape on top of it, which produces a lot of runoff and a lot of urban environments, salt being a big one in that watershed. So we physically changed it and when you get to that point, it's very, very expensive, as we're finding, to try to restore it and even putting in stormwater infrastructure the most modern, best and a lot of it is not necessarily going to replace the stream and the wetlands that were part of it, the habitat that made it a functional watershed and a functional stream. We turned it into a drainage system that's being managed, but we're not. We're not restoring the habitat and in Maine, a big part of what helps you meet water quality standards is the fact that you have viable habitat.
Doug Roncarati:So, for example, for a stream, can the stream support the food sources and the fish that eat those food sources? Is it drinkable water? And because all of these streams are connected to larger water bodies, they have to be restored in some way so they're not contributing pollutants and impairing the water bodies that receive them, and eventually everything goes to the ocean anyway. We don't want to be impairing the ocean. Long Creek flows into the Four River, which then flows into Portland Harbor and the Bay. So why is it important to restore these and not continue to allow them to degrade and contribute pollution into the Four River and the harbor? Because we want our river and our harbor to be healthier too. So it's those connections. They're not just discrete entities, they're connected systems. We have to start looking at them like they are connected systems.
Fred Dillon:And just quickly I'll add that our predecessors failed the Hippocratic Oath first do no harm, right? So moving forward, and to Rebecca's point, I mean, in some cases it may be a tall order to think that the subcatchment that's got the 65 percent contributing, you know, 65 percent of impervious cover contributing to that watershed can be restored, but we sure as heck don't want it to get worse, right so. So maybe we're going to hold the line on it, but the idea that we're going to get trout or cold water fisheries back into that, it's probably going to be a tall order. That we're going to get trout or cold water fisheries back into that, it's probably going to be a tall order, but maybe not. I mean, and it's not to say well, and I guess it does beg the question is, how much money do we have to spend before we finally get to the point of saying you know what I mean, we've really given it and Long Creek's this great science project, but it's an expensive one, right? So when we look at it, is you know?
Doug Roncarati:and I'll just say quickly.
Fred Dillon:You know, both Doug and I have devoted a decade or more of our lives to, you know, kind of looking at trying to help restore Long Creek. But we spent a lot of money 1.5 million bucks a year for the past 15 million dollars over the past 10 years and we've got this really sophisticated monitoring system. Long Creek is the most heavily monitored stream no, no question in the state, and we really can't demonstrate, by looking at all the water quality data that we've collected, that we're moving the needle very much in many regards in these various segments of the watershed. So I think we could say that you know it's only 10 years. It took us 50 years to mess the stream up. So we need to keep trying. But will we reach a point where we say you know what this is? You know we're shoveling and you're going to edit this out too. We're shoveling shit against the tide. So some of these stream segments are going to be maybe non-restorable. Just don't make them worse. So I'll stop there.
Rebecca Graham:Yeah, that's something that's always struck me as odd from the advocacy end in thinking about water systems, thinking about water sheds, water doesn't care where the municipal boundary is, and we have this really odd kind of regulatory regime where you know, I need a federal, state and state and local permit to stick a dock into a river or a pond, but I can pay to fill in a wetland and the payments for that wetland may be used by another community someplace else for an environmental project, but that wetland is gone. You've paid to fill in. That, to me, has just been an odd concept. I think that that probably has more harm than the dock, which has this you know, massive level and is focused right at that river, like the impacts of filling those. I don't think you look at in a system way, though we have this system of taking money for that activity and giving it to other areas for preservation purposes.
Doug Roncarati:It seems like a bit of a perverse incentive and I bet Doug's got some ideas around how many wetlands he has left in Portland to fill, believe it or not, there are a lot of wetlands because they're just not high quality compared to what you'd see up in the county, which has wonderful forests and streams and rivers. Our you know, basically, the development of Portland. You know, from the earliest times to the clearing that went on for farms and pasture, to the railroad and the changes that the railroads made. Basically throughout Portland's history it's been a lesson in moving water around the landscape and trying to get it off our built landscape and into the ocean as fast as possible. And I mean, if you look at what Portland used to look like along the coastline, it probably resembled something more like Scarborough Marsh at one time.
Doug Roncarati:But we filled in a lot of that land to use for, you know, industrial, commercial and residential uses and inland. You know we've done the same thing and we've used pipes and ditches to move that water around the landscape. And we continue to do that. We continue to convey it to the low-lying areas that are out of our way and then eventually we decide well, we need that land too. So we want to, as you say, fill in that land and build on that, which creates challenges. But then there's a cost associated with that because that water, when it rains heavy, that water's got to go somewhere. So we've got to find a different place to put it and we either have to run it through our storm drain systems or we have to shift it over onto somebody else's property and then nature finds a way of dealing with it at that point and then we just you know that cycle continues. So in order to manage our long-term costs, we have to think about how we're moving water around the landscape, where we're putting our development.
Doug Roncarati:Would it be cheaper to leave that wetland and that woodlands and that stream in that spot and find a better place to develop, such as if there's an underutilized developed area in the urban core? Can we develop there instead and get the same thing out of it and not have to incur the cost of moving stormwater around and managing stormwater? And I think that's where we're at issue. Traditionally, the poorest people have been relegated to the locations where a lot of our waste and water, our runoff and wastewater are directed. It doesn't make sense to fill in wetlands and put in housing in those locations only for them to have lots of problems and for the community to incur greater costs for filling in those places to put housing, because those costs then impact the cost of housing.
Doug Roncarati:Yeah, so it makes more sense to develop the underutilized developed spaces rather than to utilize most, because most of what's left in portland is very marginal land, not land that was easily developed because it was wet and or it was just a big ditch or ravine that collected water that, you know, nobody wanted to fill in because it just wasn't cost effective. Um, so it makes it still makes no sense to develop a lot of those areas because they're providing, you know, drainage services that we won't have to replicate using stormwater infrastructure.
Rebecca Graham:Yeah, managing the sins of the past, like you talked about previously. I think the East Coast in general has the same issue that the West Coast probably doesn't have whatsoever, or at least nowhere near as great of a time. So is there a way we can build a stormwater conveyance to the West Coast from here? You know, like a massive utility pipeline we could send them all of our stormwater pipeline, we could send them all of our storm water and you joke.
Cody Obropta:But there have been plans, or at least, um, you know, ideas, to either pipe some of the mississippi river out to the colorado river or to deal with some of the water issues. And again, I know it crazy, but the situation is getting so dire there that this may be one of the only ways that they can accomplish that outside of expanding desalination to just the nth degree. But anyway, that's a whole nother topic for some some other day, for some other day.
Rebecca Graham:What type of contractor education is available for someone? You mentioned construction, so how might we be doing a better job at educating contractors on how they need to meet your needs in the community and how they can be better stewards for stormwater on these sites as they're, as they're?
Fred Dillon:going forward rather than seeing them as a barrier I'll jump in quickly and then I'll, then I'll hand it off to cody and I bet doug would probably second this is that I feel like dep is doing a really, really good job now with this contractor pride training program. So they've, they've really revamped it and, um, the fellow that uh, you know, john mcclain that is overseeing that project, is just doing a stellar job. So I think that it really does. It hits all the high points from an MS4 perspective and that, I think, is a really big improvement. That John made on behalf of DEP is to make a more explicit connection between the general construction practices and what the MS4 programs have to deal with. So I think, to my mind, doug, you feel like there's any gaps. I mean, from what I've seen of EEP's contractor training program for construction projects, it seems like it's really. I mean, I think it hits all the points that we needed to hit from a construction management perspective and keeping private dirt on private sites and not into public store marks.
Doug Roncarati:I'm a big advocate for. Let's figure out how to do things right and let's figure out how to do them across the state. Right now, the biggest burden is on the communities the 30 regulated communities, because they have these stormwater permits. But we really need to make sure that those expectations on and sedimentation control and on-site management of waste are done on every construction site, regardless of the scale of the site and regardless of where they are in the state of Maine. That would be something that I would love to see more of more statewide solutions and more similar expectations across the board.
Doug Roncarati:Contractors there are other kinds of contractors. There are contractors that go out and provide services such as carpet cleaning, tile cleaning or grease vent fan cleaning, and there's no consistent industry practices or standards for managing the wastes that are generated from those things. And unfortunately, in an urban environment, where do they do them? In the parking lot, which goes into the catch basins, which goes into the in South Portland. If I'm a contractor that's providing one of these services, I know I have to implement these best practices so that I'm not creating stormwater pollution. So that I'm not creating stormwater pollution.
Doug Roncarati:It's very, very difficult for Portland you know, being a stormwater program coordinator, when I have to go and talk with these contractors and say, hey, you can't do that, that's illegal. And he said, well, I do it over in Scarborough or I do it over in, you know, cape Elizabeth, you can do South Portland. You know Portland gets a very, very bad rap for rap for being, you know, being difficult to work in. But part of that is because you know we are being asked to do more from a regulatory standpoint and we have to do more because we have such a large built landscape. But part of it is because those expectations are not clear, cut and across the board for everywhere in the state and for everybody.
Doug Roncarati:So, that would be something that I would like to see some support, some additional support from, but I agree 100% that the newer training and certification program for erosion sedimentation control has been awesome and we really welcome that that's voluntary though, right, Cody.
Cody Obropta:Yes and no, it's voluntary in some respects, but if you are a contractor working in a shoreland zone, you need to have somebody on that site during any type of construction activity that is certified through the through the main dep um non-point source training center. And again, the non-point source training center is the training that both f that both Fred and Doug have spoken at length about. I'm sure we'll include the link in the show notes because that's a really great resource, just to hit a couple of other things. So I have another resource I want to give, but I also just want to backtrack a little bit, talking to piggyback off of something Doug said, how Portland may have a reputation of being a difficult area to work. And, same thing, a lot of people were concerned that, oh well, long Creek has all of these you know, crazy restrictions and you know if we put these crazy restrictions in or if we make these developers have to deal with all this stuff, no one's going to want to. They're going to move somewhere else and they're going to, you know, pollute that pristine landscape. And what we've seen through development trends at the state level is that is not the case. I mean absolutely. Yes, other communities are seeing an increase in development, but areas like Long Creek Watershed or areas like Portland are seeing a lot of development despite the high expectations of treatment standards the you know, the high expectations of treatment standards. And so I think something that that speaks to is you know, yeah, there are absolutely concerns that if you make regulations too strict, you know people are going to go somewhere else or that those communities aren't going to see the benefits. But I don't think that that bears a lot of truth, based on just the development trends that we've been seeing, especially again in Long Creek Watershed in Portland and in other MS4 communities. I mean, despite all of these regulations, there's still a ton of demand, a ton of development demand and interest in, you know, building in these areas, and so I just wanted to add that point.
Cody Obropta:In Just speaking to a couple of other resources, I think I agree with both Doug and Fred that John McLean and his group at the Nonpoint Source Training Center have done wonders. I wish he had a team of like five or ten people rather than being almost like a solo artist there, because I think with a larger team he could accomplish so much more. I think there needs to be more education in a lot of different departments and I've been working with John on just some other stormwater-related education initiatives. One of the things we'd love to do is put together a post-construction stormwater inspection and maintenance certification or workshop where contractors or other professionals can take this class and become certified so that they can provide inspection and maintenance services on post-construction stormwater management. Because again, you have during construction, which is your soil erosion and sediment controls, and then you have post-construction, which is your long-term stormwater control measures, best management practices. That's like the stormwater wet pond you put in, or that's like the proprietary treatment device, your focal points and your tree boxes and all that stuff, your Ferguson Water Works infrastructure. And then you also have your underdrained soil filters and all that stuff is important too.
Cody Obropta:And again, ms4 communities have that additional burden of making sure that the private property owners are maintaining their stormwater infrastructure. We try to accomplish that at the state level through our five-year recertification program, which I fortunately have had the pleasure of revitalizing after a little bit of a hiatus because of understaffing, but again incorporating additional education from a post-construction inspection and maintenance perspective. I think that there's a lot of room there to expand the training. And then, finally, I just wanted to plug this other training opportunity that Rutgers University has a green infrastructure champions program where they have a it's completely free, it's there's like 10 classes, I think. They're two hours each, and it offers a really good introduction to the world of green infrastructure.
Cody Obropta:So for somebody who doesn't know anything about green infrastructure whether you're a contractor, municipal employee or something like that I think it offers a really good introduction, exclusively on retrofitting projects or going to existing stormwater infrastructure and improving it or expanding it, and so I think that that kind of speaks to some of the things we were talking about dealing with combined sewer communities, going in and retrofitting some of these areas. So I think that that's an area where it ties in and I think it just gives a really good overview of how green infrastructure can be part of the solution and how contractors may be able to look at that as something that's not super difficult to use on a site, because, again, one of the things we want contractors to be able to do is recommend green infrastructure, recommend really good quality stormwater infrastructure when they are requested. You know, hey, give me an estimate. I have this problem. Can you help me with this? What do I need to do?
Cody Obropta:In an ideal world, those folks who are providing that guidance will go hey, I know these green infrastructure practices are really good, or I know that living shorelines are a really good way of dealing with this problem, whereas currently, some of the challenges we run into are just the legacy development that people have been doing forever and ever that people know how to do really well.
Cody Obropta:That's what gets turned to when we have, I think, frankly, better solutions available to us at this time. I think it's just a matter of educating not only the people who are going to be installing this stuff, but also the homeowners and the property owners and the towns and really just everybody across the board to look towards these solutions and familiarize themselves with them. I mean, just like the same way where, you know, we used to put in a lot of ornamental exotic shrubbery as our landscaping and now there's been a really big push to put in native plants as landscaping on projects. I mean, that shift has happened over a number of years and I think the same needs to be done in just different areas of stormwater management, with green infrastructure practices, living shorelines, nature-based solutions. I think all of that stuff needs to follow suit with that type of evolution.
Fred Dillon:And MMA will have to have us back again because what Cody and Doug just both said really will be largely encompassed in the new Chapter 500 updates. So the stormwater standards and a couple of points about that. Apropos of what both of them said is the notion of these regulations being sprawl-inducing. So that argument will be no doubt trotted out. Mma is going to hear about it. No question from municipal officials that these DEPs are crazy. This is going to drive development out of the hinterlands and it's going to be worse.
Fred Dillon:And Doug has always been a real strong proponent, and spot on, I would say, about trying to level that playing field so that across, in addition to the MS4 communities, the 30 of us, all these, to some extent all of these communities are going to have to have some basis. Where they're going to have to, there'll be restrictions on development for them as well. So that will maybe dampen and so you know it'll be a sausage making process, right. So the devil will be in the details of what comes out of that and it'll probably take us a couple of years to get there. But again you will. You definitely will hear that these regulations are crazy, it's going to be sprawl inducing, it's going to cut into affordable housing. We've got a housing crisis, so all of that. So, anyway, I'd love to come back, because I'll talk about this stuff longer than any of you will want to listen to you don't know the power of the dark side, I do find stormwater fascinating.
Rebecca Graham:This is not something that I ended up thinking that I would get really geeked about, but I've been at parties before where I found a kindred soul and talked for like hours while everyone else walked off. This is a party. What does it matter with you? Yes, we have an emergent problem with housing. It didn't happen overnight, it happened since 2010 and the slow of that building, and we're not going to build our way into a solution anytime soon. So I get the emergency feeling around it, but at the same time, you know we're going to be reaping way more at the other end. We've been here before. We've been here a billion times before. It's time we should probably learn about it and we have an opportunity. I don't think things take more time to do right and they may cost more to do right, but not in the long term. That's my soapbox, doug, do you?
Doug Roncarati:mind if I jump on mine for a minute, please. You know, kind of picking up on something that both Cody and Fred said development has impacts. There's no way of getting around it. We hear a lot of terms about low-impact development and you know what does that really mean? And there's different camps about that.
Doug Roncarati:And the idea is, you know, looking at Portland, you know essentially Portland's a wonderful place to live. Many communities would love to be like Portland. They'd love to have the tax base, they'd love to have the. You know, the hot spots have the hot spots and the tax base and everything that comes with being Portland. But there were costs associated with that and there continue to be costs associated with that. You have very high taxes and high land values, which make other choices more difficult. As far as our water resources go, I would encourage communities that don't have the stormwater and wastewater challenges. We have to be more proactive and to avoid getting into the situation that we're in, because that can help manage your long-term costs and make you a much more affordable place to live. So it's a double-edged sword when it comes to managing these things. Our costs are extremely high and unfortunately that creates high cost of living and very challenging affordability situations but really hopping onto the soapbox when it comes to low-impact development.
Doug Roncarati:It's really a philosophy. It's about looking at the landscape, determining where the natural resources are, where the most important resources are on that area. And it could include multiple sites, because we kind of take the landscape and divide it into parts and pieces by ownership, but those really fit into one larger landscape and we need to proactively look at the landscape, both on the large scale and on an individual site scale, and say, okay, we should protect this stream and give it some room to grow and to exist, to grow and to exist. We should protect these wetlands and these forests and determine, okay, where on the site would be suitable for development. And then let's look at that area and let's develop that the best way we possibly can.
Doug Roncarati:We know we're going to generate stormwater runoff because we know we're putting buildings and parking garages or parking lots and roadways there.
Doug Roncarati:We're going to have to manage it using stormwater infrastructure.
Doug Roncarati:Let's utilize the best stormwater infrastructure we can and use green stormwater infrastructure, which is essentially using techniques that mimic some of nature's processes to provide the best stormwater benefits that we can Grabbing the stormwater in little bits and pieces and treating it and managing it there, slowing it down, as Cody mentioned, rather than trying to collect it in big pipes and then put it into a big detention pond or to completely send it off-site into the nearest water body, to a big detention pond or to completely send it off-site into the nearest water body.
Doug Roncarati:So green stormwater infrastructure is a great tool for managing stormwater from the areas we do develop. It is not the same as low-impact development. Low-impact development is what you look at from the landscape and try to protect the resources, and then green infrastructure is one of the stormwater management approaches and tools that we use to manage the areas that we are going to do. So there's a difference philosophically from a planning and from a stormwater management standpoint, and I think they both have important long-term cost management benefits for looking at how we develop and develop better.
Rebecca Graham:Yeah, that's an important distinction, because I've heard that the ordinance requirement for low-impact development in MS4 communities on the developer side is being too onerous and why is that happening now? And there was a disconnection in not understanding that it was going to become a permit requirement. So that was something that the contractor education, but also the development community, I think needs to understand a bit more too, Because that's now a permit requirement, right, Doug?
Doug Roncarati:It is a permit requirement and the state will be looking at low-impact development standards and we're waiting to see what those are.
Doug Roncarati:But we're not waiting, not being active, we're actually being proactive and we're regionally.
Doug Roncarati:We worked to create a model ordinance and we use that as a starting point for Portland to develop its own set of standards and then we'll be comparing that against the state standards when they come out to make sure that we're consistent and also meeting Portland's needs, Because doing low-impact development in Portland is going to be different than doing low-impact up in the county, simply because we're in a redevelopment situation rather than a development situation.
Doug Roncarati:But, as Cody mentioned, there's lots of things that we can do in redevelopment situation rather than a development situation.
Doug Roncarati:But, as Cody mentioned, there's lots of things that we can do in redevelopment and the city of Portland, as part of its stormwater utility, actually has a credit program which basically says whether you're in a new development situation or a redevelopment situation.
Doug Roncarati:If you put in modern stormwater controls whether they be grain or gray, gray being your traditional pipes and box container type systems, proprietary systems and so on versus green, which are like soil filters and tree box filters and so on you can apply for a credit on your stormwater fee, and it's a very significant it can be easily 60% of your total stormwater fee and that will help not only meet your state and local stormwater standards, but for doing what you already have to do. You can get credit for doing that as long as you continue maintaining and reporting on it. You can get credit for doing that as long as you continue maintaining and reporting on it, and it's a great tool for developers to help manage their stormwater costs on their individual sites and it's a great way for us to incentivize reducing the burden on the public side.
Rebecca Graham:Amanda, since you're so new to this topic and kind of new to the whole permit, it's going to be in your wheelhouse.
Amanda Campbell:I'm going to throw you under the bus and ask if there's anything in this conversation that you had questions about or might want to dig in. Does anybody anticipate that the number of regulated communities?
Fred Dillon:will increase in the next five year, when the next five year permit comes up, and what would make and what would make that happen?
Fred Dillon:I think I mean census, right, I mean Doug, mentioned earlier.
Fred Dillon:I think that it's a population based determination and there are several, I think or maybe that's overstating it several, I think, or maybe that's overstating it maybe a few communities that are in these areas that are burgeoning.
Fred Dillon:You know Brunswick, topsom, you know those areas that potentially will trip that threshold and will get pulled into the program. I mean there are probably others, doug or Cody, you know of any other population centers that might, you know, might get dragged in and maybe those boundaries would expand in certain communities. So that's what's referred to as an urbanized area is a designation that's largely based on census data and so that could also expand, because some of the communities that are already in the MS4 program aren't their entire municipality and actually, believe it or not, south Portland is densely developed, as we are the main mall, because it doesn't have a residential component, although that's changed recently with a lot of development that's happened there, the main mall isn't part of South Portland's urbanized area, although we manage our infrastructure out there as if it were. So yes, I mean there will be. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure that there will be additional communities that come on board with the next census.
Amanda Campbell:And because that's population-based, there isn't something that they could do to prevent that from happening, right? Like if they knew now that, oh, that's going to happen, or potentially that's going to happen, but if population is the trigger, there's nothing they can do to prevent themselves having to be sucked into that sort of bubble, right.
Fred Dillon:I don't think so. I mean to my mind. No, I mean unless they kick people out of the community or put a gate at the state line coming in.
Rebecca Graham:Right. Well, isn't there a nexus with impervious surface, though? Sure, because I look at VZ as being an MS4, and Augusta is not.
Fred Dillon:Yeah, that's a good point actually, and that's a curious, that's an oddity as far as I don't actually know the details behind why Augusta isn't. Yeah, so that's a good point. I would think Augusta would be a strong candidate for, but I don't actually know the history, not that. I'm advocating for that. But, cody or Doug, do you know anything about why Augusta didn't get I mean? And so yeah, imperviousness is part of it, but I think it is population. You know it's really largely population-based. I'm not sure about imperviousness.
Cody Obropta:So unfortunately I am not the expert on MS4 and the requirements. Actually, the Water Bureau handles a lot of the MS4 stuff and I'm in the Land Bureau, which again, I mentioned before we even started recording that I wish there was a little bit more communication between the two of us because I think there's a lot of crossover when it comes especially to stormwater management. But yes, you're right. I mean, augusta is not an MS4 community and there are actually a number of areas that have urban impaired streams but are not MS4 communities. So Caribou has urban impaired streams, same with Lisbon Falls and Sanford. So these areas have urban impaired streams but they're not MS4 communities. And I think, another thing to think about long. This is more long-term planning.
Cody Obropta:But as climate change continues to progress, the state of maine and and the northeast as a whole is actually one of the I. I don't want I. I don't want to mix my words up. It's not necessarily the safer place to be when it comes to climate change, but it's going to be one of the more hospitable areas in the United States.
Cody Obropta:When you look at the climate trends and all of the associated risk factors, like wildfires, hurricanes and things of that nature and droughts, the Northeast is relatively well protected, and so I think that planners and people in general should be aware that we could very realistically see a larger influx of people from other states moving to our area, and no doubt that that would not only increase the population numbers but that might create more MS4 communities down the road, and it's just something to think about. I mean, I don't exactly have any solutions or anything to recommend other than maybe get some good mixed-use zoning in right now, so that way you can have retail and housing combined in one area. But anyway, that's a different soapbox on an urban planning perspective that I won't jump onto, especially. I'm not qualified, I'm not a professional planner.
Fred Dillon:You're totally on the right track there, cody. So to Cody's point about how development happens. I mean densification, you know. I mean Doug and I came from beating into our heads about how density is a good thing. But if you look at greenfield development and the way that it's developed, densification there is also a good thing. But if you look at greenfield development and the way that it's developed, densification there is also a good thing. So you can really concentrate development. So if you look at it at a watershed scale and there's this great graphic that EPA developed over the years that really just really illustrates it very, very well that the amount of runoff, the amount of pollutants that come off that landscape, the amount of landscape that can be preserved.
Fred Dillon:Back to Doug's original point. You know he's very propensorial. He'll be a great adjunct faculty member in his retirement years, I think. Talking about LID as a philosophy, right so. But the I'll take that class.
Fred Dillon:Yeah, exactly, you know, you've got a thousand acre parcel and you can densify it, get the same kind of use out of it in 10 acres and you preserve 990 acres. And again, maybe that's an extreme example, but I mean, I think EPA has actually got graphics that show this, that it's a huge impact from the stormwater runoff perspective, and that's smart planning, and it really does have a lot to do with the highest and best use that we use. That's a term that MMA is very familiar with.
Amanda Campbell:It's constitutional, can't help it. That's a term that MMA is very familiar with it's constitutional.
Fred Dillon:You can't help it. I don't know, doug, if there's an example of that in Portland, but that Strahd Water project right is that. I mean there was some real effort there to try and preserve some of that green space here in Portland that I think attempted to make some efforts to preserve a lot of the green space and it's a traditional subdivision. These are upscale single-family residential houses but I think that there was some effort there. I don't know if you would call that LID, doug, but I mean you know the development I'm talking about. I can't remember the name.
Doug Roncarati:A couple of things happened happened one. We worked very hard to make sure that we protected the shoreline zone, that entire 250 foot swath or corridor along the river itself, and to make sure that no infrastructure would be put in there, so we weren't impacting that area. And it was already cleared. It had been farm fields for a long time, so essentially it's going to be managed as fields and forests. There will be recreational trails to allow people to go down in that area. But the focus was trying to protect that area, allow development closer to the roadway the main roadway and to minimize wetland impacts, because there's quite a bit of wetland as you get closer towards the river itself. And they also had to put in modern stormwater controls. There's a variety of different stormwater management techniques that are being used in there. That's kind of how it was approached. They had to meet the local and state stormwater standards and we required them to preserve the entirety of that buffer.
Fred Dillon:LID you think To reduce impacts? You think that's LID or?
Doug Roncarati:I wouldn't necessarily call that, I would say a lower impact development. I mean, certainly you can't put that many houses on the landscape and have it be the equivalent of a farm field. You're shifting the type of impacts that are going on there.
Rebecca Graham:Certainly agriculture has one set of impacts that could affect water quality and housing and roadways has a different kind of set of impacts, kind of a set of impacts, but certainly there was additional stormwater management required to deal with the buildings and the roadways that are there, yeah, so how do you manage something like that in terms of you're looking at pollutant load and you're looking at an agricultural plot of land that might have phosphorus runoff and your management around that is maybe education to the landowner about trying to find some natural alternatives or something of that nature. But then it shifts and it turns into residential and roadways, which is a whole other different pollutant runoff situation. How do you guys manage that within your within your programs? And do you guys manage that within your programs and is there a lot of pushback?
Doug Roncarati:Well, right now and it gets back to a point Fred made earlier right now we look at stormwater management and pollutant loading from the perspective of it's all stormwater. We're not looking at it, in most cases, on an individual pollutant by pollutant basis. We're looking at trying to manage the effects of any stormwater that's generated and one of the challenges we have is not all sites produce the same kind of pollutants. You know industrial landscape produces one kind of thing, agricultural a different kind, residential, different kinds, yet for the most part under current stormwater law they're all treated the same. It's all considered impervious area that needs to be managed, that the way these treatment systems are designed and permitted, they will manage a fair amount of a variety of different pollutants. Not necessarily.
Doug Roncarati:You know phosphorus and you know sediment and nitrogen being some of the ones that they focus on. But not all treatment systems are equal. So if, for example, nitrogen was determined to be a pollutant of concern for that particular water body, then as a community we would encourage the developer to put in treatment systems that would help manage for that nitrogen. But that isn't necessarily required right now and that's a discussion that we'll probably be having, you know, during the Chapter 500 stormwater regulations Talk about. Okay, let's figure out what the kinds of pollutants are that we really have to manage and then let's custom tailor the treatment systems to target those pollutants are that we really have to manage and then let's custom tailor the treatment systems to target those pollutants.
Doug Roncarati:And that's a method that's being used around the country but is not really being used this much in Maine, at least it's not as much as it should and that gets back to that whole TMDL total maximum daily load, which is kind of what you look at. If you're talking about wastewater and managing wastewater discharges from an industrial site, where nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are real targets in a lake watershed where phosphorus is a huge driver of algal blooms that really make a big difference to that lake. On the marine side, when you're talking about coastal systems, nitrogen is really the big factor, which is one of the reasons why a lot of local watchdogs and advocates have been working really hard to make sure that the city and the treatment plant are managing nitrogen discharges to our coastal waters.
Cody Obropta:Yeah, I just wanted to add some additional context for listeners that may not be as familiar with stormwater management practices as a whole or requirements, as familiar with stormwater management practices as a whole or requirements. But the way that our current regulations and systems treat stormwater, or the approach that we take, is we are trying to treat what's called the first flush, the first flush being when you are driving on a roadway or just under normal conditions, all that sediment, all of those nutrients and stuff are going to be deposited on the surface, and when it rains, that stuff gets swept off like a broom sweeping off a surface and it ends up in our water bodies. And so that's why, when we are trying to treat stormwater runoff, we're trying to treat that first flush. That's where we're achieving the maximum water quality treatment. First flush, that's where we're achieving the maximum water quality treatment. Usually, after you treat that first flush, the water is relatively clean because most of the pollutants have been removed from that surface already, and so in larger flooding events, unless you're trying to control for quantity, the total volume of water, a lot of treatment measures get bypassed just because they're meant to treat that first flush, and anything after that is assumed to be a little bit cleaner. But I just wanted to add that context because for somebody who doesn't really understand stormwater management, you may not be thinking about these things.
Cody Obropta:Another thing that the state of Maine does, where you know, because, like Doug said, we're not focused on specific pollutants, because the stormwater management practices and control measures that we recommend have a broad level of treatment.
Cody Obropta:But one of the areas that Maine is a little bit special is we do have phosphorus as a targeted pollutant treatment in lake watersheds, in lake watersheds, specifically lake watersheds most at risk of development and lake watersheds that are actively undergoing algal bloom issues.
Cody Obropta:That's where we are actually specifically targeting phosphorus, and so developers in those specific watersheds are required to utilize stormwater infrastructure and stormwater control measures that treat phosphorus a little bit more effectively, or at least they're incentivized to do so, in order to meet that standard. They're going to get more credits if they use better phosphorus control, stormwater controls, compared to just doing your average stuff. But again, like Doug said, I mean different watersheds have different triggering nutrients, you know, and in like a nitrogen watershed in a coastal watershed where nitrogen might be a pollutant of concern, using something that has internal reservoir storage or a subsurface gravel wetland that achieves higher denitrification rates might be something that we want to incentivize at the state level or at least at the community level, if that's something that we care about. And again, like Doug said, I'm sure we'll be talking about it at length in the upcoming Chapter 500 update, but just wanted to add that context for the listener.
Rebecca Graham:Yeah, I think that's really important because I didn't think about the first flush piece versus a large volume of water either, in the nuance in between that and the bypassing. I also think that phosphorus is often thought of as being an agricultural product pollutant and I would hazard a guess that there's not a heck of a lot of agricultural activity going around Maine's lakes largely probably, at least in southern Maine, but the drive for a greener, fluffy lawn Actually, in addition to that, rebecca, believe it or not, I think the primary input from phosphorus comes from eroding soils, right?
Fred Dillon:So phosphorus, you know, soils are able to so camp roads around a lot of these lakes that are not paved. They erode badly and so there have been a whole host of camp road associations that have formed around these main lakes. And I know this because I think I mentioned earlier in my bio that I worked for FB Environmental, the environmental consulting firm that was doing a lot of work for DEP at the time, and we were doing these things called PCAPs phosphorus control action plans for these lakes and ponds that were actively blooming, you know, had algal blooms, and we would. We do these. It was more GIS, you know, geographic information system mapping exercise that we would use a model that had been developed that pretty well stood the test of time to allocate the contributions from various land use types. But inevitably we'd find that one of the most significant sources of phosphorus to these freshwater lakes or ponds was often poorly managed gravel roads basically.
Rebecca Graham:Wow, that's fascinating.
Fred Dillon:Yeah.
Doug Roncarati:And just to follow up on that, we have to remember that Maine had a pretty strong agricultural background and you know today's developed areas were last year's pastures and farms. And one of the things about phosphorus is that it tends to get bound up in the soil pretty quickly and stay there. It'll get taken up by plants, but when those plants die back, they put it right back into the soil and quickly gets bound up in that soil.
Fred Dillon:So it's available.
Doug Roncarati:So soil disturbance, soil happens to get run off, then you're moving that historic phosphorus loading down into the water column and down into your water resources water resources nitrogen, on the other hand, tends to get picked up a lot faster, both by plants and animals and by water, and moved out a lot more quickly. The another really you know strong source of nitrogen and phosphorus loading in lake watersheds are septic systems and poorly managed septic systems. And poorly located septic systems and poorly managed septic systems and poorly located septic systems can result in, you know, groundwaters eating nitrogen and phosphorus in those lakes and ponds, and it's a real concern for a lot of small lakes.
Fred Dillon:And there's an interesting analogy between. So Doug mentioned that phosphorus can be stored in the soil on the land. There's also this thing in lakes and ponds that are blooming and it's called an internal load so that you could cease all phosphorus discharge into these water bodies. But it's going to take a while for that internal load. All that phosphorus that's in there, accumulated in the bottom of the lake, it gets re-entrained in the water column where there's this turnover process that happens in the spring and the fall and that phosphorus gets kicked back up into the water column and promotes the growth of algae.
Fred Dillon:So you can have, you know, you could again do a great job at controlling watershed inputs and still have years of blooming lakes. Similarly you can have the same kind of thing happen in these urbanized watersheds, particularly around mall areas, where there's a lot of salt applied. With that salt the chloride gets into the groundwater and you could cease all chloride application of that landscape and still have a period of time for that chloride-laden groundwater to flush out. Because there's an exchange between groundwater and surface water streams, especially during base flow conditions. Base flow means lowest flow during the summertime when the conditions are most challenging for the things that live in the stream and that's the time when you actually see the worst chloride concentrations, because you've got this concentrated groundwater getting into the streams that's potentially killing stuff.
Cody Obropta:That lives in the stream.
Cody Obropta:And just to add to that really quickly, climate change also plays a role in warming the water, specifically when it comes to the phosphorus feedback loop.
Cody Obropta:So, as the climate starts to warm, algae is getting more and more of a favorable environment to establish itself, and so there may be some negative consequences to that where, yeah, we might be doing a really great job managing phosphorus, but if the water's warm to certain extents, well then just the natural phosphorus that's in the lake watershed already could kick up algae blooms, and so that's another concern, and that's another reason why climate change is just this looming threat that really needs to be managed and needs to be dealt with, because, again, if you live on a lake watershed or if you live in a community by a lake, I imagine you really don't want that lake to be impacted by algal blooms.
Cody Obropta:I mean, it decreases property values, it decreases the recreational use of those water bodies, and I think we're all on the same side that we really want to have that pristine environment and that usable water body where we can, you know, have all the advantages of living in that area, and so I think we're all on the same side and that we really just want to make sure that we're protecting our resources long term.
Rebecca Graham:In the Land Bureau. What are one of the bigger challenges that you see with this nexus with stormwater?
Cody Obropta:The Land Bureau specifically is in a difficult place, at least the stormwater engineering team, because again, like I mentioned, there's the Land Bureau and the Water Bureau and the Water Bureau has kind of been driving or they're controlling the MS4 program and the low-impact development requirements came from EPA through the MS4 program and the low impact development requirements came from EPA through the MS4 program. First they weren't pressuring us as the land bureau to establish those requirements. Now, previously we have had low impact development standards in our best management practices manual and in our chapter 500 stormwater rules, but they weren't like the primary focus, they were just they were in there as resources. But now that MS4 communities have to implement low impact development standards, they are looking to the state for some guidance, for some. How should we do this? What's the best way to go about doing it? And the water Bureau has their ideas. But but there's also a lot of eyes looking towards the land Bureau and our chapter 500 update that we're we're going through the process of updating it. There's a lot of focus on that. Where, hey, can those guys come up with low impact development standards that we can use at the MS4 level? Or another problem is, what if the standards that we end up coming up with conflict with the low-impact development standards that the MS4 communities end up adopting, and then that's going to spur a whole other process of revising ordinances and whatnot. So we're in a difficult spot in that regard.
Cody Obropta:Another thing, too, is climate change driving precipitation changes. As you might assume, precipitation changes throughout the state. It's not just. Everything is going to get more intense. Different areas of the state might actually see a decrease in precipitation over the coming years, whereas other areas of the state might see a significant increase in total precipitation or an increase in intense storm events, which is something that we've been seeing more and more, at least in a lot of the communities that we're all from seeing more and more, at least in a lot of the communities that we're all from. These intense storm events where there's a lot of rain all at once over the course of a day or two, and some of the negative consequences relating to that I mean that's based on the Climate Council's scientific report that they put out that's only going to continue to increase. We're not only going to see more rain in general across the state, in most municipalities, but also we're going to see increasing intense storm events, and those intense storm events have a whole host of issues, including infrastructure damage, flooding and all of those concerns, and so at the state level, we are trying to manage all of that.
Cody Obropta:We want to protect our natural resources, we want to ensure that stormwater is being treated effectively, but then we're also concerned with the increasing intensity and how climate change impacts stormwater runoff. So there are a lot of things that are on our mind and it's something that we have to deal with. We are speaking to experts, we are discussing it internally and we're trying to come up with the best standards that we can. But keeping in mind that I mean, as Doug and I think Fred have both said, not every community in Maine are the same. I mean an area in I think Fred have both said you know, not every community in Maine are the same. I mean an area in Portland is very different from, like, a small town nearby me, brooks, maine, where they might have one development project in a decade, versus Portland's got dozens, maybe 100 development projects every year, projects every year, and you know.
Cody Obropta:So areas in the county and areas in Southern Maine are all regulated under the state stormwater regulations and so we are trying to balance that we're trying to balance the needs of all of these different communities and come up with standards that do protect those resources but also make sense for all of those communities.
Cody Obropta:And again, like folks have mentioned, it is a little bit of a home rule state where municipalities can come up with regulations on their own that are more strict than the state requirements. So the state does lean a little bit on some of these municipalities to enact, I guess enact ordinances or regulations that may make more sense for their communities. So I guess all this to say in summary, we're in a difficult position and we're never going to satisfy everybody, but we are doing our best. We are really thinking about these things. We're not just going with the flow and making it up as we go along. This is something that we have long discussions about and we do a lot of reading and talk to a lot of experts and get a lot of community involvement and community engagement, what their needs are, and so that's great, cody.
Rebecca Graham:Thank you, and please don't take any of the DEP beatings that MMA might administer in committees as anything personal.
Fred Dillon:I think Rebecca has a little post-it right on the front of her computer that says the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Rebecca Graham:Exactly Until policy improves. And when I think of TMDL I think total maximum daily load of legislature, it's like double L. I would like a significant reduction in that number.
Doug Roncarati:That should be total maximum daily levity.
Rebecca Graham:That is what I want to seek in my life on a regular basis, which is why I enjoy stormwater and beer, because Andre the Giant comes up and we can geek out and take tree baths. And yeah, did you say baths or baths. Tree baths. You're a forestry guy, you know what tree baths are.
Fred Dillon:So, Amanda, how are you feeling about all of this? Because you're going to be for the stormwater community, you're going to be our connection to MMA, right?
Amanda Campbell:Yes, eventually full-time. Hopefully Rebecca's going to hang on for a little bit until I've learned, because what I've learned is I have a lot to learn. But yeah, no, this is definitely interesting and luckily I like to geek out on science and things too, so this will be a good placement for me. So I'm looking forward to working with you guys.
Fred Dillon:Despite what I said earlier about talking about longer than you want to listen. I normally would, but I get a. I've got a skedaddle at about 1230. So I don't know how much you guys free to keep on.
Amanda Campbell:I have a webinar that I need to get to as well there we are then there we are then Thank you for the opportunity to talk about all this stuff and please make us all sound very intelligent and knowledgeable and coherent.
Rebecca Graham:You guys already do that without much editing, but I will try to edit for some brevity.
Fred Dillon:Well, thanks so much to you all for having us and thanks, Cody and Doug, for being great foils for this fascinating discussion.
Rebecca Graham:Yes, thank you all. I really appreciate it, and we need to get back to the Andre, the Giant and beer soon.
Doug Roncarati:You're here. Thanks, guys. An honor to work with you guys today. Likewise have a great day, take care.
