StormCon News

A Look Ahead With Nikos Singelis, the EPA’s Senior Program Analyst

By Laura Funkhouser

Nikos Singelis, Lisa Nisenson, John Kosco, and David Hirschman will present their very popular full-day pre-conference workshop EPA Presents: Post-Construction, LID, and Smart Growth as Stormwater BMPs on Monday, August 3, 2008, in Orlando, FL.

Singelis’s EPA Update and Q&A Session will be held on Thursday, August 7, 2008. Other new sessions presented by Singelis will be announced online and in the conference program in early 2008. See www.StormCon.com for more information about StormCon ’08.

It hasn’t been quite a year since our last talk, but many of the things you said then proved prophetic—that smart growth and low-impact development (LID) were gaining widespread favor, that construction-site stormwater management was growing—these are things we saw at StormCon ’07, where it seemed people were relieved to finally have clarity about what needs to be done to meet their water goals and how to get there.

I don’t know that anything I said was especially prophetic, but it is true that a number of things have changed since we talked last. It has been a busy year for stormwater management at the EPA and beyond. The first important thing to mention is the EPA’s interest and leadership in “green infrastructure” for addressing stormwater, combined sewer overflow, and nonpoint-source problems. This new effort really took off in the spring of 2007 with the signing of an agreement between the EPA and several national groups. This is not to say that the ideas underlying green infrastructure are new, but it’s a new emphasis for the EPA, and to have our administrator (Stephen L. Johnson) traveling and talking about stormwater management and green infrastructure is a very positive development.

I think the stormwater program is also benefiting from the growing interest in environmental issues generally. With issues like climate change in wider discussion and the unusual weather we had this summer, it seems that more people are interested in discussing stormwater management and specifically green or low-impact techniques, such as rain gardens, bioretention, and green roofs. In addition, there is growing interest in long-term management of our stormwater infrastructure—whether that infrastructure is gray or green.

We’re now another year closer to the end of the first permit term for most Phase II communities. I believe that a fair number of communities have done a good job of getting their programs up and running and are ready to take on some of the challenges we discussed last time, particularly getting LID/green infrastructure and smart growth concepts integrated into their programs.

Also worth mentioning is that the EPA’s expectations for the Phase II municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s) will begin to change in this next permit term. In the first five years of the program, the emphasis was on setting up programs in the MS4s. In the next five years, the emphasis will be on operating and improving those programs and meeting permit requirements.

Does this mean that some Phase II communities will receive warnings or program audits or fines in a process similar to the compliance enforcement for Phase I communities?
Yes, that is possible. I can’t speak directly for the Enforcement Office, but we do work closely with them. They recently issued (October 17, 2007) their Compliance Monitoring Strategy for the NPDES program. The stormwater section of this strategy contains ambitious goals for EPA and state audits and inspections of Phase I and II MS4s, construction sites, and industrial facilities. In general, I think it is fair to say that we (the EPA) will continue to provide guidance and technical assistance in the years to come and that we will also begin to review MS4 programs for compliance with permit requirements.

Let’s go back to what you were saying about the EPA’s new emphases. In the past months many regions are experiencing catastrophic droughts, and as a result topics such as rainwater harvesting have become mainstream. There have been a number of high-profile sinkholes due to pipe leaks and failure, and this has raised general awareness of infrastructure. Yet federal infrastructure funding seems to be getting tighter. How is the EPA responding to these events?
Another change that happened recently is that the EPA’s Office of Water now has a climate workgroup, a lot of whose focus is on infrastructure—water, wastewater, drinking water, and stormwater. As you pointed out in your article on this subject (“Stormwater Management as Adaptation to Climate Change,” July/August 2007), the key framework is “adaptation.” For us in the stormwater community, I think this means improving the long-term design and management of our infrastructure in the face of more extreme events such as droughts and storms. I just saw an interesting graphic on the Lake Erie basin that shows that the intensity of storms in that area have been increasing recently. Changes like these will add a level of uncertainty for those of us in the stormwater community. I think that we will need to revise and improve our thinking on a number of fronts and test whether our models and assumptions will continue to work for us in the future.

On the topic of federal funding, I don’t think that it is fair to say that federal funding sources are drying up or getting tighter. The picture for federal funding of local water and wastewater infrastructure has not changed much in recent years. In fact, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program, which provides loans for all kinds of clean-water capital projects, has been increasing its loan activity. That program can currently provide about $5 billion annually in low- or even no-interest loans. A major opportunity for us in the stormwater community is to make better use of this vast and flexible funding source.

What else is the EPA working on that will have short- or long-term impacts?
I think I mentioned before that we are working with the Center for Watershed Protection on a post-construction manual for Phase II MS4s. I’m hopeful that that manual will be completed by early 2008. The manual is a kind of soup-to-nuts guide for putting together a post-construction program at the local level. It also discusses the very important issue of linking larger-scale efforts such as planning, zoning, watersheds, and smart growth together with more site-level issues such as low-impact development and green infrastructure.

How does the EPA’s watershed needs survey figure into these more comprehensive approaches?
Managing our infrastructure and our future capital needs, as I mentioned before, will become an increasingly important part of the stormwater program. We need to adopt and adapt good ideas like “asset management” that have been successfully used in other areas such as wastewater. One way to get the ball rolling is to get cities and counties to think about their long-term stormwater capital needs and report those needs to their states and the EPA through the Clean Watersheds Needs Survey. The needs survey results in a widely read report to Congress and could help us to do a better job of telling people—Congress, state legislatures, city councils, etc.—how important the stormwater program is.

To change the subject back to regulatory issues—I was surprised at StormCon this year, given that the attendees are the top-notch professionals in the nation, at the difficulty of your “EPA Stormwater Jeopardy” game questions on National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulations for the 400 people in the room. What does this say?

Well, it was a bit surprising to me too. Shirley Morrow (of ABCs of BMPs) and I decided to do it because we thought it might be fun and educational. I have noticed that there are some strong misperceptions about certain aspects of the regulations and law. I was, however, surprised by responses we got. Perhaps we should offer folks at the next StormCon a Stormwater 101 class. We could make it fun and informal—and you could have it catered!—and that might help clear up some of these misconceptions or areas of confusion. What do you think?

Is this government dictating to the private sector? Kidding aside, this is a great idea! Whenever unmet needs are identified, we will create new programs at StormCon to address those needs. Stormwater 101 refreshments ought to be carrots and sticks. I’ll bring the carrots.

I wanted to ask you about another side of stormwater that gets little attention—the role of the proprietary device manufacturers. I’ve heard talk for years that some manufacturers want the EPA to raise its standards because their products deliver higher than 80% total suspended solids (TSS) removal. If there are performance data documented by third-party lab tests, wouldn’t this help the EPA set numeric pollutant removal standards and help all of us achieve better results?
Well, there’s another one of those “stormwater urban myths.” There is no such thing as an 80% standard for anything in the NPDES stormwater program. Anyone who is reading this will get at least one question right on next year’s “Stormwater Jeopardy”!

On the issue of standardization, I do think that the more we can do to test and evaluate best management practices (BMPs) on a level playing field will help clear up misconceptions about performance. There are some advances in this area, such as the TARP (Technology Acceptance Reciprocity Partnership) Protocol that has been endorsed by several states. Also, the EPA’s Environmental Technology Verification program will evaluate BMP test results. We also need to be clear that controlling gross solids is not the same as controlling TSS or turbidity. Many of our waters are impaired for total suspended solids or turbidity, and we need to select the right BMPs to meet that challenge.

Your unveiling of the EPA’s new SWPPP (stormwater pollution prevention plan) Guide at StormCon was well met—another sign of people looking to refine their existing programs. Now that critical masses of contractors and regulated chain retailers have established their own stormwater programs, do you have any predictions about the influence they’ll have on the stormwater industry?
Thank you. It was very gratifying to have such a large turnout. I believe that field experiences definitely have an influence on what we as regulators do. There are countless examples of innovations in the field that impact how regulations, design manuals, and permits are written. We’ve already seen that happening at the EPA and in state and local governments. I would imagine that this trend will continue as we, as an industry, become more sophisticated about what we do. Field experiences have already shaped construction BMPs and traditional post-construction BMPs. I’m sure that field experiences with LID and green techniques will also play a very important part in how those ideas are integrated into our stormwater management framework.

Information on the EPA’s Web casts, including future topics and recordings of past Web casts, can be found at www.epa.gov/npdes/training. Information on stormwater pollution prevention plans for construction activities can be found at www.epa.gov/npdes/swpppguide. To find the EPA’s National Menu of BMPs, visit www.epa.gov/npdes/menuofbmps.

SW January/February 2008

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