Developing property that is adjacent to a sensitive watershed requires a special set of skills. You have to have an open mind and truly embrace the belief that creative solutions come to light when everyone works together.
For the year preceeding the development we established a predevelopment baseline profile of the pollutents leaving the site. We then designed systems that employed multiple linear stacked best management practices as far upstream as possible to ensure the quality of our storm water runoff was far cleaner than prior to our arrival. We creatively designed additional wetlands to harbor the most severe storm events that had plaqued the community for a generation.
It was not enough to address the impacts of the additional impervious area through design and contruction alone. We needed to ensure the implentation of our practices worked.
When we were complete, we deployed automatic storm water runoff samplers that capture water samples during rain events such that we can analyze them for phosphates, nitrogen, total disolved solids, and alkalinity. We continually compare those metrics with our predevelopment baseline to ensure that each facility is working as designed. Operationally, we agreed to vacuum the parking fields each and every day as our first line of defense in removing adverse particulate from our storm water runoff.
