Stormwater Pond

Press Release from the WV-DEP: December 4, 2012.

WV DEP Issues New Stormwater Management Guide

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has a new tool to help communities reduce the impacts of polluted stormwater on the state’s streams and rivers.

Produced for the WV-DEP by the Center for Watershed Protection, the 500-page Stormwater Management and Design Guidance Manual is the first of its kind in the state. Both state and federal funds were used for the $150,000 project, which took two and a half years to complete and is based on up-to-date research in the science of stormwater management.

The manual outlines innovative ways to use plants and soils to reduce runoff volumes and pollutants at development and redevelopment sites. The guide can be used as a design resource by any West Virginia community interested in more effectively dealing with the harmful effects of polluted stormwater to the state’s waterways.

The manual’s chief function, however, is to provide design instruction and guidance on implementing stormwater practices in accordance with West Virginia’s small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) General Permit. Forty-seven West Virginia communities are regulated under the MS4 permit.

“This is a resource tool for state stormwater officials, engineers and designers who are required to implement the provisions of the MS4 permit,” said the WV-DEP’s Sherry Wilkins, project manager for the Guidance Manual. “By meeting these performance standards outlined in the permit, the MS4 communities will effectively improve the water quality of our streams and rivers and that benefits everybody.”

The manual focuses on the runoff reduction method of managing stormwater on-site to mimic natural hydrology.

Two years in the making, the WV Stormwater Management and Design Guidance Manual is now available for download on WVDEP’s website.  You can access the manual here:

http://www.dep.wv.gov/WWE/Programs/stormwater/MS4/Pages/StormwaterManagementDesignandGuidanceManual.aspx

WV-DEP Building

Public comment is invited until April 9^th on a proposed general stormwater permit for oil and gas activities associated with exploration, production, processing or treatment operations or transmission facilities that disturb one acre of land area or more.  While this does not apply to drilling pads, it does cover pipelines where substantial acreage can be involved, as recently reported.

This draft permit is based on the state’s existing construction stormwater permit but without any reference to the federal law that authorizes that, according to Scott Mandirola, Director of the DEP Division of Water and Waste Management. The authority for this is the state’s Water Pollution Control Act.

A public hearing is set for 6 p.m. on April 9, 2012, at the DEP’s Coopers Rock Training Room in its Charleston offices. Oral and written comments will be taken at that time.

Comments may be mailed to the Department of Environmental Protection, Attention: Tonya Ombler, 601 57th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304, or e-mailed to Tonya.K.Ombler@wv.gov. Correspondence should include the name, address and telephone number of the writer and a concise statement of the nature of the issues being raised.