Bacon's Rebellion

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Suburbia’s Silent Storm Water Crisis

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by

James A. Bacon
in

What happens when your storm water system fails. Photo credit: Associated Press.
What happens when your storm water system fails. Photo credit: Associated Press.

America’s older suburbs may face an infrastructure crisis from the last place they expect — aging storm water management systems.

In a presentation at the annual LOCUS conference in Washington, D.C., this morning, Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” listed a number of factors driving the re-development of America’s suburbs. They include the usual suspects such as energy-efficiency, emancipation from auto dependency and housing affordability as well as some less commonly recognized trends such as the aging of the population and public health. But the one that took me by surprise was water.

“Water is the next oil,” said Dunham-Jones, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor. By that, I understood her to mean that clean water is the next object of resource scarcity, especially in western communities where much of the waste water is, well… wasted.

Water issues also have dogged America’s older cities where waste-water and storm-water infrastructure built a century ago first began to decay. But the problems are spreading to suburban jurisdictions developed since World War II, Dunham-Jones said. The early suburbs were built with little thought to water issues. Many developments were built in flood plains or wetlands. Streams were funneled through storm culverts. Engineered, hard-infrastructure solutions that may have been adequate back then have proven less so as development spread and watersheds were paved over with impermeable surfaces, she explained.

Add to that the fact that some older pipes and culverts are crumbling and that warmer climate is associated with more extreme weather events, and the suburbs could have a time bomb on their hands — one they don’t even hear ticking.

— JAB

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2 responses to “Suburbia’s Silent Storm Water Crisis”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I’m probably going to get into another back and forth with TE but the truth is a bit different from the narrative here.

    Almost every city in the county was built with one system for getting rid of both sewage and storm water because early on – there were no wastewater treatement plants – just outflows into rivers.

    The Potomac was a virtual cesspool especially after large rain events.

    and the fix is not cheap – ” Miles of new tunnels to clean
    up Washington DC waterways”… ” A $2.2 billion combined sewer overflow abatement (CSO) project is moving forward to clean up and protect the waterways around Washington DC. The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority’s (DC WASA) CSO Long Term Control Plan (LTCP), will comply with court ordered control of CSOs into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and Rock Creek.
    Central to the program is the Anacostia River Projects, a system of 12.8 miles (20.7km) of deep level tunnels with 16 shafts, and several pumping stations and river crossings. The project is broken into four main tunneling contracts. ”

    http://www.tunneltalk.com/Anacostia-Aug2009-Anacostia-CSO.php

    there are no such tunnel projects in the suburbs – because most suburbs do not have combined sewers…

    In our area – the sewage system is separate from the storm water… except for the city of Fredericksburg which is old. Neither one of the adjacent counties has much if any CSO issues.

    Cities don’t have land for storm water – so what do they do with it? Modern places like Tysons have some innovative designs and practices but the answer for Washington is – billion dollar mega tunnels.. that basically store the runoff and feed it at a rate to the treatment plant that it can handle – as opposed to all of it coming moments after the rain begins – and overwhelming the plant – which just turns it lose with raw sewage.

    this is one of those issues that any area with density has problems with if the land can be used for more density – more people verses can the land be used to store stormwater… those are the two choices and land in cities – is too valuable to use to for stormwater whereas in suburbs, land is cheap and easily used to build storm water facilities.

    In urban areas – the receiving streams – are already seriously degraded from storm runoff.. in suburban areas – there is so much natural vegetation still remaining that most of their streams – by comparison with urban streams – are not as degraded and therefor don’t have the higher level of stringent regulation that you will find in the urban areas.

    the hardest areas to deal with are – the areas adjacent to the urban core – those areas that were the first suburbs before it went further out towards the exurbs.

    those areas – like the older areas of Fairfax that are not older subdivisions – were never built with storm water facilities and now that they are built out – land for ponds is scarce and the result is usually like what has happened with Accotink Creek and Four Mile RUn. there are no good answers.

    tunnels will be way too expensive…and trying to buy back developed land for storm water facilities, the cost would be borne by the residents, so we’re seeing regional parks that are often built in riparian corridors – also serving as regional storm water facilities.

    July 15 is the magic date for Virginia. Thats the date when places like Fairfax have to submit their plan for stormwater to meet the new standards.

    We have to meet those same standards down our way and folks are no particularly happy – but the problem is no where near as tough as it’s going to be in more densely settled places.

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    several typos in the above but one needs correction for sure:

    ” those areas – like the older areas of Fairfax that are not older subdivisions – were never built with storm water facilities and now that they are built out ”

    change to: “like the older areas of Fairfax that are NOW older”.

    then I realized overall it was not explained well and try again –

    in the evolution of moving away from combined sewer/storm systems – suburbs built in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc like the single family residential (and commercial) that constituted the part of Fairfax that was built in that time – they DID separate the sewer from the storm water. The sewer was piped to the wastewater treatment plant but the storm water just was sent to ditches and open outflows into creeks and you can easily see this if you walk the areas adjacent to creeks in the older, settled areas of Fairfax (any older suburb adjacent to any urban core).

    Most all of the impervious surfaces just drain straight to the creeks without any storm ponds to sequester the runoff much less perform any treatment to remove the things that were deposited on the impervious surfaces from pet poop to fertilizer to motor oil, anti-freeze, etc.

    so there are three basic problems in the “near” suburbs of urban areas:

    1. – no storm ponds and
    2 – essentially build-out conditions – virtually every piece of land has been developed
    3. most all of the developed land has conventional impervious surfaces, no LID, no pervious pavement, no cistern capture, etc.

    so these older “near” subdivisions have, over time, severely degraded most all streams in ‘near’ suburbs that have separated sewer from storm water .. there are essentially few if any actual storm water facilities and mitigation.

    so, when NEW development is proposed – the restrictions on storm water are NOT one size fits all – the level of restrictions is based on the CONDITION of the receiving stream – which, again, in places like Fairfax – those streams are already seriously degraded.

    so the newer development has to essentially bear the restrictions and expense associated with earlier development that had few restrictions.

    stormwater rules – have evolved over the years – from tougher and tougher rules – that are based, in large part, on the existing condition of the receiving streams –

    that means in urban areas with degraded creeks much tougher restrictions that in exurban areas where the receiving stream are – though degraded – not nearly as much as the steams in fully-built out areas.

    there is still room to retrofit storm ponds to older subdivisions in exurban locations.

    so what does all of this mean?

    to me – it means that the more dense you want to develop in areas that are already dense – i.e. add more density – you’ve got to do something about stormwater and – it won’t be cheap if you can no longer just have it run off the property and into a nearby ditch then into a local stream.

    there is a difference in the runoff – if it is coming from roofs rather than ground-level impervious surfaces… (that have liquids from cars and pet poop and fertilizer).

    TE has talked about this with respect to Tysons – and how they are attempting to capture the runoff from the roofs before it gets to ground level impervious surfaces and thence drains somewhere.

    Finally – let’s finish with the concept of “Lean Urbanism” and “free market” urbanism…

    what would either of these two – do about storm water runoff – if there were no government-imposed environmental regulations?

    See.. by asking this question – does not make me an advocate or proponent of big government or regulations –

    so I ask the question – if you don’t want big govt and/or regulations – then what is the alternative?

    People who advocate urbanism – LIKE trees and vegetation… walkable and bikeable places – i.e. normally, and typically – impervious surfaces unless specifically designed otherwise (and more expensive).

    to me – that seems to be a huge challenge and impediment to building more dense – and expanding density – …

    you can’t stop the rain – what are you going to do with it?

    it appears to me that the only real option is to store it – in cisterns, in tunnels, etc.. and use it for non-potable purposes like irrigating shrubs and trees, etc… but I do have my doubts that without government regulation, the free market or “Lean” urbanization would not voluntarily address this issue. Even people down our way – question why we have to pay money to deal with storm water runoff.. why us?

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