This newsletter was created to relay occasional updates and important information to MS4 regulated communities.
In this Issue:
· Don’t Forget your Annual Reports
· Watch the Disconnection Workshop Series
· Encouraging LID with a Checklist
· MS4 Puzzler
· MS4 Tool of the month
Don’t Forget your Annual Reports!
Unless you put it in your Annual Report, CT DEEP won’t know what your town or institution is doing to comply with the MS4 permit. That makes submitting an Annual Report one of the most important MS4 tasks to complete to avoid the ire of the regulators! Not only is the Annual Report a way to document your work, it’s also the vehicle for explaining why you may be missing certain deadlines (ex. limited staff, key staff turnover, unhelpful weather during monitoring season, reduced budgets, etc.).
UConn CLEAR developed an Annual Report template that gets slightly updated each year. This is DEEP’s preferred format because it helps towns and institutions address (or at least be aware of) everything required to be reported each year. The 2020 Annual Report template is now available on our CT MS4 Guide website. This page also outlines the process and key dates for publicly posting the draft report (February 15th) and submitting it to DEEP (April 1st).
Watch the Disconnection Workshop Series
We recently held a virtual workshop series on the MS4 permit’s impervious cover and Low Impact Development (LID) requirements. The workshop featured many guest speakers from towns, COGs, Conservation Districts, and UConn to provide insight into how they are encouraging LID, disconnecting impervious cover, and successfully maintaining LID once it’s in place.
We were happy to see strong interest in these topics and enjoyed learning from the guest speakers about what’s already happening to redirect more and more of CT’s stormwater into the ground close to where it falls.
All the presentations were recorded and those recordings are available on the Post-Construction Stormwater Management page of our CT MS4 Guide. (scroll to the bottom of the page once you get there).
Encouraging LID with a Checklist
During the disconnection workshop series, Mansfield’s Director of Planning and Development, Linda Painter, spoke about her town’s LID checklist. This is an excellent way to address the MS4 requirement to ensure developers seeking town approval are considering Low Impact Development practices first. Watch her presentation.
Mansfield’s LID checklist is based on one developed by UConn CLEAR several years ago, which is posted on the Post-Construction page of the CT MS4 Guide website and can be used as a starting point to set up a similar checklist for your community.
MS4 Puzzler
“I know we need to begin monitoring the 6 worst outfalls discharging to impaired waters this year, are those outfalls supposed to be sampled during wet weather or dry weather?
Answer: This falls under the impaired waters monitoring requirements which are done during wet weather. I think the best way to get oriented on the monitoring requirements is to look at the Monitoring Comparison table on our monitoring page. Every time I receive a monitoring question, I start here to find the answer. More details about the impaired waters monitoring requirement are covered in the yellow column of the table.
Handy MS4 Tool of the Month
During the last session of the Disconnection workshop, Mike Dietz reviewed an impervious cover disconnection tracking spreadsheet that towns and institutions may use to meet the permit requirement to track impervious cover disconnections and additions each year. That spreadsheet can be downloaded from the CT MS4 Guide Tracking Disconnects page.