Purpose
This control measure covers a lot of ground. From using best management practices for municipal operations such as equipment maintenance, grounds maintenance and snow removal practices, to administering an employee training program on stormwater management and water quality, to implementing retrofit projects to reduce DCIA, and much much more!
Relevant Terms
Retrofit: means a project that modifies an existing developed site for the primary purpose of disconnecting DCIA.
Resources
Employee Training
Partners for a Clean Environment (PACE) provides free online stormwater training presentations, SOPs, and BMPs related to municipal stormwater operations.
Employee training video for parks maintenance and stormwater protection from Minnesota.
Connecticut's Training and Technical Assistance Center offers various types of training and certifications for public works and road maintenance, especially with regards to snow management practices.
EPA's Watershed Academy Web Training offers 15 core educational modules covering various aspects of watershed management and protection. Certification at the end of the course is available.
Visit our Training Materials page for more information.
Retrofit program
This impervious cover disconnection spreadsheet created by NEMO decades ago may be useful for DCIA disconnection tracking purposes today.
Municipal operations and maintenance
This BMP guidance from Minnesota Pollution Control Agency provides lots of fact sheets for model programs for maintaining winter road materials, applying fertilizer/chemicals to park and open properties, reducing pet waste, washing vehicles, and many more.
Many towns are already doing good work preventing polluted runoff from their own properties, roads and operations. We’d like to highlight some existing practices towns and institutions are using to meet the many aspects of this control measure and we’ll update this page with examples as we collect them.
- Town of Groton's recently updated snow management and deicing material SOPs.
Task list
Where the deadline for new MS4 permittees differs from the deadline for exisiting permittees, the second deadline in parenthesis applies to new permittees.
| Activity | Deadline | Permit Page |
|---|---|---|
| Implement employee training program | Jul 1 2017 (Jul 1 2018) |
31 |
| Sweep streets in priority areas at least 1x per year | Jul 1 2017 | 35 |
| Track DCIA (additions and subtractions) | Jul 1 2017 | 30 |
| MS4 property O&M | none specified | 33 |
| Log catch basin inspections and cleanings | Jul 1 2018 | 37 |
| Develop and implement deicing material SOP | Jul 1 2018 | 37 |
| Implement snow and ice control practices to minimize pollutants | Jul 1 2018 | 37 |
| Establish catch basin cleaning schedule | Jul 1 2018 | 36 |
| Develop alternate plan for sweeping streets outside priority areas (if not sweeping them 1x per year) | Jul 1 2018 | 35 |
| Develop retrofit plan | Jul 1 2020 | 32 |
| Inspect all catch basins in priority areas | Jul 1 2020 (Jul 1 2022) |
36 |
| Implement projects from retrofit plan | Jul 1 2020 (Jul 1 2022) |
33 |
| Inspect all catch basins outside priority areas | Jul 1 2022 (Jul 1 2022) |
36 |