A call to record stormwater control functions and to share network data

Abstract

Urban stormwater is an ongoing contributor to the degradation of the health of many watersheds and water bodies. In the United States, federal regulations (e.g., Clean Water Act) require monitoring and reporting of relevant water quality metrics in regulated waterbodies to ensure standards are being met, but decisions about how to manage urban stormwater are left up to state or other local agencies. While this allows for local adaptation and innovation, it has also lead to isolated holding of implemented stormwater control data at the city level and inconsistent terminology surrounding stormwater control measures (SCMs) between cities and regions (Fletcher et al. 2015; Minton 2000, 2007; WEF and ASCE-EWRI 2012). Particularly at this time when the types of SCMs are shifting to include smaller, distributed SCMs (Chocat et al. 2001; Delleur 2003; Roy et al. 2008; WEF and ASCE-EWRI 2012), the isolated management of SCM inventories is a significant missed opportunity to improve stormwater management through information sharing between cities, agencies, and researchers (Marsalek 2013; Minton 2000; Taira et al. 2018).