Let’s Get Strategic About Stormwater Management
Water and wastewater infrastructure are widely recognized as essential community services. As communities grow and development becomes denser, individual wells and septic systems often give way to centralized treatment facilities and water and sewer networks. Residents understand why these systems are necessary, and communities are accustomed to planning, funding, and charging for them.
Stormwater management can be different.
Historically, many communities have managed storm drainage through roadside ditches, culverts, street improvements, and requirements placed on developers. In rural areas, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) may address significant portions of the drainage system. In more urban areas, responsibility may fall to public works, streets, stormwater, or general services departments. As a result, elected officials may not have traditionally needed to dedicate significant local funding specifically to stormwater management.
But growth, aging infrastructure, regulatory requirements, and increasingly visible flooding problems are changing that conversation.
What Is Driving the Need for Stormwater Management?
For many communities, the decision to take a more comprehensive approach to stormwater comes down to three primary factors: development, regulation, and flooding.
Development Pressures
Population growth brings more homes, businesses, roads, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces. It also brings more infrastructure that must collect, convey, and manage runoff.
As communities become denser, drainage concerns that were once isolated can become interconnected system-wide issues. A culvert that worked adequately for decades may no longer have sufficient capacity. New development can change runoff patterns, and aging infrastructure may struggle to keep pace with current conditions.
At some point, addressing drainage one complaint or one project at a time, may no longer be the most effective approach.
Regulatory Requirements
Stormwater requirements can also create new responsibilities for local governments, particularly as water quality regulations increase. Communities may need to address Total Maximum Daily Load and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System compliance requirements for stormwater best management practices, stormwater control measure permitting and operations and maintenance, and other regulatory obligations. McGill's stormwater services include TMDL/NPDES compliance and stormwater system inventory and certification support.
These mandates may arrive without a corresponding source of revenue, leaving managers and elected officials to determine how stormwater responsibilities will be incorporated into existing programs and budgets.
Flooding and Level of Service
Flooding often makes stormwater needs the most visible.
Repeated roadway flooding can affect the level of service residents expect from their streets. Flooding can damage homes and businesses, disrupt commerce, limit emergency access, and create safety concerns.
The issue is no longer simply, "Where does the water go?" It becomes, "What level of stormwater service does our community expect, and what infrastructure and funding will be needed to provide it?"
Questions Community Managers Should Be Asking
Determining whether a community needs a more formal stormwater program does not always begin with an engineering study. It often begins with a series of practical questions.
Has your community developed a Stormwater Master Plan?
If so, when was it completed? Are its recommendations and projected costs still relevant? Do current development patterns and infrastructure conditions change the implementation plan? If your community has never completed a master plan, what has prevented it from doing so?
A Stormwater Master Plan can help move a community from reactive drainage improvements toward a prioritized, system-wide approach. A Stormwater Master Plan provides documentation of the problems, proposed solutions with estimated costs, and an implementation plan, which are the key factors to many successful grant funding applications. McGill's stormwater project life cycle can begin with planning and feasibility analysis, advance through master planning and grant applications, and continue through design, permitting, bidding, and construction.
What progress has been made on existing recommendations?
If a master plan already exists, which projects have been completed? Which remain unfunded and which are the highest-priority projects? Have priorities changed since the plan was prepared?
How are stormwater improvements being funded today?
Smaller communities commonly rely on general revenue and one-off grants to fund stormwater infrastructure improvements. As development and regulatory pressures grow, the demands of the stormwater program soon outpace traditional funding mechanisms. Similar to a utility enterprise fund, stormwater utilities are becoming more prevalent for communities of all sizes to address these needs. Special assessment districts may also be used to address regional needs.
If the community currently relies on general revenue, managers should ask whether stormwater projects were included in the most recent Capital Improvement Plan and budget. If important projects or regular maintenance were deferred, was funding the primary obstacle, or were staffing, planning, or project-development limitations also factors?
Would a dedicated Stormwater Utility make sense?
A stormwater utility can establish a dedicated revenue source for managing a community's stormwater system. McGill can assist with stormwater utility development and ongoing support, including rate-related services.
The right solution will differ from community to community, but the discussion should consider current needs, long-term capital requirements, regulatory responsibilities, administrative capacity, and the level of service the community wants to provide.
Does your current staff have the capacity to manage the program and upcoming projects?
Even communities with an established plan and funding can struggle to implement projects when internal staff are managing multiple competing priorities.
An on-call engineering partner or staff augmentation arrangement can provide additional technical capacity without requiring a community to immediately expand permanent staffing. McGill provides both staff augmentation and programmatic support for stormwater programs.
What funding opportunities have we explored?
Stormwater programs and projects may draw from a combination of general revenues, utility revenues, bonds, special districts, and state or federal funding programs.
Depending on the project and program requirements, potential outside funding sources may include FEMA, Community Development Block Grants, EPA programs, state direct appropriations, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, state resilience programs, and Golden LEAF, among others.
Having projects identified and prioritized in advance can place communities in a stronger position when funding opportunities become available.
Moving From Reactive Projects to a Stormwater Program
A community does not necessarily need to establish a large stormwater department to begin improving how it manages drainage.
The first step may simply be understanding what infrastructure exists, where recurring problems occur, which regulatory obligations apply, and which investments would provide the greatest benefit.
McGill can assist communities throughout that process with services that include:
- Watershed and stormwater system master planning
- Drainage and stormwater management
- GIS infrastructure inventory
- Closed-system hydrologic and hydraulic modeling
- Riverine hydrologic and hydraulic modeling
- FEMA flood hazard mapping
- No-Rise studies, Conditional Letter of Map Revisions (CLOMRs), and LOMRs
- Stream restoration
- Dam hazard classification, hydraulic analysis, and permitting
- Aging infrastructure maintenance programs
- Stormwater best management practices (BMP) inventories and certifications
- Green infrastructure and low-impact design
- Wetland mitigation
- Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) / National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) compliance
- Stormwater utility development and rate support
- Grant funding assistance
- Staff augmentation and programmatic support
McGill's involvement can extend across the complete project life cycle, from feasibility studies and master planning through capital project development, design, permitting, bidding, and construction.
Is It Time to Start the Conversation?
The need for a more formal stormwater program does not always announce itself through a single major flood or regulatory deadline. Often, the signs develop gradually: repeated drainage complaints, growing development pressure, deteriorating infrastructure, unfunded capital projects, new regulatory responsibilities, or increasing competition for limited general-fund dollars.
For community managers, the key question may be less about whether stormwater needs to be managed and more about when the current approach is no longer enough.
Taking time to evaluate existing infrastructure, priorities, funding, staffing, and future needs can help a community develop a more proactive and sustainable path forward.
McGill works with communities to evaluate stormwater needs, establish priorities, identify funding strategies, and implement projects from planning through construction, helping local governments move from individual drainage concerns toward long-term stormwater solutions.
Reach out to Michael Hanson, Regional Vice President at McGill, to start the conversation about your community by email at michael.hanson@mcgillassociates.com or phone at 919.378.9111.
