Alternative Compliance Program Water Quality Equivalency – San Diego Region
Our staff led a team to develop a program for San Diego County, Riverside County, and Orange County and their cities who are all co-permittees under a region-wide MS4 NPDES permit. The program allows the permittees to modify their new and re-development programs so that developers could invest in offsite “alternative” projects in lieu of retaining the water quality storm event onsite . Mr. Haimann’s team helped the Co-permittees develop a program that allows the jurisdictions to implement a market-based credit trading program so that developers could build water quality projects and sell credits to new development developers who could not fit water quality systems on their sites. Most critically, Mr. Haimann’s team developed equivalency factors that took into account differences in pollutant controls between projects, while maintaining a simple currency for trade of retained or treated volume.
Stormwater Department Watershed Asset Management Plans for the City of San Diego, California
Our staff led a team to develop Watershed Asset Management Plans for the City of San Diego Storm Water department. This helped the department allocate resources cost-effectively to conduct site specific objective studies, initiate TMDL implementation plans, conduct NPDES compliance program elements, and plan capital projects to improve drainage, comply with TMDLs, and capture storm water as a resource using green infrastructure, and LIDs The RWQCB, environmental groups, and business community were engaged in the process and endorsed the City’s master planning framework as the means to effectively achieve water quality, flood control, and water resource development goals as cost effectively as possible. Critical and central was developing a complete cost of service for the entire storm water system, that would be used to estimate average annual budgeting needs to meet all levels of service.
Stormwater Program Support for the City of San Diego, California
Our staff assisted the City of San Diego to update their urban runoff and stormwater quality management programs in response to their 4th term municipal separate storm sewer (MS4) national pollutant discharge and elimination system (NPDES) permit. This permit required substantial implementation of Best Management Practices (BMPs) at new and existing development with strong emphasis on low impact development (LID). The team helped to guide the city through a complex maze of stakeholder issues, technical feasibility issues, and political and regulatory issues to develop appropriate LID and BMP programs that would meet regulatory criteria, be acceptable to environmental stakeholder groups, be implementable within the city's legal environment, and be acceptable to landowners who would be required to adopt the BMPs
