It was one of the most vexing moments of Shirley
Morrow’s career.
Morrow, a certified professional in erosion and
sediment control (CPESC) and a stormwater specialist, had been discussing the
preparation of a stormwater pollution prevention plan (SWPPP) when a hand shot
up: “What are you talking about?”
With some developers and building contractors still
not knowing what a SWPPP (pronounced swîp) is, and with many engineers and
designers at a loss on how to properly prepare one, Morrow and her industry
colleagues see a situation they are out to change. She is the vice president and
director of technical content with Stormwater USA, a company that provides
online stormwater compliance training to the construction industry.
A SWPPP, as defined by the EPA, is a detailed document
describing a construction-site operator’s activities to prevent stormwater
contamination, control sediment and erosion, and comply with Clean Water Act
requirements.
That act requires nearly all construction-site
operators whose clearing, grading, and excavating disturbs 1 acre or
more—including smaller sites in a larger common plan of development or sale—to
obtain coverage under a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)
permit for stormwater discharges. Most states are now authorized to implement
the NPDES program.
A SWPPP sometimes goes by other names: construction
best practices plan; sediment and stormwater plan; erosion, sediment, and
pollution prevention plan; construction site best management practices plan;
erosion control plan and best management practices; best management practices
plan; and erosion and sediment control plan.
The EPA defines erosion as the process by which land
surface is worn away by the action of water or wind. Sedimentation is the
movement and settling out of suspension of soil particles.
Failure to implement a SWPPP can result in significant
fines from the EPA or a state environmental agency.
Here’s why: stormwater runoff results when rain or
snowmelt flows over land and does not percolate into the soil. Impervious
surfaces, such as parking lots, can alter the natural hydrology of the land by
increasing its volume, velocity, and temperature and decreasing infiltration
capacity.
That can cause severe streambank erosion and flooding,
and can degrade streams’ biological habitat. Reducing infiltration lowers
groundwater levels and affects drinking-water supplies. Stormwater picks up and
carries debris, with potentially detrimental consequences for aquatic life,
wildlife, habitat, and human health.
Sediment is a
primary stormwater pollutant. Rain breaks down the soil structure, dislodging
soil particles, and eventually forms smaller rills and large gullies. Erosion
can be prevented through a number of erosion control best management practices
(BMPs).
One of the biggest weaknesses Morrow notes with regard
to the SWPPP is that some people regard it merely as a site map, “and it’s much
more than that,” she points out.
Lacking in many of the SWPPPs Morrow sees are
inspection forms, spill forms, contractors’ certification forms, and a general
permit copy.
Jerald Fifield, Ph.D., CISEC (certified inspector of
sediment and erosion control), CPESC, believes the weakest link in the process
is how designers put the plan together.
He is the president of HydroDynamics in Parker, CO,
has taught classes on preparing the SWPPP, and authored the book Designing
for Effective Sediment and Erosion Control on Construction Sites.
“It’s not
intentional,” he says of how designers write a SWPPP. “They’ve never taken
courses on how to do the plan. If the contractor doesn’t have it in the plans,
he isn’t going to do it.
“If the plan is a piece of junk and the contractor
installs a best management practice and it fails, it’s not the contractor’s
fault—it’s the designer’s fault.”
Paul Taylor, a consulting engineer with J-U-B
Engineering in Kaysville, UT, who works primarily with municipalities, agrees
that not only do many people in the industry not know what constitutes a SWPPP,
but those who do aren’t thorough in its preparation.
“I do a lot of reviews of stormwater pollution
prevention plans, and they are grossly incomplete,” he says. “The common thought
in the industry is ‘If I show a site plan, put silt fence around it, and
stabilize the construction entrance, that’s my stormwater pollution prevention
plan.’
“It’s so much more. The most common stumbling block I
run into as a municipal engineer representing municipalities is people not
understanding what a stormwater pollution prevention plan is and all of the
different aspects that should be included.”
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Photo: Paul Taylor |
Tina Evans agrees. She’s a project engineer with
HydroDynamics and has more than 10 years of experience working in the field.
“One of the biggest problems we come across is trying
to get people not to put everything on one sheet: to break it up into items you
would put in prior to grading, items you would install during construction, and
then post-construction BMPs,” she says.
If HydroDynamics is preparing a SWPPP for another
engineering firm, at times it becomes “a battle to convince them that two or
three sheets are a lot more informative and better laid out than what they’ve
done before,” says Evans.
“If we’re doing inspections and we get a set of plans,
if we can, we’ll talk to the engineer, although by that point the plans have
already been approved,” she says. “In that case, all we can do is give them a
recommendation and hope they follow through with it. The other way that we are
rectifying this is through the classes that Jerry [Fifield] teaches.”
Phase II of NPDES, which went into effect in 2003, has
not changed the way SWPPPs should be prepared because they’ve always been
required, says Morrow.
“One of the biggest problems we are seeing is that
people thought all of these regulations didn’t exist before Phase II,” she
points out. “All of it’s been required since 1992 in Phase I.”
What has made a difference is that the EPA and
individual states had been quite lax in enforcement; thus, many people were not
motivated to prepare a plan, Morrow says.
Nonetheless, after Phase I, when large cities had
their own programs and states managed programs for sites of 5 acres or more,
Phase II brought everyone into the
fold.
“These smaller towns have to put their own programs
together, so it’s bringing the regulations down to the local level, and now
everybody is paying more attention to it,” says Morrow.
As a result, there is increased local enforcement,
“which is what EPA had envisioned,” Morrow says.
Still, 16 years
after Phase I, enforcement is so lax in some places that Morrow and others in
the field note that smaller companies and developers exist who have never heard
of SWPPP regulations.
Taylor agrees that while Phase II hasn’t necessarily
changed the way the SWPPPs are prepared, there are many people now preparing
them who don’t know what they’re doing.
“I think this regulation is sometimes misunderstood,”
says Taylor. “I do think it is moving us in the right direction as a nation. I
think it is important to protect our environment; we need to be responsible.
Sometimes I think the regulations go too far, but they are what they are and we
need to comply.”
James Spotts, CPESC, is with Southeast Environmental
Consultants in Atlanta, GA. He says there is disagreement over a Georgia
practice of using turbidity as a measure of stormwater discharge violations.
“There is a lot of talk in the professional circles,
particularly among biologists, as to whether turbidity is in fact the one true
and best measure for evaluating the quality of water in a stream,” says
Spotts.
“There are many other factors, like dissolved oxygen
and contaminants of various types, but because the inspector in the field only
has a few minutes to get a sample and do an analysis, he doesn’t have time to do
sophisticated lab samples. So turbidity is the criteria used to measure water
quality, although in reality it’s rather incomplete in terms of accessing the
quality of the whole system.”
Accountability is a key factor in SWPPPs, says
Fifield. Writing a second SWPPP becomes part of that effort, he continues.
“Say the developer develops 100 acres and a builder
buys 25 of those acres,” Fifield says. “The developer of those 100 acres had a
SWPPP that everybody was supposed to follow. When the builder comes in, he may
not do anything required of him with the first SWPPP.
“If the developer’s done a beautiful job and
stabilized the land with vegetation, then the builder comes in and he’s going to
have to tear up that grass [on his 25 acres]. Now he is destroying it, negating
the original SWPPP because of that action. They cannot do that unless they
develop their own SWPPP for those 25 acres.”
Phase II is what made the difference, Fifield
says.
“It told the developer to do a good job. The builder
has a choice to either make sure he does not negate what the developer did—and
if it looks like the builder can’t build houses without disturbing the land,
then it is suggested that the builder develop another SWPPP showing how the
company is going to control the sediment on the 25 acres.”
The developer still has to maintain the first SWPPP
for the remaining 75 acres.
“I believe you’re going to see some changes come up
with the next reauthorization in 2008 that are going to make the builders more
accountable, because when they develop, they can’t build without stripping the
land,” says Fifield.
“Accountability is the biggest change that occurred when Phase II kicked
in. There’s a good reason for it—builders were not doing their job of trying to
keep the sediment on the site when it rains.”
As for the time to initiate the SWPPP process, Fifield
believes it should occur after the drainage analysis has been done by the
engineering or design firm, adding it’s best to know which way water is going to
flow.
Going straight into an erosion control plan without
understanding water patterns can present many problems, says Fifield.
Another necessary component before the construction
phase is an NOI—a Notice of Intent—that may go by other names in some
states.
“Implementation starts at the beginning with a
pre-construction meeting, where the inspector will look at what needs to be done
to ensure the environment isn’t wiped out in trying to make sure the job is done
in the best way possible,” says Fifield.
“People tend to forget that the EPA tells contractors
to do their own inspection, with municipalities coordinating it or looking over
their shoulders,” he says. “You’ve got to have a set of plans that the
contractor and his or her inspectors can understand.”
Fifield has seen plans where erosion control measures
are put in place before grading occurs.
“I tell designers to make sure they’re doing these
plans for the contractors, because they are not going to put vegetation in for
erosion control before they do grading—they are going to do it afterwards,” he
says.
Problems can also occur after a major weather event,
mandating the modification of the plan.
“The erosion and sediment control plan is a dynamic
document, subject to modifications if it is going to be effective,” says
Fifield. “You may find the BMP that was called for—and you did the best job you
possibly could, but site conditions were changed—is not needed.”
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Photo: James W. Spotts,
CPESC |
Good log installation. Mouth is open. Sediment fence prevents sediment from area behind the curb inlet from reaching the
inlet. |
Although the BMP can be removed, the EPA wants that
documented on the drawings, he adds.
“I tell my clients they better be sure they don’t need
it,” he says, using the example of a silt fence on top of a hill.
“The designer put it up there because that’s what he
did on a previous plan,” he says. “Water doesn’t go uphill.
“On the other side of the coin, you may have a
particular culvert or something going in with a projection at the discharging of
the culvert, and you decide you want something better. You modify the plan to
put in additional BMPs as needed.”
The SWPPP is also a dynamic document, Fifield
says.
“A prime example is that often in the fueling of the
machinery, companies can store the fuel onsite or truck it in. We had one where
we assumed there was going to be a fuel depot someplace on the drawing,” he
says.
“After the contractor got hold of the drawing, he said
they weren’t going to store fuel, but truck it in. We had to change the verbiage
on the narrative part of our report.”
Communication is another step in the process, Fifield
says.
“Are we
communicating with the regulatory agency to find out what they will want? That
will help guide us to what we hope would be the final requirements necessary for
submittal of the SWPPP and of the sediment and erosion control plan.”
After finding out what the client needs and compiling
the data—including doing a site visit before breaking ground, which Fifield
notes is not often done—the SWPPP preparer should analyze the data, he says.
“Where does all of the water flow toward when you’re
working? Where is the water going to go after the site is fully developed? For
example, it usually goes to the detention pond,” he points out. “What do you
need to be careful about—are there wetlands to protect? Look at the whole
picture. This is where the drainage analysis is very useful.”
The next phase before developing the SWPPP’s narrative
part is designing the sediment and erosion control plan.
“You’ve got the information from the municipality, and
you know what the developer wants,” says Fifield. “If it’s feasible, it’s nice
to know the name of the contracting firm and know the scheduling.
“Not only are you looking at the hydrology, but you’re
also looking at how the contractor is going to do the grading. If you don’t have
that luxury, you’re going to have to pull from your knowledge as a designer who
has seen what happens on construction sites to do the best plan you possibly
can.”
After getting the plan worked out, the designer goes
onto what Fifield calls the most difficult—yet most important—part of the
process: identifying BMP locations.
“When do you put
them in? What goes in before grading? What goes in during the time of grading to
get the final land contours, as well as installing utilities? What about the
final land stabilization?”
Up to three operators can be involved in the SWPPP
preparation, says Fifield.
“Operator One is generally the owner of the property
and is responsible for developing a SWPPP for the property he’s working on,”
says Fifield. “Operator One, usually the land owner, hires a design firm to
design the plan. That plan goes to the municipalities and maybe the state for
approval, then it gets turned over to Operator Two. That person is the one who
has to implement what is on the first plan—the narrative part as well as the
drawings.”
Operator Three is usually the builder.
“The third operator can also be the contractor who is
excavating the land for the road and is responsible for making sure that the
paving is done and the hillside is established with vegetation,” says
Fifield.
SWPPP implementation then follows the first operator’s
plan.
A “huge hole” often occurs when the process gets into
the hands of the second operator, Fifield notes.
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Photo: James W. Spotts,
CPESC |
Filter diameter is too small. The filter is being pushed into the mouth of the inlet. |
“Often, the designers are not necessarily going out to
see what the contractor does, unless there’s a catastrophe,” he says. “That’s
the worst possible condition for a designer to develop plans, because they don’t
see what worked, they don’t see what failed, they don’t understand the reason.
At the same time, they are not getting paid to go out; that’s a flaw in the
current system.”
One state that may change that is Florida, says
Fifield, who helped to write the state’s manual; that the state may require
monthly visits by the designer.
In such a case, a designer can engage in the same
process as an inspector—viewing what’s being installed and what isn’t, making
changes to the plan, updating drawings, and meeting with the contractor and
inspectors.
“The irony is that when the designer does that,
problems are correctly solved,” says Fifield. “Contractors end up having fewer
problems because everything gets installed in a correct manner. Regulatory
inspectors stop worrying about whether a good job is being done. It saves the
contractor and developer money.”
Taylor also knows of many people who prepare SWPPPs
without ever having visited the site, and without understanding the soil or the
climate.
“If you are familiar with an area, maybe you could do
that, but generally speaking, I don’t prepare a stormwater pollution prevention
plan without visiting the site,” says Taylor.
“I tell my clients I need to come out to the site to
understand what is going on. I also will not finalize a pollution prevention
plan without talking to the contractor.”
Taylor points out that, as a designer, he can put
together a plan that he believes will work, but the contractor might decide he
wants to approach the project differently.
“So now what I had planned doesn’t work because of the
way he is approaching it, and that’s the way he bid it,” he says. “Then the plan
needs to be adapted to meet his needs. So before we finalize the plan, I like to
get his input.”
After developing the drawings, designers prepare the
narrative part of the SWPPP.
“Once the designers see what is going to be needed on
the project, they then can put that information into the SWPPP,” Fifield
says.
Morrow says the two biggest factors that people should
keep in mind when preparing a SWPPP is to know the regulations and to keep
current on the latest and best technologies.
Regulations can be obtained from the Internet. “It’s
easy to download the general permit,” Morrow notes.
Reading trade journals, belonging to trade
associations, and attending conferences also provide information necessary for
keeping current on new technologies, Morrow points out.
Many times, “common sense” is lacking in the
preparation of SWPPPs, says Spotts.
“In most cases, the architects are relying strictly on
the manual we have in this state called Manual
for Erosion and Sediment Control in Georgia, which lists specific
BMPs, such as silt fence, hay bales, or construction entrances,” he says.
“Designers are basically giving contractors the recipe
of which BMPs need to be put on a site. In some places the regulatory authority
will specify ‘You must have a tree protection fence and a silt fence wrapping
around the entire site, including the tops of hills.’ There’s not a lot of
common sense to that, but if it gets the plan passed, that’s what the architect
puts on the plan and then that’s what the contractor has to install—a silt fence
at the top of a hill.”
Fifield agrees that common sense is a cornerstone for
SWPPP preparation.
“Usually, on the sediment and erosion control plan,
designers follow a book that was approved by a municipality, state, or other
regulatory agency, and it has great illustrations,” he says.
“It talks about silt fence, how to put it in, and
about turf reinforcement mats and wattles and even about the need for vegetation
and why you should stage the removal of vegetation,” he says. “But it doesn’t go
into anything really technical as to what they should be doing.”
For example, Fifield cites sediment containment
systems, which some others call sediment ponds.
“It doesn’t really talk about the design of those,” he
says. “Consider EPA’s recommended criteria that say you’re supposed to capture
3,600 cubic feet of runoff per contributing acre from your land if you disturb
10 acres or more.
“What does that mean? It means you’ve got a large or
little volume of water, but it doesn’t say anything about how you get rid of the
water, how long it should stay in the pond, what size suspended particles you
are going to be capturing—all these are very important factors.”
Another issue Fifield cites is designers placing
barriers in front of inlets.
“The simplest one is a rock barrier in front of an
inlet,” he says. “What’s overlooked is what happens if you are on a street that
happens to be on a grade—say a 3% slope. You may get downstream flooding because
runoff is diverted from the inlet.
“That’s the type of knowledge every designer should
have,” he says. “They don’t necessarily put it onto the drawings, and it’s not
necessarily their fault. Often, they are required to put something in front of
an inlet no matter what because of the regulations of the city for which they
are making the plans, and that is a huge problem.
“While designers have to get their acts together, at
the same time, regulatory people have to get their acts together.”
That’s best achieved through education, says
Fifield.
“Some regulatory people feel they have to follow
what’s in the book,” he says. “This requires us to be very flexible on what’s
happening, but accountable, too.”
He points out that one of the most rigid rules he’s
encountered is the one adopted by some Colorado municipalities stating that no
sediment should ever leave a construction site.
“That’s totally impossible,” says Fifield. “You can
make a tremendous improvement if you’re willing to put a polymer into runoff
waters so you can get more effective deposition of the suspended particles, but
Colorado says you can’t put chemicals in the runoff waters leaving the site. So
you are in a Catch-22 situation.”
Some regulators point out that such rules tie their
hands and advocate trying something like a polymer-based approach, followed by
monitoring, to ensure accountability, Fifield says.
“I think people are beginning to realize the standard
sediment containment system—the typical ones in the majority of the manuals—will
not remove the fine colloidal particles in the water being discharged out of the
system,” he adds.
Because of some of the challenges inherent in
preparing the SWPPP, some entities are paying third parties to do it, as well as
installing and maintaining the BMPs.
Although many larger Phase I communities have the
staff to put together their own SWPPP plans, Taylor’s company works primarily
with smaller municipalities that have third parties prepare the plans.
There’s still a tendency to have an engineer do the
design and another person prepare the SWPPP, says Morrow.
“When I worked for a consulting firm, I always wrote
the SWPPP, but I didn’t do the civil engineering design of the ponds or the
structures,” she says. “I would relate to the engineer what the requirements
were and prepare the SWPPP.
“A lot of engineers don’t want to learn erosion and
sediment control, and if they don’t, that’s fine—then you need two people. You
need one person who knows how to read the regulations, work with the engineer,
and put the SWPPP together, and then you have the engineer doing the actual
design.”
Morrow says the “scariest” SWPPPs are the ones
prepared by contractors “who haven’t got a clue what they are doing.
“Hopefully, we’re getting away from that, because
they’re going to have to hire an engineering firm if there needs to be a pond or
something else.”
Spotts typically reviews plans produced by other
architects or by people who are not quite as familiar with them as he is.
“I provide a minimum of suggestions to them,” he says.
“On some occasions, I have done the entire plans from start to finish
myself.”
The state of Georgia requires that licensed
professionals sign off on SWPPPs; as a CPESC, Spotts is qualified to do so, as
are professional engineers, architects, landscape architects, foresters,
geologists, and surveyors. As such, third parties prepare many SWPPPs.
Fifield himself works for developers, builders, and
engineering firms, helping to develop SWPPPs and sediment and erosion control
plans.
“Many of the engineering firms do a very good job as
far as development of the narrative part of SWPPP, because it’s a good template,
but they are often lacking in developing a good sediment and erosion control
plan,” he notes.
When designers “cram everything into one sheet of
paper” including words, symbols, and illustrations, and contractors can’t figure
it all out, the contractors oftentimes seek to find the designer. “And if he
doesn’t come out to the site—which is much more prevalent than one would like to
believe—then they throw the plans away and do it on their own,” Fifield
says.
He points out that entities spend a lot of money for
the plans, yet a lot of the work he gets is from contractors who can’t figure
out what the designer is trying to say in the original plan.
“That saddens me,
because that means we are not doing a good job to be accountable to the
contractor and clients,” he says.
“If a specific
BMP is to be placed in a drainage channel, I, as a designer, had better know if
it’s going to work and what are its limitations,” says Fifield. “A lot of people
don’t realize there are limitations on these BMPs.”
Some municipal
officials have told Fifield that a BMP should be able to hold back sediment for
all types of storm events and not fail.
“It doesn’t
happen like that,“ says Fifield. “Designers need to be aware that everything
they are putting on a piece of paper is just a guess anyway; that’s why I
advocate they do site visits to see what the limitations are, and next time they
can do a better job.”
If a BMP fails,
it’s a lesson in learning why it did, he adds.
“Most of the
time, it won’t be because the product was installed incorrectly. It just was not
the right product or has never been rated well for the weather event or the
runoff that occurred,” says Fifield. Although many products are laboratory
tested, most are not field tested, says Fifield.
The biggest stumbling block in preparing the SWPPP is
in not reading the general permit requirements, says Morrow.
“It’s so easy to
do—you just download it and read it,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s because it
is written in regulatory language that it makes people gloss over it, but
they’re not reading and understanding what the state or jurisdiction wants. The permit is very specific on what’s
required, and it would be a big help if people read it.”
Training is a
major factor in SWPPP preparation, Morrow points out. She has been involved in
the industry for 14 years and has taught stormwater compliance.
When the EPA sued
Wal-Mart Stores for non-compliance, Morrow was hired by the company to develop a
training program.
“I also did a lot
of training with the Wal-Mart engineering firm, because we had to review all of
the stormwater plans; we were getting some really bad plans,” says
Morrow.
And although it
hadn’t been part of the consent order, Morrow taught the engineers how to write
a SWPPP.
“We’re getting
better at enforcement with the general contractor and permit holder, but when
they’re given a stormwater plan that isn’t even in compliance when it first hits
the site and the contractors’ duty is just to follow it, it’s not their fault;
they’re following it but it’s not properly written,” says
Morrow.
“Unfortunately,
we say that it is their fault, so one of the things I started at Wal-Mart was
making the engineers and SWPPP preparers more accountable for their work up
front. When the stormwater plan hits the site, the contractor has a better tool
to work with, and communications improve between the engineer and site
contractor.”
Morrow says that
when she first started working with Wal-Mart, she learned that contractors will
do what they need to do when it’s explained to them.
“One of the
things I see over and over is that we’re not getting the message down to the
people who need it,” she says.
In her current
role with Stormwater USA, she is responsible for developing two online training
programs, each leading to certification: one as a SWPPP preparer and one as a
compliance inspector.
Such training
will be necessary for going forward.
For example,
Spotts has served as an expert witness in a number of court cases involving
stormwater discharge.
“One landowner
will sue another if discharge comes onto his site and causes any damage. That’s
very common in this area,” says Spotts.
“There can be
some damage to a little watershed, and the next thing you know, it’s causing a
lot of damage. Then the first party gets a lot of sediment in the pond or he’s
lost some of his streambed because it’s been eroded away,” he
says.
“In some places,
the problem is an accumulation of sediment; other times it’s actually causing
erosion,” says Spotts. “In reality, when you are converting land from one use to
another, the laws say you can continue to discharge the water volume but you may
not do it at a velocity that would cause problems to a downstream
neighbor.
“And when you
pave a whole parking lot for a shopping center and suddenly you have gone from
some infiltration to no infiltration, all that water is going to go racing off,
and inevitably that’s where we have these problems.”
Fifield advises
designers to remember for whom they are designing the
plans.
“It’s always for
the contractor,” he points out. “Too many times, we think we’ve got the best
plans in the world, but if the contractor doesn’t know what to do, it isn’t
going to get done in the right way.”
Despite the
weaknesses in the SWPPP process, Morrow believes designs are
improving.
“I am seeing more
of the better products and practices being used,” she says. “We’re starting to
get away from the hay bales and circling the site with silt fence, but we still
have a long way to go.”