Opinions Sustainability Blog Why Business Should Care About Stormwater
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By Daniel Schoonmaker
Director of Member Services
West Michigan Environmental Action Council
If asked to name the municipal functions most important to quality of life and economic development in West Michigan, how far down the list would you put stormwater management?
More than likely, you’re going to put police and fire at the top, along with snow removal, water treatment and road maintenance — basic safety and infrastructure. Depending on your perspective, maybe you have the building inspector or mass transit on that list, maybe parks and recreation or economic development.
Is stormwater management on that list? It should be.
Although generally one of the least recognized municipal functions, it is also one of the most critical. To talk about stormwater management is to talk about flooding, erosion and water pollution. And we’re not talking about it nearly enough.
Contaminated rain and stormwater is the leading source of water pollution in West Michigan. In a community such as Grand Rapids, it takes just 15 to 30 minutes for stormwater runoff to reach the Grand River or a comparable waterway, and from there it’s off to Lake Michigan, with whatever pollutants it may have picked up along the way. Stormwater runoff is also the leading source of thermal pollution in our lakes and rivers, a constant threat to our local fisheries.
Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell often cites how proud the city is to have eliminated 99.7 percent of the 12.6 billion gallons of combined sewer overflow it once discharged into the Grand River each year. This was a stormwater management problem; excess precipitation was overflowing the city’s wastewater system.
From a public safety perspective, the primary reason for having any stormwater infrastructure is to protect our personal property and neighborhoods from flooding. During and after a large storm event, stormwater management is basically emergency response.
If you’ve had experience with flooding or problems with erosion, perhaps you did have stormwater management on your list. For most people, it is only discussed when something goes wrong. And we can expect people to have a lot more reasons to talk about it in the future unless there are some fundamental changes within the municipal budgets to maintain and improve stormwater infrastructure.
Looking at Grand Rapids specifically, funding for stormwater management is not currently sufficient to even maintain the status quo. Of the 60 flooded streets and plugged basins that occurred during a recent storm event, 85 percent of those would have been prevented through basic maintenance.
In the coming years, the revenue sources used to fund the activity face significant reduction and some could even face elimination. With expenditures already as-needed and often complaint-based, the funding situation will make it harder for the city to protect its residents and their property. It will make it incredibly difficult for our city to take additional steps to protect the water resources, which have proven such vital assets to our community.
To make financial matters worse, some of these improvements could soon be mandated by new federal regulations similar to the ones that required the city to invest over $300 million to address its combined sewer overflow problem over the past 20 years. It will be necessary for the city of Grand Rapids and similar municipalities to make some new investments, regardless of whether it has the funding to do so.
So now we have an opportunity. We can continue on a course of debt spending that satisfies the minimum requirements of the law, or we can take steps toward establishing a model stormwater management system that matches the expectation of our community as one of the most sustainability minded on the planet.
Throughout history, our communities have not managed stormwater in the most efficient or environmentally responsible manner. Both capital and maintenance costs can be dramatically reduced through the use of low impact development strategies and green infrastructure, essentially allowing stormwater to be managed onsite, reducing or eliminating the need to drain it into our lakes and rivers. Case studies have shown that LID techniques (eg: pervious pavement, rain gardens, managed wetlands) are 80 percent more cost effective than conventional strategies. And obviously, such strategies have tremendous environmental benefits, greatly reducing water pollution in West Michigan.
If given incentive and opportunity, individual property owners could take the lead in such a transformation. Associating a portion of stormwater management costs with property owners and users creates an opportunity for innovative, proportional, and tailored onsite stormwater management solutions.
With a user-based incentive, it becomes even more advantageous for a property owner to employ low-impact development techniques. What exactly that looks like remains to be determined, but we’re hopeful that our community can move in that direction.
The West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum will host a discussion of this topic at its monthly luncheon meeting on Dec. 12, from noon to 2 p.m., at the Grand Rapids Wastewater Treatment Plant, 1300 Market Ave. SW.
In addition, the Tools & Resources Committee will present an update on the Community Pollution Prevention Grant recently awarded by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to the WMSBF for our West Michigan Sustainability Assessment Tools and Resources Initiative.
Guests are welcome. Cost is $10. For reservations and more information visit www.wmsbf.org or contact Lisa Locke at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .