It seems obvious that trees impact our communities in a beneficial way by providing shade and lowering temperature, absorbing carbon dioxide, and intercepting and absorbing rainfall. But quantifying these benefits can be challenging. Fortunately the USDA Forest Service “provides urban and rural forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools” that can help us. The USDA developed…
Tag: stormwater
Who Should Pay for Clean Water?
There's been an ongoing legal dispute in Iowa between the Des Moines Water Works (DMWW) and drainage districts in three Iowa counties to decide who should pay the price to clean up polluted water. It's an interesting case for those of us who are involved in stormwater regulation and water treatment. And it is one…
Proposed New Rule to Extend Army Corps Jurisdiction and Oversight?
According to a recently released Latham & Watkins Client Alert Commentary, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) jointly released a proposed rule on March 25, 2014, which would represent the most sweeping change in a generation to the rules governing federal Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction. Based…
WATERCON2014
This year I am fortunate to again have the opportunity to attend WATERCON in Springfield, Ill.It's amazing how every year the conference offers so many great sessions, and the exhibitors always have such interesting displays and information. In addition to attending sessions and talking with vendors, I'll be posting as much as I can on several…
Infographic of the Month – March 2014 (FEMA Flood Maps!)
This month's infographic comes from FEMA – our friendly folks who work to keep us safe and help us when there's a disaster. One of FEMA's tasks is to develop flood maps which show us where flooding is most likely to occur. There's a lot that goes into determining flood boundaries and making these maps…
Quick Stormwater Regulation Update in Illinois
Just wanted to post a few quick thoughts/information about the status of the recent efforts to impose additional stormwater regulations throughout Illinois. Currently the task force we wrote about last year (Illinois Considers New Stormwater Regulations) is still meeting to discuss the comments they received. They have been working on addressing and looking into the issues…
Try Out Our Stormwater Beta Class!
If you ask public works professionals what are the most common concerns or issues they handle in their community, you will probably hear stormwater or flooding mentioned. So when we thought about developing online courses related to public works, we decided to begin by creating one about this topic. The entire course is still in development, but we have…
WATERCON 2013 – Day 3
And here we are already at the third full day of the conference. Today I started out in the exhibit hall talking to folks as they walked by the booth where we had a display of the #watercon Tweets. But I didn't have much time to chat before having to run off to the Mission Impossible…
Watercon 2013 – Day 2
On the second day of Watercon, I alternated between attending sessions and visiting with exhibitors. Because of access to an outlet, I was only able to live blog a few of the sessions. The links to those are below: Ice Pigging: Cleaning Mains with Ice – I first heard of this technique from a co-worker and…
WATERCON 2013 – Day 1
Yesterday was the opening day of WATERCON 2013 in Springfield, Ill. – a four-day event focusing on all things water in Illinois. We were told yesterday at the business meeting that 1,400 people had registered for the conference; this number was 10% over last year's registration. It's not surprising the number is growing – the…