Not very long ago the phrase stormwater management might have drawn blank faces if you were addressing a group of local government officials. Not so today. Indeed, in the eyes of many it has moved to the top of the agenda for many cities and counties in the United States, and in South Carolina. In the coming years, elected officials at the local government level will be grappling more and more with financing and managing stormwater improvements. But, the subject is interesting for more reasons than that. It also illustrates the complex nature of our intergovernmental system and how national, state and local government are interdependent in our contemporary society.

What exactly is stormwater runoff and stormwater management? Stormwater runoff is water running over land during and immediately after a rain storm. Management of stormwater refers to controlling the quantity of rainwater runoff, and resultant flooding, and the quality of water in our rivers, lakes, streams and even the ocean, which receive runoff. It is brought about by urbanization which results in the clearing of trees and grass and their replacement with hard, or impervious, surfaces, such as concrete, brick, asphalt, and rooftops. Now, when it rains, water does not seep into the ground as fast as it used to but runs over nonabsorbent surfaces and picks up in quantity and velocity. In short, the movement of water from clouds to earth and back again, or the hydrologic cycle, has been altered. Flooding and erosion often result.

FIGURE 1: THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE NOT INCLUDED ON THIS FILE

In recent years we have come to realize that more than just flooding, or the quantity of water, is a problem. The quality of our water may be degraded by stormwater runoff. This is because natural purification resulting from slow filtering of water through the ground may not occur. Impervious surfaces have pollutants on them, such as oil and other lubricants, pesticides, fertilizers and other elements that may be toxic. These may contaminate our rivers and lakes and make them unsafe for swimming, fishing and drinking. Thus, stormwater runoff is a major source of water pollution.

Stormwater management has traditionally been a local government responsibility. Today, however, both the federal and state government are intricately involved. In the following pages we will briefly trace the history of stormwater management and show how it has changed dramatically, and gotten more complex. We will also examine what modern stormwater management programs should look like. In the process we'll glimpse how two South Carolina local governments are dealing with this enormous challenge, and how a neighbor, Charlotte, North Carolina is gaining recognition for its efforts in this area. And, we will see how our state has moved to the forefront with a comprehensive state law which attempts to assist with a uniform, statewide approach to stormwater management and erosion control.

Until recently the primary concern with stormwater was to control the quantity of it and simply move it as fast as possible away from places where it could do damage. Unfortunately, even this was often not managed well, or was even mismanaged. Too often developers, and even governments, would construct stormwater facilities to simply handle their individual needs with little regard to how their discharge would affect areas downstream. To grasp this we must begin with a brief overview of what a drainage and flood control system looks like. One way to do this is to think of the system as composed of two subsystems: minor and major elements. The minor elements give us relief from frequent rainwater runoff which may be a nuisance and inconvenience. Typically minor elements in a system are such things as curbs, gutters, street inlets, underground culverts, ditches, channels and swales (a grassed depression) through which water can move. On-site storage and small detention facilities may also be parts of the minor element of a stormwater system.

Major elements of a system serve major flood needs. This would be things like creeks and rivers, lakes, ponds, marshes, estuaries and the ocean. They are evaluated in terms of fairly infrequent events, such as a hundred-year storm. (This has a one percent chance of occurring in any given year, a five-year storm has a 20 percent chance, and a two-year storm a 50 percent chance.) The major element is referred to as the receiving water component.

Traditionally local governments have been concerned about drainage for a number of reasons. It affects road and street design, construction standards, and maintenance costs for roads. Standing water on roads can be a safety hazard. Flooding can enter homes and damage property. And, of course, lives can be threatened of both people and pets.

In the past stormwater management facilities have not been as essential as other public works systems for urban development to occur. Thus, water, sewer systems, and roads, often received more emphasis from developers and government. Only after flooding occurred, with resulting hardship and inconvenience, was stormwater management recognized as an important feature of urbanization and regulatory control by government. The result is that in urban areas local governments today typically accept responsibility for preventing and solving drainage and flood control problems. Cities tend to be slightly ahead of counties in this role, in general, but many counties are rapidly catching up, and, in urban counties, may even be taking the lead over small towns.

Stormwater management, as most other challenges faced by government, requires planning if resources are to be used efficiently and effectively. To begin with, drainage basins, or watersheds, must be analyzed and planned on a basin-wide basis. This type of planning is often a mix of remedial and preventive initiatives.

Preventive planning. The basic idea of preventive planning is to prevent problems from occurring. Obviously this is best done in undeveloped flood plains, or when there is only limited development. Good preventive planning requires aggressive regulation of the flood plain by government to control where development occurs and in what fashion.

Remedial planning. When development has already occurred and flooding resulted, remedial planning occurs. Such planning is oriented toward problem solving. This does not always mean, however, that problems will be resolved. At times remedial measures may be advisable, which include such things as flood proofing structures, flood warning and evacuation plans, and even buying flood prone structures. On the other hand, structural measures may be called for, which include digging drainage channels or improving existing ones, building flood storage reservoirs, taking erosion and sedimentation control measures, checking dams and so forth.

Sub-basin, or minor system planning, is to provide relief from frequent storm runoff and reduce nuisances and inconveniences. As we said earlier, this usually means using such things as curbs, gutters, inlets, underground conduits, detention facilities, and ditches, etc.

Ideally, such planning should take place early in the development process. A variety of regulatory controls can be used by local governments to assist in implementing their plans. When this system works properly, local government reaps many benefits. Street maintenance costs are lower. Traffic management is easier. The public health is safer. And, the cost of open space can be less and park access increased.

But, many developed areas were built at a time when planning and regulatory controls were weaker than they are today, or nonexistent. This quickly brings home the benefit of early planning, because providing minor drainage system improvements in an already developed area is often costly and may even be controversial.

After an area develops, stormwater runoff is usually going to be greater than before building or paving occurred. Detention or retention of water runoff close to its source of origin has increasingly become a method of reducing the rate that water travels in minor drainage systems. Detention refers to temporarily holding water and slowly letting it go to reduce its rate of flow. Such facilities may be ponds, lakes modified or made by man, building rooftops, playgrounds and even parking lots. Retention is the permanent holding of water in lakes or ponds.

FIGURE 2: CHANGES IN RUNOFF DUE TO PAVED SURFACES NOT INCLUDED

Unfortunately, one can travel in many cities and suburbs today and find hundreds and even thousands of homes and businesses constructed in flood prone areas and not one detention or retention facility. The lack of planning in these cases results in considerable costs to future governments to correct problems, and/or loss of property due to flooding and lower property values. Needless to say considerable political pressure is usually brought by residents in such areas for their local government to do something to help them. Such demands often create conflict and become divisive in communities unaccustomed to fulfilling modern municipal functions, or who are inexperienced in dealing with relatively large public works projects from a financial and management standpoint.

There are other methods of controlling stormwater runoff and its effects besides retaining or detaining it. Some are aimed at reducing the magnitude of pollutants in the runoff water through physical containment of the water or restricting it to allow for the settling, filtration, percolation, chemical treatment or biological uptake of the pollutants. These typically require a lot of land and long term maintenance and may be costly. And, their focus is upon water quality. While the quantity of stormwater, or flooding, first got the federal government involved in stormwater runoff, it is the quality perspective that led to federal involvement in stormwater runoff as we find it today.

The federal government's interest in flood control initially was on the quantity aspect of flooding and reducing damage in urban areas. In 1968 the National Flood Insurance Program began. It required that flood maps be prepared by a national agency for local communities in order for them to participate in nationally subsidized flood insurance programs. Moreover, these communities had to show that they had certain policies and procedures in place to regulate building in flood plains. The effect of all this was that any community which had flood prone areas had to participate in the national program in order for its citizens to be able to buy flood insurance from any federally insured or regulated lending institution. Implementation of this program, however, took years. As late as 1979, for example, Lexington County had no flood maps for unincorporated areas.

In 1972 Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, popularly known as the Clean Water Act. It prohibited the discharge of pollution into navigable waterways unless authorized by a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As initially set up, the NPDES program focused almost exclusively on reducing pollutants from municipal sanitary sewage and industrial wastewater. This was because these were felt to be more responsible for poor water quality than other factors.

Thus, in 1976 the International City Management Association would say, regarding stormwater quality, that while it was obvious that stormwater contains pollutants, the effects on receiving waters were not obvious, and pollution from runoff was not adequately understood to make judgments about how to handle runoff from a quality standpoint. Recognizing the need for more information, the EPA collected data on runoff between 1978 and 1983 in a program called the Nationwide Urban Runoff Program in 28 cities across the nation. As a result of this study, and others, stormwater runoff was determined to be a serious source of water pollution.

In 1987 Congress passed the Water Quality Act which amended the 1972 Clean Water Act by adding a call for a phased approach to control pollutants by stormwater runoff. EPA issued final regulations in 1990, after almost two years of reviewing comments on the rules which covered more than 3,000 pages. The new EPA regulations for NPDES permits specify two types of stormwater permits: municipal (broadly defined to include counties as well) and industrial permits. Local governments obviously fall under the municipal permitting requirement, but interestingly also fall under the industrial permit process in one instance.

Municipal permits. EPA defines a municipal storm sewer system as streets, catch basins, curbs, gutters, ditches, man-made channels, or storm drains that discharge into U. S. waters. A city or a county is viewed as the operator of a stormwater system and is therefore liable for pollution flowing from that system, and may be fined for such pollution.

As initially issued, two types of municipal applications were specified in the NPDES permit regulations. One was for larger communities, over 250,000 in population, and the other was for smaller communities between 100,000 and 250,000. The difference, however, lay in deadlines for applications. Forty seven counties were identified nationally that had to submit municipal applications to EPA in either 1991, 1992, or 1993. Richland and Greenville Counties in South Carolina were in this group. No cities in our state are currently required to get a discharge permit, but this may change in the near future because EPA is expected to propose new regulations reducing the population size below 100,000 to determine when discharge permits would be required of stormwater sewer systems.

The primary focus on the municipal permitting requirements for storm sewer systems is water pollution, or the quality of our water supply. The EPA regulations require that operators of such systems monitor their discharge at the end of their storm sewer system both when it has rained and when it has not rained. If pollutants are found, operators must work their way up the storm sewer system to try to find the source of the pollution and correct it if possible. Obviously, this can be very expensive. Moreover, just monitoring discharges on a regular basis is expensive. Some estimates are that a local government could spend between $200,000 and $300,000 a year on monitoring!

The Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) in S. C. has been delegated the responsibility to oversee the EPA regulations regarding the NPDES permits for stormwater runoff. This is not the case in all states, however, and in some, like Florida, the EPA will directly handle this responsibility. The permitting process consists of two parts. In an over simplified fashion these can be characterized as follows: First, the applicant must identify their stormwater sewer system, where their runoff goes, how much they discharge and the nature of pollutants discharged, and how they control their discharges. Second, more specific information on the source of pollution from the stormwater system must be provided, levels of pollution in receiving waters determined, and proposals on how the operator will manage the problem to reduce pollution provided.

Industrial permits. The Industrial permitting portion of the NPDES regulatory process also falls under DHEC in S. C. Nine standard industrial codes are used to determine which types of industries are subject to permitting requirements in their stormwater discharge program. One of these is construction sites of five acres or more. Thus, any construction anywhere in S. C. which disturbs five acres or more of land must be permitted under the new stormwater runoff regulations. It is here that a new state program interrelates with DHEC and the NPDES permitting process. This is the S. C. Stormwater Management and Sediment Reduction Act.

Passed in 1991, the S. C. Stormwater Management and Sediment Reduction Act was drafted following careful examination of what other eastern seaboard states were doing regarding stormwater and sediment control. In particular, Florida, Delaware and Maryland's programs were studied and the best taken from each to compose a new, comprehensive law for S. C. Until then, the S .C. program was voluntary and completely under local government control in terms of standards applied in regulating stormwater runoff and erosion. The 1991 legislation is considered by many to be a model for comprehensive state oversight aimed at preventing stormwater flooding and erosion. Some planners, however, feel that the legislation should have given more emphasis to area-wide or regional planning.

The law was crafted in close consultation with the EPA regulators in order to dovetail with the federal and local role in preserving water quality. Indeed, EPA added a requirement in it's regulations that construction must comply with state and local government stormwater management and sediment control laws and regulations. South Carolina's law established statewide minimum standards for the first time in state history. Under the new law, the Land Resources Conservation Commission, or the Coastal Council in coastal counties, will review construction plans, do inspections and enforce stormwater and sediment control regulations on construction sites. Once the construction activity is permitted under the state program, the owner or operator will only have to submit a Notice of Intent to use the S. C. General Permit for Construction Activity and begin construction 48 hours later.

Land Resources, or the Coastal Council, however, will allow cities and counties to be the permitting authority if they prefer to assume this responsibility under a three-year delegation from the state agency. Program oversight will remain at the state agency level in order to assure that minimum standards are met statewide. The Land Resources program ties into separate storm sewer systems in that local governments have to develop plans to manage their storm sewer systems, and they have to decide how they will address new construction through pollution prevention plans. That's where construction and water quality monitoring fit together.

For those local governments who already have regulations that equal or exceed the new state standards, little added expense may result. For those who have done little in this regard in the past, however, costs will escalate for them. Moreover, the new regulations may point up a glaring failure in most local government stormwater programs--a lack of maintenance over the years of stormwater systems. If poor maintenance can be shown to contribute to a degrading of water quality, the thrust of the federal regulations, and even the state's as well, then corrective action may have to be taken. This can be expensive.

Local governments play a number of roles in stormwater management. These include planning, regulation, administration, financing and education. The federal and state roles may be best understood as regulatory in that they set policy that local governments are expected to comply with. And, in some cases either the federal or state government may actually act as the regulator, such as in water quality issues in some states, or in sediment control if a local government chooses not to regulate this in S. C. But, the federal and state governments do not bear the primary responsibility for regulation in overall stormwater control matters. Local governments do. And, they also must engage in the planning to regulate wisely and effectively, which means they may have to do more watershed planning than they have heretofore done. Clearly, they must administer the regulations they enact themselves, as well as the state minimum standards and federal regulations.

The problem for most local governments with stormwater management is that their maintenance programs thus far have been driven by complaints rather than scheduled on any rational basis. Enforcement and inspection of stormwater conveyances has been infrequent and also driven by complaints. Thus, a great deal of remedial maintenance needs to be done to deal with runoff problems and flooding, as well as to control water quality. While extensive estimates of costs are simply not available yet for South Carolina's local governments, the costs will clearly be enormous. Hence, financing and education will be some of the most important roles localities will play in this important concern. Therefore, we'll examine these two topics separately as issues in their own right.

Until recently, financing stormwater management at the local government level was discretionary. Although prudent and even advisable, one did not have to do it. And, even if one did something, there were no required minimum standards. This has changed now. Federal and state mandates now exist in law and regulation that require local governments to address the problem of stormwater pollution and flooding.

Two things are certain. First, local governments will have to pay at some point for the planning, design, infrastructure, operation and maintenance of stormwater systems. Some local governments will also have to pay for the permitting, inspection and testing processes. Second, the federal government will not be providing financial assistance, nor most likely will the State of South Carolina. Hence, the mandated activities will cost significant sums of money for most local governments.

Stormwater utility fees are gaining popularity as a way of financing stormwater management. Partly this is due to the fact that water and wastewater systems in most communities are already operated as a utility. Of course, there are other alternatives, such as: (1) using general fund revenues in a city or county; (2) using general obligation debt; (3) using some type of special assessment against benefited properties; or, (4) setting up a special taxing entity composed of benefited properties. For a number of reasons, few cities and counties seem to be using these, but prefer, instead, to establish a stormwater utility along with a fee.

The advantages of the utility approach are many. St. Petersburg, Florida categorized them neatly for us several years ago when they debated alternatives and selected the utility and fee approach. The fee is simpler to use, easy to implement, if properly done is more equitable to the fee payer, provides a stable source of revenue, funds operations and maintenance of stormwater management activities, provides capital funding, can relieve pressure on the property tax, has no effect on debt capacity, and is based on the cost of the service provided by the community.

  Questions government officials , and their citizens, are likely to ask when this topic is introduced include: What is a stormwater utility? How does the fee work? Why do we need it? And, what will I get for my money?

What is a stormwater utility? In its pure form, a stormwater utility is a program that provides for stormwater system operations and maintenance, including collection, disposal, and treatment. It also provides capital improvements to include new construction and reconstruction of existing structures and facilities. And, importantly, it provides a dedicated revenue source. The utility may be set up as a separate city or county organization, much like water and sewer operations today, or it can be assigned to an existing department.

How does the fee work? The fee is usually based on how much each property contributes to stormwater runoff due to the amount of hard surfaces on the property, and the cost of providing stormwater services in the community. There are different methods of calculating how the fee should be allocated, and they can be rather complex. Most utilities tend to use something called the Equivalent Residential Unit (ERU) which is based on the average impervious area of all residential units combined. Some, however, base their fee on single family units (SFU). The fee in Charlotte, N. C., for example, is $1.90 each month for single family homes with less than 2,000 square feet of hard surfaces, and $2.60 per month for those with more than 2,000 square feet of hard surfaces. Commercial and non-single family structures are charged the same amount per square foot that single family units pay, plus 48 cents a month to cover fixed costs. If they have runoff or water quality control devices, these properties may be eligible for credits on their fees. Fees are attached to monthly water and sewer bills, although the city's stormwater program is part of the city engineering department.

The City of Aiken, South Carolina was the first city in S. C. to adopt a stormwater utility fee. The fee is attached to the monthly water bill. It charges a single family unit under 10,000 square feet $2.10 per month, property between 10,000 square feet and one acre pays $2.80 per month, and one acre and above pays $3.50 per month. Multi-family units pay $2.10 per month. Commercial property fees are determined individually. Undeveloped and open land is not charged a fee. Owners of tax exempt property and governmental properties do pay the fee, unlike the property tax from which they are exempt.

Indeed, the ability to collect from tax exempt and governmental properties is one big advantage of the stormwater fee concept. Communities which have large amounts of property which pay no property tax would find the use of a utility fee quite advantageous as a way of paying for this costly program.

Why do we need a stormwater utility fee? The costs of stormwater management are high. Assuring good water quality and flood control are important activities that have been neglected in too many instances. But, they are also now under mandates from federal and state agencies that local governments must comply with. Thus, some method of financing has to be used. Many feel the fee idea is the fairest. It requires that all residents pay their share of this important program.

What will I get for my money? Most local governments can point to improved maintenance of existing stormwater systems, more frequent activities such as cleaning ditches and mowing, and more improvements being made to the overall stormwater system.

The questions raised above illustrate another important responsibility that local governments have in stormwater management: citizen education. If communities are going to successfully tackle the problem of stormwater mangement, they are going to have to educate their citizens about the federal stormwater quality regulations, permit, inspection and testing requirements, financing, and the community's plan for managing stormwater. Charlotte, N. C. has done just that and has attracted a lot of attention with its public education process. Although some modifications might be in order for other cities and counties, all can learn from looking at the Charlotte example.

Stormwater management is different from other public education programs. How so? First, it is dealing with new responsibilities for most local governments. The quality and quantity of stormwater has not been a large concern for many local governments to date. Certainly, they have not spent huge sums of money on it. Thus, citizens must be assisted in understanding this new role for local governments.

Second, putting together and carrying out a comprehensive stormwater program is more costly than many other traditional public works projects people are familiar with. And, funds are likely to come from different sources, such as a fee, rather than existing taxes or revenues, and particularly grants.

Third, if a fee is used, and since property owners and residents will pay it, they need to be convinced of the value of the fee and why it is preferable to alternative funding mechanisms.

Fourth, stormwater does not affect the public each day. Unlike other government services where people see exactly what they are getting for their money, like streets, fire protection, police protection, trash collection, and so forth, stormwater management is often not very visible. People must be aided in understanding how flooding problems affect property values and safety, and how pollution can affect us all.

Charlotte set up a four point program to educate its citizens. It began with an effort to define the issues, such as mandates requiring city actions, obvious problems needing correction, the value of the comprehensive approach to the problem, how the utility idea would work, and the value of preventive measures in the future. Citizens were surveyed to determine their level of awareness and to help the city staff better define the issues that needed to be addressed.

Specific objectives were set for the city's education program. Target groups were clearly identified. Input was solicited from concerned groups.

Resources were clearly identified, such as city staff and citizen task forces. Consultants were used as appropriate to provide technical expertise. And, public relations advice was sought.

Finally, specific activities and tasks were outlined and carried out. A logo and promotional material was prepared in a professional manner in order to develop a theme to help people identify with stormwater management as a problem government must confront. Surveys were conducted to keep regular tabs on public opinion. A phone hot line was used to answer citizen questions and concerns. Newsletters were produced. Material was provided to the news media to educate them. Op ed pieces were provided to newspapers. Slide shows were developed. Presentations were given to relevant interest groups, neighborhood groups were addressed, social events were sponsored, and public hearings held. In short, Charlotte launched a comprehensive effort to educate their citizens. Their effort provides lessons for others and examples of what can be done to inform citizens about public problems and build support for necessary government actions.

As we have clearly shown in this discussion, stormwater management means different things to different people, and has meant different things at different periods in recent history. To the local government administrator until now, it primarily meant dealing with flooding problems. To the state administrator it may have meant dealing with sediment and erosion control. To the state health agency and federal environmentalist it meant water quality control.

Today it has come to mean all three things with the new federal regulations, and state and local governments will be asked increasingly to engage in comprehensive stormwater management and control and to practice what are called Best Management Practices. The interdependency of governments in our federal system stands out in this issue dramatically. The problem can only be dealt with by concerted action by each level of government working together, hand in hand. And, the nature of our federal system as it exists in the 1990s is also illustrated by this issue. The national and state government regulate but increasingly do not contribute to the financing of their regulations as they mandate standards for local governments.

FIGURE 3: BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES NOT INCLUDED IN THIS FILE

Planning, financing and education about stormwater management will be at the top of many local government agendas in the 1990s and beyond. Fortunately, we have some good examples of how to do what needs to be done right here in S. C. and in our neighboring state to the north.

SIDEBAR

Source: Stormwater Management: A Guidebook for Floridians, Tallahassee, Florida: Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, n. d.

Stormwater mangement has been an issue in Aiken since the city was founded in 1835. Aiken sits on a hill, and water flows down through some of the older neighborhoods and newer subdivisions. City officials recognized up front that water has to go somewhere, and that they could not afford to wait for new grants or hope that the water would simply evaporate. Thus, the city staff looked at some of the systems in use in Florida and in the mid-west and recommended that the city adopt a stormwater management system.

The Aiken City Council adopted this system in May, 1992 and the city's first billing for each customer of the city was included in the July water bills. The city charges $2.80 per home, with a formula that also includes variations for large homes, larger lots, and businesses. The residents of Aiken support this program, and recognize that the only way to solve some of these problems is for the city to do this itself, without further delay.

The city was helped in this process with the adoption in South Carolina of the Stormwater Management Act, requiring all localities to adopt a stormwater management system. In Aiken, however, the city's officials wanted to be proactive on stormwater management and worked closely with the state's Land Resources Conservation Commission to develop a model system for South Carolina and other states of similar geography. The city has an aggressive system underway, and is well on the way to meeting the demands to control stormwater.

City officials in Aiken feel strongly that stormwater should be controlled, and that its residents should not have to put up with a flooded home or flooded streets from a normal rain shower. Certainly officials would have loved to have had a grant from the state or federal government to relieve them of this problem and responsibility, but they recognized that if these problems were going to be solved in a reasonable amount of time that the city would have to take the responsibility for stormwater management and control. And, it has!

SIDEBAR

Rapid suburban growth and lack of infrastructure standards for new road and storm drainage systems were part of the motivation that prompted Lexington County in the 1970s to equip itself to deal with problems previously thought to be "municipal" issues. In 1971, the county road commissioners (replaced by county council) adopted the county's first zoning ordinance, and perhaps even more important, subdivision regulations. The first actions of the county council which took office in 1972 included hiring a County Engineer. By 1973 the county had adopted the first Sediment Control Ordinance in the State of South Carolina, and had hired a full time soil conservationist to implement the standards of the ordinance--something only Lexington County did for many years.

In the late 1970s the county began to realize that the new Federal Flood Insurance Program, with all its advantages, would provide counties with little mapping beyond the existing developed areas. Knowing that storm drainage planning must focus strongly on the undeveloped areas, Lexington's county council adopted its own flood management and storm drainage regulations in 1979. Some of the more important provisions of that ordinance are:

As elementary as some of these decisions seem today, they were probably of equal importance to the county as the very sophisticated planning that is being done today. All of the major flooding problems in the county were created prior to 1980.

In the early years the county touted the ease of predicting storm drainage over the more difficult task of forecasting traffic volumes (in part because water does flow downhill!). The 1980s brought new technologies that demonstrated that storm water behaves in a much more complex manner than previous concepts had acknowledged. Basin-wide planning became essential to stormwater control. Planners learned that the timing of water flow is an important part of forecasting the quantity of flow.

With some help from the University of South Carolina, Lexington County's in-house engineering staff is now very active in the prediction of drainage of flows and the development of solutions to existing problems. Activities currently underway, and some of the technologies being utilized, include:

Just as basin-wide modeling brings about more accurate forecasting, it also creates a list of new issues. The impact of new development in a basin is no longer uniform, but may vary greatly depending on location. Lexington County is now having to pursue more innovative ways to distribute the responsibility. Basins also do not recognize political boundaries, therefore teamwork among adjoining cities and counties becomes a vital part of the process. Lexington County has been fortunate in having excellent cooperation from area governments located upstream of most of the important problem watersheds.

What is in the future for Lexington County? Water quality and pure aesthetics call for preservation of as many of the natural drainage conditions as possible, or the stream beds, wetlands and flood plains. Planning for quantity alone, which sometimes produces manmade channelization, has proven to be shortsighted. Thus, as new ideas come along, many of them will probably be tested in Lexington County.

Tyer, Charlie B. "Stormwater Management: Moving to the Top of the Agenda," The South Carolina Policy Forum Magazine, Vol. 4, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 6-23.