Environmental Site Design (ESD) Presentation

Our friends at Hord | Coplan | Macht kindly extended an invitation to present an overview of the forthcoming regulations and design guidance in Maryland that requires the application of Environmental Site Design (ESD) on all projects. This is a turning point for stormwater design and represents a significant change in how sites will be designed in Maryland.

Overlooking the Baltimore Harbor on a rainy day – no better place or time to talk about stormwater management! Many HCM clients and staff attended – it was a very productive couple of hours. Check out the presentation:

We are already working on projects under these new regulations, which will go into effect in May, 2010.

Contact us here if you’d like to have a group that would be interested in having us present this information.

Maintenance Obligations

Many owners or property managers wonder what their maintenance responsibilities are and how they can be enforced by the regulatory authorities.  We happened upon this maintenance agreement on EPA’s website that is a “typical” maintenance agreement.  These agreements usually run with the land and allow the municipality to maintain or repair the facility if he owner refuses – often then having the power to assess the costs as an addition to the owners anual property tax.

Take a look at the sample agreement  here:

D2b-Ablemarle.pdf (application/pdf Object).

SWM Facility Embankment Repair – Barrel Relining

One of the exciting aspects of working in stormwater is coming up with unique ways to solve repair problems. At this site, the existing outfall pipe was corroding causing water to erode the soil along the outside of the pipe, a condition known as piping. Eventually, it caused a sinkhole that was visible from the surface. This condition can lead to a failure of the embankment with catastrophic results. Check out this video of a failure.

Positioning the new lining

Rather than dealing with the high cost and disturbance of replacing the entire pipe, we lined the corroding corrugated metal pipe (CMP) with a smooth walled HDPE pipe. The pipe we used was Snap-Tite manufactured by ISCO Industries. Made specifically for this purpose, this pipe actually improved the hydraulic performance of the barrel while significantly extending the lifecycle of the structure. The void between the two pipes was pumped with grout. Of course, the sinkhole was also repaired with compacted clay.

With our design/build approach, we reduced the owner’s cost significantly while accelerating the schedule.

StormCon 2008 LID Site Design Presentation

This paper and presentation explores whether Low Impact Development (LID), as originally contemplated (duplicating existing site hydrology), is really a practical solution.  We used this same example in a national workshop series in 2006.

Managing Stormwater Management Presentation

This presentation is geared for property and facility managers who would like to learn more about managing stormwater infrastructure.