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PARTICIPATORY STORM WATER MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY – WHAT ARE THE CONNECTIONS?
Citation:
SHUSTER, W. D., H. W. THURSTON, A. ROY, M. A. MORRISON, AND M. CLAGETT. PARTICIPATORY STORM WATER MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY – WHAT ARE THE CONNECTIONS? Presented at Ecological Landscaping, Cleveland, OH, October 28 - 31, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Urban stormwater is typically conveyed to centralized infrastructure, and there is great potential for reducing stormwater runoff quantity through decentralization. For areas which are already developed, decentralization of stormwater management involves private property and possible liabilities, so that management techniques must be applied in a way that is both acceptable to landowners and effective in terms of accrued environmental benefits. The question of how to implement rain garden and rain barrel BMPs into private properties is addressed in a 1.8 km2 urban watershed near Cincinnati, OH with a comprehensive monitoring program gathering watershed data before and after BMPs are installed. A reverse auction, where residents voluntarily bid on BMPs, was held in spring 2007. The bid is taken as the willingness-to-accept cost to EPA, and successful bids were selected on the basis of cost and potential environmental effectiveness; BMPs were then installed at no cost to the landowner and will be maintained for a period of three years. About 25% of the residents submitted bids for the BMPs, with slightly more bids for rain barrels than rain gardens. Approximately two-thirds of the bids were for zero dollars, indicating that a no-cost BMP provided sufficient enough incentive to encourage residents to participate in decentralization of municipal stormwater management. We focus on implications of this approach for the effectiveness and sustainability of retrofit urban stormwater management at the watershed level.
