Best Practices

Stormwater quality control systems require a maintenance plan for proper functioning. Ideally this is developed by the civil engineer shortly after design completion.

Stormwater storage and biofiltration can be incorporated into landscape features and can also include educational elements for occupant and community benefits.

Soil type, planting medium and plant species must be considered for their capacity to promote infiltration.

Consider contouring the land to direct stormwater to planting beds to reduce irrigation needs of potable water in locations where stormwater capture and reuse is not allowed.

Treating captured stormwater to the quality standards required for this credit provides the potential for a clean water source for irrigation or toilet flushing, and a further reduction of the burden on municipal treatment facilities.

The stormwater design should reflect unique site features, attempt to minimize impacts on natural stormwater hydrology, and promote infiltration and treatment of stormwater runoff.

You must design any BMPs to local standards that have adopted an 80% TSS removal rate criterion, or use existing data that has monitored the

Find TSS removal rate data in state or local best management practice manuals.

The civil engineer can conduct a cost-benefit analysis of stormwater-reduction strategies, including cisterns, porous pavement, rain gardens, parking garages (instead of parking lots), detention ponds, green roofs, sand filters, or detention tanks. Some of these strategies may be perceived as added costs, but this analysis may show that with reduced infrastructure, these environmental strategies are cost-neutral, or better.

Use an integrated design strategy to improve the quality of stormwater runoff. True integration requires the input and collaboration of the entire site team, including the civil engineer, landscape architect and architect. Don’t leave stormwater management solely in the hands of the civil engineer.