For Sustainable Site Credit 6.2, LEED refers to the US EPA stormwater best management practices, and also recognizes other programs such as at the state level. The US EPA document recognizes state programs as well. Due to the more established design criteria described in the NCDENR (North Carolina) stormwater best management practices design guide, and our familiarity with the NC program, we plan to use the NC program for determining design requirements for a wet pond, which is pre-qualified by the state program to eliminate 85% of TSS (LEED requirement is 80%). We (the engineering firm) are located in North Carolina, but our project is in Central America, and there are no developed programs or design guidelines for TSS removal where our project is located. When the site soils information is available, we will select a comparable design criteria from the NC design guide in terms of applicable soil qualities (water infiltration and suspended particle attributes), and use the appropriate NCDENR method to design the wet pond. Is this an acceptable path to obtaining Sustainable Site Credit 6.2 for our situation?
The proposed path of using a qualified best management practice design guideline in combination with local soils information is acceptable for this credit, given that no local design standards exist for this purpose. The description provided does not mention use of local rainfall data, but clearly the sizing of the wet pond should also be based on local rainfall as opposed to assumptions for North Carolina. Applicable Internationally.