Replace the Behind the Intent section with the following:
Conventional site development disrupts natural hydrological systems and watersheds through impervious surfaces, soil compaction, loss of vegetation, and loss of natural drainage patterns. The cumulative effect of these changes is disruption to the natural water balance and a loss of water resources. Typically, a conventional site’s rainwater management technique is to address runoff as a byproduct to be disposed of by piping and conveying it as quickly as possible into centralized, large facilities at the base of drainage areas. However, such a strategy, although intended to prevent flooding and promote efficient drainage, can harm watersheds: it increases the volume, temperature, peak flow, and duration of runoff, eroding streams reducing groundwater recharge and stream baseflow, and increasing the amount and types of pollutants discharged to surface waters.

The v4 credit addresses the management of both the quantity and quality of rainwater runoff. This is done through the required use of green infrastructure (GI) and low-impact development (LID) strategies, which improve upon the conventional approach by mimicking a site’s natural hydrology and managing water as close to the source as possible. Rainwater is treated as a resource rather than a waste product. The approaches and techniques in this credit involve minimizing disturbed areas on the project site, limiting the amount of impervious cover on a site, and then infiltrating, filtering, storing and reusing, evaporating, or detaining rainwater runoff at or close to its source. The approaches also focus on restoring or designing landscapes to function hydrologically more like the natural, undisturbed landscape of a given location.

This credit’s process is iterative in nature, which means that the project will need to conceptualize, calculate, and refine the design until the requirements are achieved to ensure that both the intent of the credit and the project’s goals are met. As such, the Step-by-Step Guidance is intended to be a guide only. The steps may need to be repeated or revisited throughout the design process. The rainwater management professional(s) may also have other steps that they typically follow to achieve the requirements.