ASK THE EXPERTS

Brandon C. Vatter, PE

Senior Project Manager, Hatch Mott MacDonald

Brandon Vatter is a senior project manager and watershed/wet weather technology expert for Hatch Mott MacDonald in the Cincinnati, Ohio, office. A registered professional engineer with more than 16 years of experience, Brandon has been involved in all aspects of collection system and wet weather modeling, planning, and design. He has directed the planning and design of multiple green and gray infrastructure projects within the combined and separate sewer systems to reduce overflow volume and stormwater runoff by addressing stormwater at its source. Brandon’s work focuses on affordable water quality—integrated watershed management to obtain the optimum public investment to improve water quality. Brandon is currently helping several utilities implement integrated watershed planning based on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA’s) Integrated Planning Framework. Brandon’s work also includes regulatory risk advisement to more cost-effectively and efficiently implement pollution abatement programs to minimize impacts to sewer rates and improve efficiency and lower costs within a utility. Previously, Brandon was the director of planning and design for Sanitation District No. 1 (SD1) of Northern Kentucky. He was one of the main architects of SD1’s innovative watershed plans, which combine gray, green, and watershed-based controls to comply with the Clean Water Act and balance affordability with measurable water quality improvement. This watershed-based approach was designed to save the ratepayers of SD1 nearly $2 billion compared to a traditional combined sewer overflow (CSO) and sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) approach. Brandon has a BS in civil engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

Q: Please tell us a bit about the watersheds where you have worked (geographical location).

A: In the last few years, I have worked primarily in northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. These watersheds drain to the Ohio River and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. The urban and suburban watersheds where I work have impervious cover that ranges from approximately 70% to 100%. Most waterways in these areas are listed on USEPA’s Clean Water Act Section 303(d) list as a result of this dense urban development; the existing CSOs, SSOs, stormwater runoff, industrial discharges, and dry weather pollution (i.e., illicit discharges) are causing water quality impairments.

Q: How does your organization define green infrastructure?

A: Green infrastructure (GI) uses innovative engineered systems to mimic the natural hydrologic cycle and treat stormwater where it falls to renew the resource rather than create a nuisance. GI can provide triple-bottom-line benefits to include water quality improvements as well as economic and social benefits. However, GI is simply one tool in the water quality management toolbox used to develop integrated watershed plans to address urban, rural, and agricultural pollution in our watersheds.

Q: What is your experience with GI, and what reasons or decision-making processes were behind the adoption of this approach to address CSOs, whether throughout the region/area or for a specific project?

A: From my experience, I learned from utilities that had already addressed wet weather consent decrees that building larger tanks and conveying and treating more flow at the wastewater treatment plant required significant capital investment, but typically did little to improve instream water quality because other pollution sources were left uncontrolled. Therefore, a watershed-based approach to address the multiple pollutant sources is needed. If your approach starts at the stream and works back to the pollution sources causing the streams not to meet water quality standards—including stormwater discharges, dry weather sources, overflows, and even habitat issues—then a holistic and more affordable pollution abatement program can be developed. An integrated watershed-based approach using a balance of green, gray, and watershed-based controls to abate the various pollution sources in context with one another can be more cost-effective and provide significantly more instream water quality improvement and public health protection than a traditional convey-and-treat CSO/SSO approach. The bottom line is: stormwater causes sewer overflows. We don’t have CSOs or stormwater discharges when it is not raining. Dealing with the root cause of the problem, stormwater, is a key to success.

Q: Does the adoption of a GI approach to address CSOs result in regulatory issues that differ from those associated with more conventional or traditional engineering solutions to address CSOs?

A: Traditional approaches focus on the quantity of flow controlled. Instead, we should focus our efforts on instream water quality improvement through an integrated watershed management approach. This focus gets us right to the heart of Clean Water Act regulatory compliance—our waterways meeting water quality standards. For each GI project, the goal should be to measurably improve instream water quality. Stormwater volume managed or CSO reduction is a design criterion, but the goal of either a GI approach or a traditional solution should be measurable improvement to instream water quality. When we begin to think of GI projects and traditional solutions in terms of instream water quality improvements, then we can begin to develop an affordable and integrated combination of green, gray, and watershed-based controls to maximize water quality and public health improvements at the lowest cost.

Q: Can you identify a few key challenges that you have encountered in implementing GI?

A: GI is an institutional change from the “normal” convey-and-treat approach of a sewer utility, and not everyone is comfortable implementing and maintaining GI yet. In addition, demonstration projects to date do not definitively show that GI can achieve similar “consistent” benefits. Stormwater sources originate in urban settings, where space and logistics often make it a challenge to install infrastructure to manage the necessary stormwater runoff volume. The third issue is that GI typically involves more public exposure and involvement, which requires more intensive community outreach to those who live and work in the area where we want to implement GI. A utility’s commitment to public outreach is necessary to achieve a partnership with the public that, in many cases, is essential for proper operation and maintenance of the GI. A fourth challenge for implementing GI is that GI requires a paradigm shift in utility thinking on maintenance and often requires learning new maintenance techniques. Some utilities are uncomfortable maintaining GI; we know how to maintain sewers, but not GI. However, if you talk to a sewer dig-up crew they would likely rather pull weeds and install plants versus stand in sewage and fix a broken sewer pipe. A fifth challenge for GI is understanding that it is a tool in the toolbox to manage water pollution, but it is effective only if designed with clear performance goals. Identifying measurable and achievable water quantity and water quality performance goals at the onset of a project and knowing how they will be measured post-construction is a key challenge to address. Documented performance and familiarity with the long-term operation and maintenance of GI will establish the utility’s confidence to meet all of these challenges.

Q: Beyond the goal of using GI to address pollutant loadings in receiving waters, in your experience, what other community/social or economic benefits resulted from using GI?

A: Beyond cost savings compared to traditional gray infrastructure, GI can also provide job creation, neighborhood beautification and recreation, carbon footprint reduction, economic redevelopment, energy savings, offsets to climate change, air quality improvements, property value increases, habitat restoration, and urban heat island reduction. GI can also help reduce overland flooding, basement sewer backups, and impacts from more frequent storm events. GI offers a triple bottom line with benefits that can exceed those of traditional gray infrastructure projects.

Q: What programs or assistance are available to advance the use of GI, and what criteria are used to determine what type of solution is most appropriate? Which assistance needs are being met, and which are not? Is the information getting to the practitioners?

A: The Water Environment Federation (WEF) is developing a GI implementation publication that will be available in 2014 and will provide a comprehensive reference to implement GI. WEF has solicited input for the publication from more than a dozen national experts. The publication will provide a basis for the selection of GI solutions, such as performance goals; existing site features and constraints (utilities, grading, and drainage areas); watershed target pollutants to remove; and the level of community involvement and acceptance. Based on my experience, folks who are implementing GI approaches should talk with other utilities with GI implementation experience for their feedback and lessons learned. Many times, utility folks have learned by doing which design details work and which design details do not work. For example, a common question asked is what to do if waterlines or sewer laterals are in the way of the excavation needed for the GI feature. The answer to this question can be best obtained by talking to others in the field who have encountered this issue and constructed these installations.

Before GI implementation, make sure to develop specific measurable performance goals that go beyond just capturing the first inch of runoff. For example, at the project level, we want to see that the GI system functions as designed, achieves the estimated stormwater reduction and pollutant load reduction, achieves the CSO volume reduction that we estimated during design, and has operation and maintenance costs that match what were expected. At a watershed scale, we check that GI is functioning with the other pollutant source controls to achieve the instream water quality improvements that we projected. We also want to confirm that the GI achieves the social and economic benefits that we estimated through the triple-bottom-line analysis.

Once these measurable goals are established, one should develop a cost-effective yet appropriate post-construction monitoring program to verify that the performance goals are met. Just because GI is installed does not necessarily mean that a CSO volume reduction or water quality improvement will be achieved. These two key points tend to get lost, and without them you may not reach your overall regulatory goals.

Q: Can you share a “success story”? If so, who was involved (e.g., organizations, volunteers, or researchers)?

A: In Philadelphia, our firm has experienced the community embracing GI projects across the city while working with the Water Department. This program has included community involvement in design, landscaping, and maintenance activities. Also, property owners have added to the program by installing rain barrels and stormwater planters. Through this process, the residents embraced GI and the community benefits that result.

At SD1, one of my keys to success was personalizing the problem—getting the ratepayers to understand that we as a society created this water pollution problem and it will take involvement from all of us in order to fix the problem. This is not a utility problem, but a community problem. I like to say, “Had we known back then what we know now, we would have done things differently so we would not be facing this water pollution problem today.” This type of approach garnered community support for the watershed-based approach as well as for the implementation of individual, private-property GI projects. I recall that before one public meeting started, one of the more vocal property owners whispered in my colleague’s ear that “we were in for a lot of public resistance tonight.” We completed our “personalizing the problem” presentation and then answered several questions about the presentation from the audience. After that point, the “public resistance” we were promised changed to one of collaboration and working together. Comments went from “not on my property” to “how can I save my landscaping when my downspout is disconnected?”

Q: Based on your experience with GI, what research or other work (e.g., coordination or programs) is still needed for its effective watershed management application?

A: GI water quantity and water quality performance effectiveness data are available, but the datasets in many cases are limited, so more work to confirm GI’s effectiveness needs to be done. GI can be an effective tool to improve water quality; however, GI does not typically address all of the pollutant sources in a watershed. In order to develop effective watershed management, we need to understand the full range of pollutant sources so as to optimize affordable green, gray, and watershed-based controls to maximize water quality and public health improvements. Various universities, including the University of New Hampshire and Villanova University, have active GI research and development programs. The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF)/USEPA/American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) international best management practice (BMP) database is an updated resource for available GI performance data. However, you will notice upon review that the amount of GI performance data for various BMPs is still limited in the database. Before using GI in a watershed, we recommend that the planned BMP types be pilot tested to confirm both water quantity and water quality performance goals based on local conditions. If GI is to be used to address CSOs or to reduce pollutant loading by managing stormwater runoff, pilot testing that confirms GI effectiveness is critical to a successful program. Implementing GI on a wide scale without proper pilot testing can result in a pollutant control program that does not meet its goals and costs a community more money in the long run. Once pilot testing confirms GI effectiveness, simply installing GI with the intent that it will perform as desired is not sufficient. An ongoing GI post-construction monitoring program to confirm consistent and reliable performance is needed. This GI monitoring program should be incorporated into the overall watershed water quality compliance monitoring program.

Suggested resources

WERF/USEPA/ASCE International Stormwater BMP Database www.bmpdatabase.org

University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center http://www.unh.edu/unhsc/

USEPA Economic Incentives for Stormwater Control http://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?dirEntryId=235389

Villanova University Urban Stormwater Partnership http://www3.villanova.edu/vusp/