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Storm Water
The state of Wisconsin has experienced a record-breaking amount of precipitation over the last decade, resulting in billions of dollars in flood damage to homes, businesses, and public infrastructure. Fortunately, there are resources available and steps you can take to prepare for increasingly severe weather and minimize your municipality’s risk of flood damage.
The amount and type of precipitation we experience on a daily or yearly basis can dramatically impact our lives and communities, and the consensus among experts is that the distribution of the world’s rainfall is shifting as our climate changes. Keep reading to learn how your community can prepare for changing precipitation.
Proper maintenance of storm water BMPs is necessary to ensure that these systems function properly and continue to protect our communities’ lakes, streams, and drinking water. Keep reading for helpful tips on how to preserve the life and effectiveness of your storm water BMPs.
Urban trees are showing more promise from a storm water perspective than ever before. Trees absorb water from soil and transpire it to the atmosphere, reducing the amount of rainwater that flows untreated into storm sewers and ultimately to local lakes and rivers.
As the City of Kenosha embarked on a comprehensive analysis of their storm water infrastructure from both flood control and water quality perspectives, the City was hit with back-to-back intense rainfall events in July of 2017 that resulted in significant local and regional flooding. The immediate public health and safety concerns tied to this flooding event doubled down the City’s efforts to simultaneously develop a long-term plan for the future, while also quickly addressing some of the most pressing concerns.
MS4. TMDL. NPDES. These acronyms (and many more) can sometimes make complying with municipal storm water regulations seem like an exercise in alphabet soup more than anything else. A variety of recent advances in ways of thinking and technology can simplify regulatory compliance.
The City of Oconomowoc, with assistance from R/M, constructed joint parking lots with vegetated parking lot islands to allow storm water to flow across the lot and into bioretention areas.
Per the National Weather Service, April 2017 was the ninth wettest April on record for the Chicagoland area. This much rain will always reveal urban flooding issues that face our municipalities, but it's not just major flooding events that are an issue. As the economy rebounds, many communities are experiencing significant increases in redevelopment activity. L
