Rivanna River Basin Commission Annual Conference   9/24/2021

Wonderful.

All right.

Well, I guess that's our cue at five after.

Very good.

Thank you everyone for coming today.

My name is Ann Mallek.

I represent the Whitehall District where the Mormons and Meacham's Rivers and South Fork Rivanna rise for the watershed and begin our Rivanna

Waterbody, and I'm very glad to have so many of you here today.

Dominique has put together a wonderful program for us, lots of good information.

And before we jump to that, I would just like to welcome all of our people, but also to announce who our board members are.

Some of them will be here today and some are not able to be, but Bea LaPisto-Kirtley represents the Rivanna District.

She's here, my colleague from Albemarle.

And we are seeking a citizen appointee

So we will have that spot open for the city of Charlottesville.

Michael Payne and Heather Hill are the city councilors.

And then Jason Halbert is their appointed citizen.

For Fluvanna County, home of our founder, Marvin Moss, then we also were represented by two supervisors there, Mozell Booker and Tony O'Brien.

In Greene County, Supervisor Dale Herring and Supervisor Bill Martin are on our board and Dale is here today, thank you very much.

And you all are still seeking a citizen as well.

The Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District is represented by Steve Morris and our Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District is represented by Lonnie Murray.

And we're very happy to have them so close where we can pounce on them at any moment to get information as we go along.

So,

We have three great presentations today.

Good afternoon, everyone.

For those who have yet to meet, my name is Dominique Lavorata.

I'm a planner and legislative aide with the PDC.

We also have Sandy Shackelford on this call.

She's our director of planning, and she's going to be assisting me on a brief presentation on some of our corridor plans.

But just starting off, we have a nice chunk of time dedicated to

Laura Cattell-Mull, she's from the Alliance for the Bay and she has some partners from DEQ as well as Michelle Edwards here to discuss and do a presentation on a local government guide to the Chesapeake Bay, which is essentially a series or suite or module of resources for increasing the knowledge and capacity of local officials with water related issues.

So without further ado, I will let

Laura, go ahead and share her screen and do whatever it is she needs to do for her presentation.

And just as a reminder, just keep ourselves on mute so we don't have any background noise.

Yeah, thank you all for having me here today.

Again, my name is Laura Kittel Noll.

I work with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.

I'm going to be sharing some slides in a minute, but I just thought I'd start a little more conversationally here.

So I won't go too deep into the weeds, but I coordinate the local leadership work group within the Chesapeake Bay program.

So we work watershed wide.

And our work group is really laser focused on helping local officials quickly get up to speed on watershed issues.

We know that you are asked every day to make decisions that impact drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, and we want to make sure you have the baseline level of knowledge and capacity to make those decisions.

that are right for your communities.

And we've heard a need throughout the watershed for educational materials for local officials.

So you can get quickly up to speed.

I'm reminded of a council member up in Pennsylvania who said he didn't realize how much of his job was about stormwater when he signed on.

And he didn't even know what MS4 was when he became a council member.

As was shared earlier, Michelle Edwards this year from the Rappahannock Rapid MPDC, as well as two of our partners from DEQ, Drew Hammond and Justin Williams.

Hopefully that's in slideshow view now so you don't see the, it's like a full screen, okay.

Great.

So I'm here to talk about this product that our work group, the local leadership work group has created, which is that quick guide to watershed issues for local elected officials.

It's called a local government guide to the Chesapeake Bay.

Again, this is all about helping local officials make the decisions that are right for their community.

So for the local officials on the call, this could be a resource that you could use or that you could share with your fellow elected officials.

For the folks that are staff on this call, we envision this as a product that you could use when you're talking to your local officials about watershed issues.

So these are PowerPoint slides.

We'll make sure you all get the link to them.

But these are non-branded, editable materials that you can download.

They're easily digestible.

Again, it's only 30 slides for each of these modules.

So it's supposed to be easy for you to just quickly go through these and quickly get up to speed on these issues.

We talk about all the clean water issues through the lenses of economic development, public health, and safety.

infrastructure maintenance and finance and education, because we've heard time and time again, that's what local officials are focused on.

So how can our clean water work?

How does it intersect with these issues?

And how can we make sure we're getting the strongest co-benefits for our communities?

So there are seven module topics.

Two of the topics you won't see are climate change or equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice.

And that's because we built those through all seven of the modules.

Those are cross-cutting issues, so we didn't want them to be siloed in their own module.

So each of them have a call-out that talks about the climate connection.

The first module is how your watershed works.

It's just a really basic, what is the water cycle?

What is a watershed?

And how does it intersect with these issues that local officials make decisions about every day?

Module 2, Foundations of Clean Water, that's just an overview of the laws and agreements that are relevant to local governments.

You know, what is the Clean Water Act?

What does MS4 stand for?

The baseline level of information.

The next modules are really topical.

The third module is all about economic development and how clean water is essential for our economy.

For the Virginia, and I know you all are from the Blue Ridge area and I know that breweries are big in your region.

So that's actually something we talk about in this module because breweries choose where to locate based on the clean water.

That's an essential component of making beer.

So it's an interesting angle to think about clean water.

Module four is all about trees, tree canopy, forest buffers, forest conservation, how trees can bring value to our communities and how we can really capitalize on those benefits.

Module five is really the land use module.

What are the tools that are available for protecting our landscapes, for preserving our rural character and promoting economic development at the same time.

Module six is all about stormwater.

That's the module that Michelle is going to kind of walk you through all today as an example.

And then Justin and Drew are going to share some Virginia specific resources around stormwater that might be helpful to you.

So the goal is you can kind of see how these might work for you to use them or for other people in your community to use them.

And the module seven is all about workforce development and in particular, the green collar workforce.

How can we take advantage of these investments we're making in stormwater and green infrastructure to increase jobs in our community?

That's a really, I think, relevant one for a lot of officials these days.

So again, you're going to see an example of what these are, but a few things to highlight.

They begin with what you'll learn.

So some learning objectives and questions that are going to be answered through the module.

What you can do is how it ends.

There's some really actionable specific opportunities for you all to evaluate what your community is doing and how you could, how you can improve.

And then to learn more, those are additional resources.

And those are, I would recommend paying close attention to the ones, the resources that Justin and Drew share, because those are going to be specific for Virginia and really actionable as you think about next steps for your community.

Thanks, Laura.

I'm Michelle Edwards with the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission, and we cover Culpeper, Orange, Madison, Fauquier, and Rappahannock counties.

And I am the environmental and natural resource planner, and we have a grant through DEQ all over the Chesapeake Bay

PDCs do to help local governments implement the WIP and get the word out about things like this.

And we intend to use our future contract, one of the components, to use these guides and reach out to our local governments.

And I think, you know, the stormwater

The Stormwater Module is definitely one of those that we will be taking out, especially to our more developed localities, whereas some of our less developed localities may be more interested in tree planting, for example, or the clean water example.

And I really encourage you, as you look through these slides, to tailor them to your communities and your communities' interests

and experiences what is most important to you.

For example, this one you could pull out data from your hazard mitigation plans or current events if there's been flooding in your area to highlight those examples, whether or not your communities are MS4s or they are not MS4s to really use this guide and make it your own.

Slide.

Okay.

So this is just the table of contents that walks you through what is in the presentation.

As Laura mentioned, it starts out with purpose and what you'll learn.

Kind of a 101 of what stormwater is, which we'll be breezing through.

I assume if you're part of this group, you know what stormwater is.

What's at stake?

Why should you care?

That's what elected officials usually want to know.

Why should I care about this as opposed to the myriad other things that are on my plate?

And then it'll talk about the bulk of it.

Stormwater resiliency.

What is stormwater resiliency?

And then go through.

OK, so now I know this is a problem.

What do I need to do?

What can I do?

What tools are available?

Which is mainly what Drew and Justin will be covering.

and then at the end, it'll provide some resources for additional information.

Slide.

Okay, so this slide pretty much just takes you through where it fits within the various modules.

It talks about what the other modules are and tells you to look out for some icons that appear throughout the slides for economic development, public health and infrastructure, finance and education.

Slide.

So first of all, we lay the foundation for what is stormwater?

Why should we care?

Managing stormwater runoff and increasing resiliency can mitigate flooding and other damages.

Let me see if I can minimize.

In addition to hazard mitigation, increasing resiliency also improves water quality.

Stormwater runoff can carry bacteria, nutrients, and other pollutions into our local waterways used for water supplies, fishing, swimming, and other recreation activities posing a public health threat.

So those are the key issues that local governments are going to care about.

The public health threat certainly and flooding are the biggies that you might care about as a local elected officials.

And what will I learn?

What is stormwater?

How can it be dangerous to my community?

What can I do to mitigate flood related damage and how will future climate conditions impact my infrastructure?

These are things that local governments would definitely care about.

Of course, local elected officials many times do care about the environment, but there are other things that their constituents care about that they need to address.

Understanding stormwater.

So now we get through what is stormwater and we'll really just breeze through these slide.

There's a slide here that explains the water cycle.

These are all things that if you're addressing just your average local elected official or even citizens that they will need to know to understand the problem at hand.

But we won't take time to go through these.

Go ahead.

Next slide.

Slide.

Okay.

Then this slide really gets down to what is an MS4.

And if this applies to your community, certainly this is something you want to discuss.

So it's understood most people that don't deal with this have no idea what an MS4 is.

It also points out that non-MS4 communities can choose to implement their own stormwater management programs.

And some of them like

Greene County certainly do.

So it's not just for MS4 communities.

It's something that all communities should be aware of and care about.

Slide.

So what's at stake?

Now we get into the nitty-gritty.

Stormwater runoff can damage public infrastructure and private property through flooding and wash pollutants into our local waterways.

And slide.

And more specifically, go back, Laura.

Thanks, Laura.

Flooding can endanger our critical infrastructure in your community, including roads, electricity, clean water, and cellular networks.

So this slide goes through and explains what specifically stormwater runoff can affect with each of those various areas, what it can do to your roads that the community

needs vehicles like school buses and ambulances to be able to reach residential areas.

So if they're flooded, people can't get to school.

The electrical damage that can occur through flooding, the drinking water supply that can be affected, your cellular networks that can go out if towers are affected.

Slide.

And then of course the public health issue.

This is a very big one.

Certainly E. coli is

The biggest pollutant that affects our streams that we're concerned about in most of our communities in Virginia.

Various other toxic contaminants, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals.

Bacteria, as I mentioned, such as E. coli, also algae can cause nutrients to grow and excess nutrients can fuel excess algae in water bodies that die and decay and then cause fish kills.

and they can also sometimes produce toxins that can be harmful to humans.

So pollution can make recreation in, on or near water unsafe and fish and shellfish can be unsafe to eat.

So those are things people definitely care about.

Slide.

And then we have examples.

This might be a case where you have your own local example.

that you want to include on here as a public health issue.

This one talks about E. coli bacteria being found in a local waterway by the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative and how they worked with the Soil and Water Conservation District and Public Utilities Department to track it down to a local pet daycare center and then mitigate that effect.

Slide.

Then this next slide is likely very important to a lot of elected officials where it talks about the economic impacts of stormwater and flooding.

So flooding harms businesses and private property.

It also threatens the health of local waterways, which often support outdoor recreation and tourism.

The example that's included here is from Pennsylvania's Emergency Management Agency, documented over 160 million in public infrastructure damages

but only 160 million that year was covered by federal disaster aid.

So the municipalities then had to pick up 100 million in damages.

So benefit cost analysis of natural hazard mitigation found that every dollar invested in proactive mitigation steps save $7 in emergency response and recovery costs in the future.

So it pays to

Put in BMPs and do stream restoration rather than waiting for the flooding to happen.

Outdoor recreation relies on healthy waterways and safe access.

Annually, the US outdoor recreation economy provides $887 billion in consumer spending.

7.6 million in American jobs and 125 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

So if you have local numbers, you can add in your local numbers.

But this is a big deal to a lot of communities in certainly my region that rely on recreation and tourism.

Slide.

Excess stormwater can also cause missed school days during extended closures caused by flood damage.

While only 2% of mid-Atlantic schools are in a flood zone, 10% of mid-Atlantic students' zip codes are in a flood zone, which means that even if the school is not impacted by flooding, students may not be able to get to their homes.

And elected officials will be hearing from the parents.

So, slide.

and this is that diversity, equity, inclusion and justice component that Laura mentioned.

In 2020, Virginia passed the Environmental Justice Act, which established that it is the policy of the Commonwealth to promote environmental justice as defined in the bill and to ensure that it is carried out throughout the Commonwealth.

While flooding affects a wide range of demographics, it is most harmful to communities of color, low income residents and others who do not have the resources to handle the damage and disruption.

So flooding in the US can harm African American neighborhoods.

Okay, slide.

So I think that's it for me.

Thank you, Michelle.

Good afternoon.

I'm Justin Williams.

I'm the director of the Office of Watersheds and Local Government Assistance.

And I, along with Drew Hammond, who is our director of water permits, are going to provide some more specific information on resiliency and the efforts that's going on in the Commonwealth and how communities can take action and work with the state and look at the resources we have available to help address this issue.

So next slide.

Thanks, Justin.

So really the big thing here with this particular slide and really what we wanted to drive home is the fact that as communities develop and we have more parking lots, more roofs, more roads are built that we have this significant increase in impervious surfaces.

And when that happens, there are negative impacts on stormwater resiliency.

So if you kind of take a look at the left side of the left side of the slide there, you've got this one inch of rainfall.

that generally falls on forested or wetland areas, those natural landscapes.

And that results in about 750 gallons of runoff from an inch of rain on the one acre.

But then you can make the comparison there to that same amount of rainfall on an acre of parking lot or other impervious surfaces and see the borders of a magnitude in which that stormwater runoff occurs.

So really the big thing is to make sure as we move forward,

Plans to ensure that we mitigate increases in stormwater runoff and keeping communities resilient.

Next slide, please.

And then, as I mentioned earlier there, we spoke about wetlands and those natural landscapes.

You know, in Virginia, we have the Virginia Water Protection Program, but really the thing here is to kind of explain to the communities

that wetlands are a positive thing.

They help capture, filter, hold and release runoff at a slower rates.

They act like a giant sponge and incorporating those features into designs or retaining those features.

There are things that can be done to help prevent damage to surrounding infrastructure.

Next slide.

And then another big thing that we speak about in the Virginia Stormwater Management Program too is green infrastructure is looking at a pathway forward in which we start to consider and implement green infrastructure into our stormwater management designs and our plans for community resiliency and getting away from those green-gray approaches.

So green infrastructure,

Examples can include looking to incorporate green roofs, bioswales and or rain gardens in your stormwater management plans and or your community resiliency plans, etc.

So here we talk about the importance that sustainable schools provide, not only to be able to actually install BMPs at that level, to talk to and address some of the flooding that was mentioned earlier that can impact this infrastructure, but also that educational component that's extremely important, especially in the area of things like climate resiliency, which is a multi-generational issue that requires efforts

throughout many generations to be able to address.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Building on that particular topic, one of the things that NOAA did and also the Commonwealth has done also is to take a look at recurrent flooding that's happening in different areas across the United States as well as across the Commonwealth.

An example of that would be in Hampton Roads.

In 1960, there was approximately two days per year in which recurrent flooding or sunny day flooding was happening and now

In 2014, we're seeing upwards of seven plus days of that happening in the Hampton Roads area.

And when those things happen, basically you put recurrent flooding on top of rainfall events and then all of a sudden your existing storm sewer system is overwhelmed.

So it becomes this case of as we plan for more rain and we look to

look to our existing infrastructure, adapting to methods in which we look differently after building back from flooding and or flood damage events.

And that may be not putting back the same size culvert or pipe that failed, looking to upgrade your stormwater infrastructure after those events occur to be able to handle those larger rainfall events, as well as taking into account flooding itself

and just a little quick case study there.

There was one done in New York.

They had a whole bunch of property damage that happened between 2005 and 2011.

You can see 675 million happened there.

And what that locality did was implement mitigation projects that seek to take into account more rainfall and flooding there in that particular locality.

Aside from the increased rainfall that's anticipated, certainly there's anticipation for higher waters or specifically sea level rise.

As noted there, Virginia has experienced more than 18 inches of relative sea level rise in the past 100 years.

And you see there specifically a case study related to Norfolk and the efforts that they've done through their zoning efforts to look at the impacts from that increased flooding and sea level rise and new developments.

Additionally, in this arena, aside from the large scale Virginia Coastal Master Planning Framework and the Virginia Coastal Master Plan,

to look at the impacts of sea level rise in Virginia and efforts to combat them.

Virginia has incorporated climate change and adaptation into some of its regulatory programs, specifically in the tidewater localities under the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

Additionally, the General Assembly in an effort to consider sea level rise and these impacts established a policy that living shorelines are the preferred and should be the installed shoreline management practice under the

permitting program for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

So what can you do at the end of the day if you're curious about the pathway forward?

How do I make my community more resilient?

How do I how to what are what are pathways in which we can seek to implement to take care of planning for that additional rainfall, planning for those additional days of flooding?

you know, et cetera, you know, kind of, you know, three really big topics, but, you know, you know, sitting down and, you know, meeting with your MS4 coordinator and or your stormwater engineering staff and discussing through strategies associated with implementing green structure, infrastructure, et cetera, trying to get away from that traditional green-gray infrastructure that we've historically done.

You know, another thing that, you know, is taking a look at protecting and restoring

Wetlands, as I've said, those natural landscapes, they act like nature's flood insurance, they filter stormwater, and they also seek to protect the community's infrastructure and also help to deal with shoreline erosion issues.

And then the other thing is as we continue to implement and look at resiliency, increased rainfall, increased flooding, et cetera, as we

put together our community resiliency plans to make sure that those plans continue to be flexible and adaptable.

Because as with everything, we make decisions based upon the best available science and information that we have, but we also recognize that changes on a daily basis.

So here's some additional resources that are available to provide both specifics on actions or tools that can be utilized by localities as well as the efforts going on in the adaptation corporation that occurred.

Aside from national models, you're probably familiar with or should check out ADAPT Virginia, which provides information and models and tools on climate change in Virginia.

As I mentioned, we have the Virginia Coastal Adaptation Resilience Master Plan and the framework for that.

There's the Commonwealth Center for Recurrent Flooding Resiliency, as well as more information on our DEQ water quality programs in general.

And then to add to that, there's additional information that's available on the Commonwealth Stormwater Management Program.

Michelle talked about this a little bit at the beginning, but you know, our municipal separate storms who were

System Permitting Program, but also information included in that program is what the Commonwealth is already currently doing to help manage post-construction stormwater quality and quantity runoff.

The other thing that we have available is the Stormwater Best Management Practices Clearinghouse.

There's information on the clearinghouse on the best management practices that can be utilized across the Commonwealth to help address

with stormwater quality and quantity issues.

And those include best management practices that are in the non-proprietary domain, as well as ones that are in the proprietary domain, such as manufactured treatment devices.

There's also the Commonwealth's Erosion and Sediment Control Program, and that has a wealth of information on how the Commonwealth looks to address

Stormwater Quality and Quantity Management during construction.

And then one of the most important tools that I think that's on this slide here is the newly released Mid-Atlantic Intensity Duration Frequency Curve Data Tool.

And what this is, is a portal information on future projected data with respect to rainfall across the Commonwealth that can be used to help develop community resiliency plans and

take a look to the future with respect to sizing new infrastructure, et cetera.

And then next slide.

We've also listed here at a much higher level, some more national resources that are available here, stuff that isn't DEQ specific.

So, you know, we certainly encourage you to also take a look at these resources too, and, you know, share those with, you know, all of the respective parties because they just,

They're really good in terms of kind of breaking down some of these more complex concepts and making them a lot more understandable for the general public itself.

And then last slide, please.

And really right here is just a glossary of some of the terms that we use throughout the presentation, just as a means of providing some context for these terms, but also

As I said, just like the previous slide, they, you know, start to put some definition to the folks that really don't work in this field every day that aren't hearing this information, you know, on a day to day basis.

Well, thank you, Michelle and Drew and Justin for going through that.

I do feel like I need to apologize for the jumpy slides.

I think I started in that mode where it advances automatically, so my apologies.

But I'll just see if there are any questions.

I know we sort of filled most of our time, but I'll see if there are any questions or if you all have any ideas about how these resources can help you in your community.

Oh, Bea, you can go ahead.

Okay.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I should have hit the hand or whatever.

Just wondering regarding, you mentioned about Hampton Roads and everything and the increase in stormwater, you know, what's happening.

Would that also be due to building?

That is certainly an additional factor to take into consideration.

I kind of view this as almost like a three legged stool.

Not only do we have climate change, you know, increased rainfall amounts.

We have flooding on the back end, sunny day flooding on the back end or just, you know, sea level rise as Justin mentioned, which also impacts our existing infrastructure.

And then you add on top of that exactly what you pointed out, which is the change in the natural landscape from more of those natural features that rainfall was heading to impervious surfaces.

And all three of those have an impact on our existing infrastructure.

So knowing that development probably will not cease, is anyone working on types of impervious or surfaces that can be used that will help the water drain?

I'm kind of thinking like holes in the surfaces or micro holes or something like that.

So that's a good question and one of the good resources to take a look at would be the Virginia Stormwater BMP Clearinghouse.

There are best management practices up there that can be utilized to help offset stormwater quantity and quality impacts due to changes in land surfaces.

and yes, in areas in which we can achieve, and there are green infrastructure practices up there.

So there's information about how to implement green roofs, how to design and implement rain gardens, how to design and implement permeable pavement at the end of the day.

So there are a lot of green infrastructure, stormwater,

Okay, now someone just said that VACP would pay for permeable pavement.

Yeah, so the Soil and Water Conservation District, one of the practices that we provide cost share to people for, in fact, we've funded these in Albemarle and Charlottesville, our permeable paving projects.

These are specific pavers that are meant to absorb water so that water doesn't run off of driveways.

And they're installed, there's a whole process of installation, but

You know, feel free to visit our website to look at those.

I would just point out that you have a perfect example

Good management practices right in Charlottesville that the new university athletic center that was built, I forget its name, John Paul Jones, is that it?

Anyway, when that was designed, it was very carefully designed because the amount of water that was going to pour off the roof of that was an extraordinary amount.

And if that had been gone at

into the little stream that is right nearby.

It would have over absolutely caused great flooding and damage to the system and brought lots of unsavory things into eventually into the Chesapeake Bay.

What they did was they sloped the, which was essentially an impermeable surface so that the water

in all of the areas of the parking lot flowed into essentially cisterns or rain gardens on each side of the dividers along the parking lot.

The runoff that occurred that is not absorbed in the parking lot was then sent down a stream between the athletic center and Emmett Street.

in a series of dams that slowed down all of the flow into the creek that's there right beside it.

So it's a perfect example.

I actually took the Fluvanna Board of Supervisors there to see it because I thought it was one of the great examples of use.

I do have a question for Drew or Justin.

One of your slides, which you didn't mention, but it showed a little blurb about

Maryland being able to reduce a great deal of its runoff.

You didn't mention that, but I wonder if you can tell us whether that was because of state mandates or efforts by local localities throughout Maryland or good

Maryland had came up with the critical areas planning for the entire state, especially around the Chesapeake Bay area, which probably helped inform those decisions.

So Laura might be able to provide a little bit more information because that was one of the general statistics that were provided as the modules were developed for the Bay.

And it was specific just to the impact and value that wetlands can have and overall reductions for runoff.

I think it's that slide, yeah, Laura.

So, you know, that was based on a study that they did looking specifically at the

Fallout from Hurricane Sandy.

I don't think so, although I will say that Maryland has gone pretty all in on wetlands as important in their resilience strategy, particularly for the Eastern Shore.

And I will say, if you look at the Virginia Coastal Master Planning Framework, for example, and the policy, like I mentioned, with living shorelines,

And I just wanted to note, I'm happy to spend extra time on this in our agenda, given that the call is primarily composed of our board members who have

heard a little bit about our rural and urban corridor plan as well as WIP already.

I think one thing, this is sort of a question statement.

I mean, you know, in the coastal areas, we have living shorelines are funded as a BNP, but it's not generally recognized as a BNP in the Piedmont.

But I feel like that it'd be very important, particularly as we deal with,

blooms of cyanobacteria that are poisoning our lakes because it helps keep bacteria out of the lakes and helps prevent geese and other things that are going in there.

I mean, I think what I can say is, as I mentioned, there is an emphasis on nature-based solutions overall, one of which is living shorelines.

For example, if you look at the community resilience funding guidelines that were just put out by DCR for large-scale local and regional flooding efforts, there is a greater emphasis in the scoring, for example, based on nature-based solutions, which can include

anything like a living shoreline down to other types of driven nature-based BMPs such as wetlands.

And to add to that, one of the things Dominique provided the link there to the Virginia Stormwater B&P Clearinghouse, one of the things that I point out is one of the non-proprietary public domain best management practices that's up there for utilization in the state stormwater management program is constructed wetlands.

So that is one option.

There are some other

or there are other, you know, more natural or nature-based solutions up there.

Also, too, with best management practices.

When we were talking about John Paul Jones Arena, you know, one of the things that jumped out at me was, you know, bioretention or urban bioretention or infiltration practices.

You know, one of the other things, too, is and I kind of heard it and it really jumped out at me also was is

A, the conveyance channel that actually takes the water down to the receiving stream has these series of dams in it.

Well, you know, in the world of stormwater design and management, that's actually what we refer to as a wet flail.

So you've got all these little step pools that encourage infiltration behind every one of those little small check dams to have a volume of water that we are looking to infiltrate back into the natural landscape.

that we've changed from whatever the area was to either the arena or the parking lot.

And then the other thing that we have, and this is really getting into more of the weeds of Virginia's stormwater management program, but one of the things that the Commonwealth implemented with our new water quality criteria for new development and redevelopment is this concept of the Virginia runoff reduction method.

Step number one of that method is basically implementing environmental site design or minimizing the amount of land disturbance that you have to undertake to accomplish your construction activity.

And step two being implementing what we refer to as runoff reducing measures.

So implementing those measures that are more nature based and or natural based

and that actually promote and encourage infiltration as the primary means of addressing changes in water quality.

And then step three being implementing those pollutant removal practices.

So ones that basically act as like filters of pollutants, they don't provide a volume reduction associated with it.

And then step four kind of being the

If I haven't gotten there from step one, two, and three, there is an offsetting program in the Commonwealth also.

But I always tell folks when asked the question with respect to that, really look to the runoff reduction method and really seek to implement steps one and step two as hard as you can.

Minimize the amount of land disturbance, the amount of change that I have, and if that does, what solutions can I implement that

will seek to decrease that runoff volume that I spoke to earlier about that orders of a magnitude different, that one inch of rainfall on a wetland or more of a natural landscape being approximately 750 gallons of runoff versus if that same inch of rainfall fell on an acre's worth of parking lot and there'd be 27,000 gallons of runoff.

If that land change needs to occur,

So a question I have related to that is, I think one of the challenges that localities face is that because of nutrient credit trading, we've found a lot of people just buying credits to meet their requirements.

What can localities do to encourage developers to do more stormwater treatment on site?

And the other thing is too is all of our incentive programs are geared towards places that are already developed.

So that's certainly a good question.

Two examples that really jump out in my mind are two

Two local stormwater management programs in the Commonwealth that have utilized their ability underneath the state water control law to further limit or restrict the use of non-point source nutrient credits for that exact purpose.

So there are two examples of that in the Commonwealth right now.

You've got Arlington County up in Northern Virginia, and then you've got the city of Virginia Beach down in Tidewater.

and both of those hold a municipal separate storm sewer system permit also too through DEQ.

And what they realized in looking at stormwater runoff and community resiliency and flooding and water quality issues was that they felt it was extremely necessary in their jurisdictions with the issues that they were facing with respect to

Climate Adaptation and or flooding that this need to implement provisions inside of their local ordinances, you know, that, you know, one way of saying it is further restricted the use of nonpoint source nutrient credits.

But what it did is it really, as I spoke to the four steps of the runoff reduction method, they truly implemented a program in which

They said, we want you to go through the four steps.

You know, we want you to do environmental site design first, then we want you to do runoff reduction, and then we want you to do pollutant removal.

And we're truly going to make step four, step four, which is we're not going to let you go directly to step four.

So, you know, so those are two examples, you know, to look at, you know, other

The other things that come to my mind in the state stormwater management program that could be utilized to incentivize developers to actually implement best management practices in lieu of jumping straight to step four is explaining to them that there are these possibilities if they have other properties in the watershed

that don't have best management practices implemented on them, encouraging them to implement best management practices on those, and then seeking to basically utilize that as a means of offsetting the new development in lieu of just purchasing nutrient credits.

But at a state level, we certainly understand

the exact situation that you bring up here.

I have a question for Drew.

You just mentioned

Arlington and Virginia Beach.

So what they did is they incorporated by reference the states and in every local jurisdiction that has done this has incorporated by reference the commonwealth's standards with respect to what I call the Virginia runoff reduction method.

But what those two jurisdictions did is they basically said, okay, we recognize at the state level that certain projects basically get a de facto approval to utilize non-point source nutrient credits if they meet certain thresholds or under certain thresholds and into

really encouraged folks to go through steps one, two, and three.

What they did was is they said, we are using our authority under state water control law, and we are going to restrict the use of step number four.

So like the extreme example was Arlington County.

They said, we will allow you to use step four, but when and only when there is a non-point source nutrient credit bank established in the limits of Arlington County.

and to date that hasn't happened.

And Virginia Beach has done something similar to that.

And really what that was is that was their means of looking at their local water quality issues with respect to land change and recognizing that in their analysis they didn't believe that someone buying credits outside of their MS4 service area or their jurisdictional area

To chime in with what Drew's saying, Culpeper County actually had what they called their low impact development ordinance that required developers to

Use low impact development techniques like rain gardens or bioretention areas and prove to them that they couldn't be used before they used things like ponds or other BMPs.

There's a message in the chat that says that they were told by the county attorney that they weren't allowed to do that.

Are you talking to me?

Maybe?

I mean, Culpeper County didn't have that same concern with their county attorneys.

So I'm asking, Michelle, would you

Well, see, the trick with that is, is that when localities were allowed to opt out of stormwater programs, they opted out.

Now DEQ operates their stormwater program, but they did use that ordinance for many, many years and other localities within the region adopted a similar ordinance.

Yeah, I'm, I'm particularly curious about Arlington and Virginia Beach and restriction of nutrient credits.

I know that we had, we talked in Emerald just about restricting the ability to use nutrient credits within a TMDL and, and in my understanding is that we were told it was a no go that

May I expand on that?

Yeah.

Frank Pohl, County Engineer for Albemarle County.

So we don't have nutrient TMDLs in the county.

We only have sediment or benthic.

within the county.

So I think what Harrisonburg did is they were able to restrict offsite credits being used within their certain jurisdiction or a certain watershed because of a nutrient TMDL that they had.

So we've investigated doing that here, but because our TMDLs are not nutrient based,

Well, you know, and Drew, correct me if I'm wrong, I think certainly from the Arlington, Virginia Bee's perspective, they took a, it was based on a different tact and authority than it sounds like the driver there, which was based on the TMDL

I believe so, Drew, you can probably

Yep, so it's, you know, I think there are a lot of different things at play, you know, really it gets down to, you know, like I said, certainly both of those jurisdictions, certainly both of those jurisdictions, both Arlington and the city of Virginia Beach are phase one, large MS4 permittees in the Commonwealth

So that's a lot different than some of our small MS4 jurisdictions too.

Frank is exactly right.

There are already some provisions that are already built into state water control law and then subsequently into the local ordinances about the utilization of non-point source nutrient credits

in contravention of local water quality based limitations or local limitations.

And one of the things that he spoke about were ones determined pursuant to the section of law that speaks to the TMDL program that we've talked about here.

And that includes local TMDLs for chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen or nutrients too.

So yes,

was a situation where the agency going through its TMDL process and we developed a TMDL for nutrients in the Charlottesville area and working through that particular process, just because that happened and then once the TMDL was developed, well, all of a sudden the way the statute was written, that basically said, okay, you can't use nutrient credits in this watershed

unless those nutrient credits are being generated in that particular watershed upstream of the impairment that we identified and developed the TMDL to address.

So there are some like, I guess some de facto steps that are established in state water control law, but there are some general provisions and we've had very, very few jurisdictions that have done this.

But there are some provisions in state water control law that do provide local governments the ability to adopt more stringent ordinances under certain circumstances.

And we can certainly, if we need to have a follow-up conversation that kind of works through all of the nuances, with that we can certainly sit down and have that conversation about

you know, what would be necessary, how do we work through that?

I'll give you another example, you know, not in the nutrient trading world, but you know, one of the things that we had another jurisdiction do is, and I spoke to this, the use of the stormwater best management practices listed on the clearing house.

There is a provision in the code

that allows local stormwater management program authorities the ability to put additional limitations on what best management practices can be utilized and how they're utilized.

So this kind of speaks to Michelle's example with the previous Culpeper ordinance where they kind of basically made folks go through and doing an analysis and determine that they couldn't use these

environmental site designer, these low impact development BMPs first before they jumped to the traditional green gray infrastructure, ponds, et cetera.

You know, the Fairfax County did something similar.

They kind of looked at the stormwater BMP clearinghouse BMPs and said, hey, you know, we're going to further restrict when these things can be used or where they can be used, et cetera, as a means of

Getting to steps one, two and three and not having folks jump immediately to step number four.

So we have some we have some precedents in the Commonwealth where we do have a jurisdiction that went through that particular process and restricted the use of certain best management practices where the county just, you know, felt it was more appropriate to to utilize a smaller subset itself.

And then just overall,

Overall, I didn't mention this, we didn't put this in the slides, but just for everyone to be aware of.

And I think this has to deal with not so much water quality best management practices, it speaks more to potential future rainfall amounts increasing as well as dealing with existing flooding issues.

The city of Virginia Beach actually in mid 2020

went through an exercise in which they basically completely overhauled their city's stormwater management ordinance and implemented two things.

And I recognize this can't be done in every jurisdiction because they spent a lot of money to do this with the technical experts to do it.

But they now have an ordinance on the books in which

like developers coming in and want to develop a piece of property.

Not only do they have to take into account future projected rainfall amounts, so they're making folks, they're already implementing provisions in which they're making folks account for and accommodate rainfall amounts that are projected to be out in the future.

They also implemented, they took into account like the work that was done with respect to

recurrent flooding and sea level rise, et cetera, and actually put together.

They had a consultant put together a stormwater model for for the city itself, and it's broken down in the different watersheds itself.

But that is in that model takes into account not only future projected rainfall amounts, but also sea level rise and development has to input their best management practices for their particular project.

into that model and run that model and prove to the city that they're not going to have any issues many years out into the future.

So that's one, you know, and like I said, that wasn't that wasn't a cheap endeavor.

You know, that was a multimillion dollar effort to do that.

But that was that was one of the jurisdictions that we do have that, you know, has had a lot of issues with respect to, you know, climate change, sea level rise,

You know, they're also on the coast to deal with those issues that Justin spoke to.

And they've taken that first proactive approach by saying, hey, you know, we want all development.

I wanted to jump in really quickly and just note that for time purposes, it might be a good idea for us to jump into our next section.

But I will say Sandy and myself were just discussing in our chat about how this is such valuable information.

We made some modifications to our agenda and I actually took out our WIP portion because the folks from DEQ as well as Michelle and Laura did such a great job of discussing TMDLs and BMPs that's like, you know,

Well, I hear all that information twice, but I just want to give folks an extra minute or two just to throw in any last questions, and then I'll do a brief overview of our rural corridor plan, and we'll wrap up by 2.30.

I'll just make one more comment, Frank Poligan, that the state, the new regulation that was passed

and January 1st this year that restricts purchases or creates a hierarchy for offsite nutrient credit use and impaired streams has been fully adopted here and it affects many projects in case anybody's wondering.

Thank you and thank you everyone for their great questions and comments and it's nice being able to have a

a locally specific discussion.

I was just going to say, thank you very much.

And we will be using that recording because I know we will need to come back and contact you about more details.

Thank you, Ann.

And I will also on our website with the recording and all the conference agenda materials,

I will share the slides that Laura passed on to me the other day so we can all have access to the overview of her modules.

And I will also make sure to include her email somewhere if anyone has any questions or any of the folks who are on this call today.

But if folks are ready, we can just hop into the overview of the rural corridor plan for the Rivanna River.

But of course, we want to thank

everyone who came from DEQ, Justin, Drew, and then Michelle and Laura as well for coming this afternoon and doing a presentation for us.

That was incredibly helpful and very valuable information, especially since this particular conference was primarily our board members.

So it'll be nice to have that really applicable information.

So thank you.

But without further ado, we'll quickly jump into our rural Rivanna River corridor plan.

And we'll just do a brief presentation, just have about six or seven slides.

And I know that some folks here had an overview the other day at the board meeting, but there are some other individuals here who might like to hear that information.

And of course, Sandy is here if there are any other questions.

But I will go ahead and quickly share my screen.

And I'm really glad that there was such a great overview of the WIP already because folks from DEQ can do a far better job than I can at explaining their baby.

Share my screen.

For board members who were at our board meeting on the 14th, sending myself a discussion about the rural and urban Rivanna corridor plan, but just really briefly to go over it for those who missed it and just in case there are any new details that have come out.

It's our initiative with the Rivanna River Basin Commission with the goal of developing a vision and action plan for the rural portion of the river, and that includes portions of the river in Greene, Albemarle, and Fluvanna.

And as you all know, the corridor plan is almost completed for the urban portions of Charlottesville and Albemarle.

And the draft scope of work, which we did briefly discuss before, just includes five general tasks,

managing our project scope and budget, making sure we're analyzing and reviewing other Rivanna initiatives, having a network analysis of all those organizations involved in recreation, conservation, whether they be nonprofits or government organizations, drafting recommendations and next steps with our stakeholder and technical experts, several of whom we've reached out to in the county and city and other localities just to see David a level of involvement

and then finally finalizing our report and the recommendations for the RRBC.

And just a brief timeline just to kind of show where we are.

Starting in July, Sandy and my, excuse me, Sandy and myself started doing the initial research review of policies recommendations programs related to the Rivanna.

And we have a table on the next slide that I just popped over to quickly showing what we've taken a look at.

And then heading into September, we began debriefing the RRBC localities

and just kind of getting a pulse on what our stakeholders and technical experts believe we can do with this corridor plan.

And now at this point, I would say we are now at the end of September and October, sort of beginning to assess the resources and the folks who can really contribute to stakeholder communication and just developing the vision for the corridor plan.

And ideally we would like to, by the end of the year, have a nice team put together

and just have just a Rivanna rural project team for all those recommendations.

And then the project deadline would be June of 2022, at which point we would provide the RRBC with a draft document that they can review before we have our final completion date.

And then just as I referenced, there were some comp plans that we took a look at from Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna, as well as other Virginia plans and neighboring states.

But a common theme that we noticed and in no particular order ranking emphasis on a need for recreational facilities, bikes and walking paths, encouraging tourism, encouraging economic development.

As I'm sure you can imagine, job opportunities along the river are good for everyone.

And maintaining natural rural scenery.

I'm sure that folks from rural localities know the importance of sort of having that historic and natural divide where you really can feel the difference between the city and the country, if you will.

I'm sure that's something that a lot of folks want to maintain and really enjoy and love about living out in our rural localities.

And then lastly, maintaining water quality, which is something we don't need to go into the importance of because DEQ and the folks who presented did such a great job.

But locality guidance is our next topic, but the PDC staff just wants to maintain and facilitate discussions with our technical committee members and other specialized experts to really develop

and refine our recommendations to include things like environmental protection.

Like I mentioned in our previous slide, things like recreational activities, public health and safety and welfare, land use, historic places and cultural features and trail connectivity, which is probably the number one thing that we hear from folks when talking about plans of this nature.

And then I believe I did share this table previously at the board meeting for folks who haven't seen it, just sort of a glance into

The types of organizations and departments within our localities that we hope to put in our little stakeholder or planning group.

Not so little, I should say.

And this list will obviously be developed as our scope continues and we get into more detail and continue that network analysis portion of the scope.

But I will leave it at that.

If there are any questions or comments, I know that Sandy might have a few things she'd like to note about the

Urban portion.

Thanks, Dominique.

The only thing that I'll say is we've been giving updates in a lot of different places.

So I want to make sure that we're focusing on next steps instead of rehashing what we've already covered with many of you on this call today.

But I did drop a link.

into the chat with, if anybody is not familiar and wants to look at the plan, you're welcome to go and the full draft of the plan is available.

There are some additional suggested revisions that were mentioned when we met with the RRBC board last week.

Those have not been incorporated, but that is the working draft

to date right now.

And we'll be working with the localities of Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville to move forward.

I'm jumping in just to say I'm hopeful that the work done by Albemarle and Charlottesville will be valuable for all our surrounding counties to pick and choose and to make sure that that saves them some startup time so that they can carry on.

Thank you, Ann.

Are there any other comments or questions before we close out with our conference this afternoon?

Well, thank you everyone for coming this afternoon.

I just wanted to say thank you very much.

I learned a lot.

I'm looking forward to learning even more and I'm looking forward to getting the slides because I'd actually like to share that if it's okay with

Absolutely and I had a conversation with Laura about that they have some other modules as well that they'd be happy to pass on.

I believe they actually kind of customize this one a little bit for us and

We appreciate their effort and all that.

But thank you, absolutely.

And I'll be sure to pass on all those materials.

I'll send out a little email to the group and let them know.

But as always, thank you guys so much for coming this afternoon.

It is always a pleasure seeing our board members and there will be follow-up materials in an email after this with everything.

And please feel free to shout out, ask me any questions and share any concerns.

PDC is always here and ready to help.

Thank you so much.

Have a great rest of your day and a great weekend.

Thanks everyone.