STORMWATER STRAIN: Can’t just blame it on the rain

Trash, cigarette butts, oil and antifreeze assault Waynesboro’s stormwater system – and there’s plenty of blame to go around for the problem, a state official said.

“If you ask the average person who’s the big polluter, they’ll say the big companies,” said Jim Echols, resident manager for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation in Staunton. “Really, if you want to know who’s causing the pollution, look in the mirror.”

Residue on impervious surfaces — such as parking lots and roads — washes into retention ponds, culverts and ditches on its way to the South River, and later, the Chesapeake Bay.

Many of the structures cannot handle the amount of water that pours from the sky, especially when concentrated bursts shower the area in a short period.

When that happens, backyards and other areas overflow with stormwater rapids, leaving city residents to shell out money from their own pockets to repair damage to yards, basements and homes. Or homeowners file insurance claims, which totaled more than $6.1 million in the last 30 years, according to state records.

When neighbors or landscapers fertilize lawns, Echols said, the problems worsen.

“Guess where those nutrients are going?” he said.

With more impervious surfaces around the city, there are more chemicals getting into the stormwater system, and, Echols said, what’s in the system “goes off to the river.”

“The fastest growing land use in the Chesapeake Bay [watershed] is turf – grass,” Echols said. “It’s having a huge impact on nutrients.”

Wider streets help water run off faster. Higher peak discharge and eroding channels carry more contaminants with it. Forested land, Echols said, keeps water cleaner.

“Essentially, when you have a development … you have a naturally occurring condition, whether that’s a field or a forest, or just a yard – and that gets replaced with more of an impervious surface,” Waynesboro Public Works Director Brian McReynolds said. “So you’re obviously going to produce additional runoff.”

Echols cited a recent Department of Environmental Quality update on impaired streams, noting that 57 percent of impairments come from bacteria.

“The connection between the land use and the water quality is huge,” Echols said.

McReynolds said something as mundane as leaf collection can have a major impact on the stormwater problem. Uncollected leaves wash into drains where they collect with branches and other debris and clog water flow.

“It’s about having a complete and comprehensive program,” McReynolds said.

In 1999, Waynesboro retained Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern to perform a comprehensive drainage study throughout the city. The study was updated in 2006.

Councilman Frank Lucente said past neglect — cited in some city stormwater reports — is a key cause of the problem.

“Back in the old days, they used to do stormwater maintenance,” Lucente said, referring to city workers. “I want to see something done.”

Before the recent creation of a stormwater management program, system maintenance was handled by the city’s public works department.

“The big difference is the defining of the program, and not having a definition on a previous program,” McReynolds said. “That’s really been the big change.”

A new program, he said, will allow the city to be proactive rather than reactive. The city knows what the projects are, and what it is supposed to do now, he said.

With stormwater, McReynolds said, there are precipitating events.

“If it’s a wetter season than a dryer season, some of your infrastructure problems are going to be more obvious,” McReynolds said. “We live in an area [where] we are prone to some of the effects of the hurricane season.”

Councilwoman Lorie Smith said the city’s stormwater problem stems from several factors. She pointed to the area around Stonewall Drive which lacked stormwater infrastructure when it was annexed by the city in 1987. That was in addition to city land that already was lacking infrastructure, Smith said.

The problem was exacerbated, she added, when Wal-Mart came to Rosser Avenue.

“Retrospectively, Wal-Mart hit Waynesboro by storm,” Smith said. “I think we were not prepared, in my opinion, to handle the rapid growth once Wal-Mart came, from an infrastructure perspective.”

McReynolds said development hasn’t necessarily made the problem better or worse; instead, it has altered its dynamic.

“It’s going to change the way that your watershed distributes the stormwater,” McReynolds said.

It depends on the storm event and its timing, he said.

“It won’t pass through as quickly as maybe it would have pre-development,” he said. “The flip side of that is that you have some protection because you do have ponds,” which came with development.

Some people have pointed to Invista as a potential contributor to the city’s stormwater woes.

During a recent plant tour, company officials said Invista actually reduces the impact on the city system because runoff from properties adjoining the plant flows through the company stormwater system instead.

Invista spends $350,000 annually to maintain its $6.4 million system, company officials said. The company is allowed under its state permit to release cooling water, treated industrial wastewater and stormwater at a rate of 5 million gallons per day into the South River.

Company officials insisted the fibers maker is not part of the problem. They said the plant’s storm sewers provide drainage for the factory site without using the city’s stormwater system.

What is clear enough in the minds of both Smith and Lucente is that cleaning out ponds and culverts would considerably reduce stormwater overflow. But Smith argued that maintenance without infrastructure fixes and upgrades “just isn’t going to get us there.”

“The problems are significant,” she said. Raging stormwater runoff has “become a way of life for a lot of neighborhoods, and that’s not OK with me.”