Four years after the passage of the nation’s strongest stormwater regulations, runoff from construction sites in Wisconsin continues to pose a serious threat to the health of Wisconsin’s waters.
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From the Sugar River south of Madison to the Lake Michigan shoreline, the excess flow of runoff pollution into Wisconsin’s waterways has led to serious water quality problems, including impaired drinking-water quality, degraded wildlife habitat and uncontrolled sewage overflows. These problems also extend downstream. Contamination in the Great Lakes flows out to the St. Lawrence Seaway, and runoff in the Wisconsin and Chippewa rivers contributes to the dead zone that forms every year at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
In 2002, Wisconsin took a major step toward solving these problems by adopting the nation’s strongest stormwater regulations. The regulations set limits on runoff from roads and developed areas and require nutrient management plans for agricultural land. However, developers are not fully complying with the law.
A new report we released in January with American Rivers found that four years after the passage of the nation’s strongest stormwater regulations, runoff from construction sites in Wisconsin continues to pose a serious threat to the health of Wisconsin’s waters. To improve the health of Wisconsin’s waterways, the state needs to strengthen its oversight of development projects.
Runoff degrades Wisconsin’s waters
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) identified runoff as a dominant source of pollution in over two-thirds of impaired river sections in the state and over 50 percent of impaired lakes in a 2006 assessment. Though not the only source of runoff pollution, development projects can be a major source of runoff without proper prevention measures, since they create runoff pollution both during construction and over the long term.
During construction, development clears land of vegetation, allowing rainwater to carry loose soil into nearby waterways. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a construction site of one acre can release between 20 and 150 tons of sediment per year.
After development, new roads and buildings replace natural surfaces that formerly stored and cleaned runoff with hard, paved surfaces that divert water and pollution directly into creeks or sewers. As a result, runoff increases the variability of stream flow, eroding stream banks, impairing wildlife habitat, polluting drinking water, and contributing to flooding and sewer overflows.
In the next 14 years, Wisconsin’s population is expected to increase by over half a million people, or by about 10 percent. If development continues at even half the pace as in the past, the amount of built-up land in Wisconsin could increase by 12 percent by 2020.
To put that in perspective, imagine a construction site one and a half times the size of Milwaukee County, nearly 250,000 acres. Much of this construction is likely to occur in or around population centers.
Weak enforcement lets developers off
Wisconsin’s runoff prevention rules require builders to reduce sediment runoff during construction by 80 percent at sites of one acre or larger. Builders must also design sites to prevent runoff after construction by reducing sediment runoff, cutting peak runoff discharge during storms, creating protective buffers between developments and waterways, and implementing practices that allow water to infiltrate into the ground rather than directing it off the site.
But flaws in enforcement allow developers to subvert the runoff rules. A Department of Natural Resources official has estimated 100 percent noncompliance in at least one region of the state, and the Department of Commerce, which oversees “commercial” construction sites (an estimated 85 percent of all sites), has weak enforcement practices compared to the DNR.
The Department of Commerce has recently updated its rule to improve management of stormwater at commercial construction sites. Nonetheless, the proposed rules do not require sufficient information from developers for project review, allow only seven days to object to an application before permit coverage is automatically granted, and propose an inadequate $25 fee to fund the program.
In addition, the department has fewer enforcement tools than the Department of Natural Resources to ensure compliance with the law, and it has failed to refer a single violation to the Department of Justice since it began monitoring commercial construction sites in 1994.
Protecting Wisconsin’s waters
To prevent future growth from exacerbating runoff pollution, Wisconsin’s government must improve oversight of development projects. With the start of the 2007-2008 legislative session, Wisconsin Environment is urging state leaders to consolidate stormwater regulation within the Department of Natural Resources, require developers to supply comprehensive and detailed information about their construction plans equivalent to DNR procedure, and increase permit fees to ensure adequate funding and staff to review applications, inspect sites and address violations.
The bottom line is, for most construction projects, Wisconsin collects very little information and issues permits without even basic review. Responsibility for regulating runoff from construction sites has been largely handed to the Department of Commerce, which is not living up to its responsibilities under the law.
Wisconsin Environment will be working to ensure that Wisconsin’s landmark runoff prevention law is implemented and enforced so that the health of our waterways is protected. |
