Hey, hey, ho, hey, hey, ho, hey, ho, hey, hey, ho, hey, ho, hey, hey, ho, hey, ho. Music Stormwater, water that comes from precipitation, looks like a natural flow of water, but there's more than meets the eye. In urbanized areas, water can't actually infiltrate the ground. because of all the impervious surface.
Instead, it has to flow over the ground, and in that process, it picks up anything that's on the ground there. It can be chemicals like automotive fluids or fertilizers. It can be trash like cigarette butts. Anything that's on the ground, it'll be picked up by the water and flow along with it.
Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes and... A good example, a well-known example, is the Charles River situation.
Years of continuous pollution have left the river in a very poor state. The excessive pollution of phosphorus has resulted in huge algae blooms every year, and these algae blooms basically just choke the life out of the river. It jeopardizes the recreational use. It damages the quality of life for the aquatic life in the river, and it just doesn't look very well for the river either.
A Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System, or MS4, is a system designed to protect the river from the pollution of the river. designed to transport and display stormwater into surface water bodies. Stormwater enters the MS4 through a storm drain, formerly known as a catch basin, flows through underground pipes, and discharges from an outfall.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency issues MS4 permits within Massachusetts. Our project was to help improve the stormwater management programs of Holden, Auburn, and Upton while helping them prepare for the upcoming Massachusetts MS4 permit, which is expected to be released within the next year. The state of New Hampshire has recently been issued an MS4 draft permit by the EPA. This was issued in February of 2013 and is believed to be a strong indicator of what the new upcoming Massachusetts permit will look like.
Other than conducting field work for the municipalities, we also created several deliverables to help them understand the complicated requirements of the upcoming MS4 permit. One of our deliverables is a spreadsheet that we created for each of the municipalities that assesses whether or not they complied with each of the requirements of the 2003 MS4 permit. We also created a document to compare the requirements from the 2003 Massachusetts permit. to the new requirements in the 2013 New Hampshire draft permit. One of the more difficult requirements of the 2013 New Hampshire draft permit that we decided to focus on was the requirement that each municipality rank different areas of their town by the probability of it having an illicit discharge.
To aid them with this requirement, we created a database that will help them automatically rank their areas and keep track of them after doing so. So after a municipal employee fills out a form to rank an area, They can then keep track of all their areas and view them later on. So as you can see here, we can then view the different areas in our municipality.
And there they are, stored with information about them and the priority rank that they were given. By creating these deliverables and helping municipalities meet the requirements of the upcoming Massachusetts MS4 permit, we are attempting to improve the stormwater management programs in central Massachusetts. You're like a baby of a bird, so misty-balled and so out of this world.