WHAT IS STORMWATER ANYWAY AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
CATCH BASIN / STORM DRAIN CLEANING
We offer hourly, daily, and weekly rates as well as long term per unit pricing
to better help your agency with yearly budgets.
DID YOU KNOW?
What exactly is a Watershed?
In North America, a watershed is technically know as a drainage basin, defined
as "an extent of land where water from rain or snow melt drains downhill
into a body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea
or ocean. The drainage basin includes both the streams and rivers that convey
water as well as the land surfaces from which water drains into those channels,
and is separated from adjacent basins by a drainage divide."
All of western North America and some other parts of the world, for a total
of 13% of the world's land mass, drain into the Pacific Ocean. The world's largest
drainage basins empty into the Atlantic Ocean, which drains 47% of the world's
land mass.
Copied from EPA BMP’s
Stormwater is the water from rain, snow and sleet that travels down our gutters
into the storm drain. Stormwater starts off clean. Stormwater flows DIRECTLY
into our rivers, lakes and streams. It is almost never treated. So everything
stormwater collects from the land surface, roadways, sidewalks, parking lots,
construction sites, business parks, etc., is carried to gutters, storm drains,
canals, drainageways, and finally ends up in our local rivers and streams ~
UNTREATED! It is estimated that more than one-half of the pollution in our nation’s
waterways comes from stormwater runoff.
In the past, it was thought that water pollution was caused mainly by industrial
and municipal wastewater treatment plant discharges. A lot of effort was put
into cleaning up these “point sources” of waste water. Now, the
effort is being expended to clean up “non-point source” pollution,
water pollution that is generated all over and carried to rivers and streams
in pipes and ditches. The problem with non-point source pollution is that it
is very expensive to treat and discharge. Treatment facilities would have to
be very large to treat storm peak flows and would sit unused more that 95% of
the time. The best way to improve stormwater quality is to treat the source
– don’t let runoff get polluted in the first place. These methods
are called Best Management Practices (BMPs).
-EPA 2004
Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4)
A conveyance or system of conveyances (including roads with drainage systems,
municipal streets, catch basins, curbs, gutters, ditches, manmade channels,
or storm drains) owned by a state, city, town or other public body, that is
designed or used for collecting or conveying storm water, which is not a combined
sewer, and which is not part of a publicly owned treatment works. Commonly referred
to as an "MS4" [40 CFR 122.26(b)(8)].
Clean Water Act (CWA)
The Clean Water Act is an act passed by the U.S. Congress to control water pollution.
It was formerly referred to as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972
or Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (Public Law 92-500),
33 U.S.C. 1251 et. seq., as amended by: Public Law 96-483; Public Law 97-117;
Public Laws 95-217, 97-117, 97-440, and 100-04.
Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO)
A discharge of untreated wastewater from a combined sewer system at a point
prior to the headworks of a publicly owned treatment works. CSOs generally occur
during wet weather (rainfall or snowmelt). During periods of wet weather, these
systems become overloaded, bypass treatment works, and discharge directly to
receiving waters.
Combined Sewer System (CSS)
A wastewater collection system which conveys sanitary wastewaters (domestic,
commercial and industrial wastewaters) and storm water through a single pipe
to a publicly owned treatment works for treatment prior to discharge to surface
waters.