Any rain that falls on the roof of your house or collects on paved areas like driveways, roads and footpaths is stormwater. Stormwater drains carry stormwater into natural waterways such as rivers, creeks and the sea. As it travels over the land, it picks up all kinds of pollutants such as oil, grease, fertilisers, litter and heavy metals not naturally found in our waterways. These pollutants contaminate the water in various ways. Some are toxic and dangerous, even in small amounts. Others, such as nutrients, are not poisonous but they are present in such great quantities, they can impact natural waterways and the marine environment. After a dry season, the first flush of stormwater can have the same pollutant load as raw sewage.

As our population expands, the potential for contaminants to wash off rooves, driveways, roads, footpaths and unsealed surfaces and into our waterways increases. Urban and industrial development, farming, mining, combustion of fossil fuels, river-channel alteration, animal-feeding operations, and other human activities can change the quality of natural waters. The whole community (residential, commercial and industrial) contribute pollutants into stormwater. This can cause many problems for aquatic species (such as sea grass and fish) and humans who fish, swim or boat in these water bodies.

Stormwater runoff occurs when precipitation from rain or snowmelt flows over the land surface. The addition of roads, driveways, parking lots, rooftops and other surfaces that prevent water from soaking into the ground to our landscape greatly increases the runoff volume created during storms. This runoff is swiftly carried to our local streams, lakes, wetlands and rivers and can cause flooding and erosion, and wash away important habitat for critters that live in the stream. Stormwater runoff also picks up and carries with it many different pollutants that are found on paved surfaces such as sediment, nitrogen, phosphorus, bacteria, oil and grease, trash, pesticides and metals. It comes as no surprise then that stormwater runoff is the number one cause of stream impairment in urban areas.

To reduce the impacts of runoff on urban streams, EPA expanded the Clean Water Act in 1987 to require municipalities to obtain permits for discharges of stormwater runoff. As a result, many communities have adopted regulations requiring developers to install stormwater management practices that reduce the rate and/or volume and remove pollutants from runoff generated on their development sites. This site provides links to a number of resources to help communities develop or improve their stormwater management programs. It also introduces some terminology related to the various approaches to stormwater management, keeping in mind that these are not mutually exclusive categories. Low-Impact Development (LID) is a stormwater management approach that seeks to manage runoff using distributed and decentralized micro-scale controls. LID's goal is to mimic a site's predevelopment hydrology by using design techniques that infiltrate, filter, store, evaporate, and detain runoff close to its source.

You can now hire highly professional and effective Stormwater Erosion Conrtol services and SWPPP on the internet. This has made life a lot easier for those who wish to find a stormwwater erosion control company quickly as they are able to simply log onto the net, and find a reliable firm to assist them with their troubles in a quick and fast acting manner.