Best Management Practices

What the Heck is a BMP?

By Bob Woodall

When it comes to keeping our waterways clean, BMPs or "Best Management Practices", are a very important tool which local governments could require homeowners and developers to install and maintain. Unfortunately we see more and more developments constructing buildings and installing impervious pavement without adequate means to capture and treat polluted runoff.

BMPs are defined to "include practices that provide 60% or greater metals removal, such as infiltration basins, trenches, vegetated filter strips, grass swales, porous pavement, concrete grid pavement, sand filter filtration basins, water quality inlet with sand filter, wet ponds, constructed storm water wetlands, as well as, treatment requirements, operating procedures, and practices to control runoff to reduce flooding, remove pollutants, and provide other amenities."

We need to incorporate progressive approaches to current development practices and accordingly pass site development standards to control both the quantity and quality of runoff from both developed and undeveloped sites.  BMPs like vegetated filter strips, grass swales, porous pavement, or concrete grid pavement in parking lots should be required by local code.  In addition, developments should install and maintain features such as wet ponds, constructed wetlands, and infiltration basins and trenches, to treat and remove pollutants, and control runoff to reduce flooding downstream.  It's a question of taking responsibility for one's actions and the impacts they might have on the environment.  We as citizens must decide how we will pay to clean up the streams, through development fees, improved building standards, storm water utility fees on our property, or a combination of these options.

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Last updated: 30 Nov 99