Workshops teach a better way to manage stormwater.

In workshops around the country, the U.S. Army is demonstrating a set of techniques called Low Impact Development (LID) for minimizing impacts to water quality and aquatic habitat from real estate development. The idea began in the Department of Environmental Resources of Prince George's County, Maryland, in the early 1990s. By the late 1990s, Fort Meade, in nearby Odenton, Maryland, had begun designing a LID demonstration project, and, by the turn of the century, Fort Lee, in southern Virginia, had initiated a LID demonstration project. LID has since been adopted by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. EPA Office of Water, and the states of North Carolina and Washington as the preferred method of developing land.

Last year, the U.S. Army Environmental Center began a series of three-day LID workshops. Staff from federal, state, and local agencies; all of the military services; nonprofit organizations; and academic institutions are encouraged to attend. The first workshop took place at Fort Belvoir, in April 2002, and workshops are being scheduled for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Lewis, Washington.

Attendees learn the importance of incorporating LID concepts and principles into the planning process, a variety of techniques for mimicking the predevelopment hydrologic regime of the land, and retrofit methods that can he applied to highly urbanized environments. Historically, stormwater that flows into streams--and eventually large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bag the Great Lakes, and Puget Sound--has contained high levels of sediment from soil erosion, nutrients from animal wastes and fertilizer, and pollutants such as oil and heavy metals from parking lots and industrial sites.

The traditional civil-engineering approach to stormwater management seeks to maximize the movement of large volumes of water from the built environment to large stormwater ponds that have little habitat value and are not maintained. At the LID workshops, by contrast, attendees learn how to use the land's own ability to retain and gradually release stormwater and attenuate pollution.

For more information, contact Helene Merkel at Home Engineering, by phone at [phone] or by e-mail at [e-mail].

(Adapted from Environmental Update, Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring 2003.)