Cogenerating Resilient Urban Futures through Combined Sewer Overflow Management

Traditional practices of managing stormwater systems fail to invoke an expansive range of co-benefits beyond water service that has been thoroughly documented over the last two decades, and many water utility managers are missing an opportunity to reconcile mandated stormwater management objectives with sustainability and resilience goals. This research investigates the sustainability of "old" paradigms of water management and the availability of new paradigms that can support community resilience. A literature review is conducted to support the development of a framework that provides regulated stormwater utilities with an alternative pathway to maintaining regulatory compliance while maximizing opportunities to cogenerate stormwater management solutions that provide valuable community benefits. This framework is applied within the context of a case study where a utility authority regulated under the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Combined Sewer Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Control Policy uses this framework to develop a master plan implementing green infrastructure (GI) in a neighborhood within a combined sewer system area. The pathway to achieving resilient regulatory compliance incorporates participatory planning strategies and an ecosystem services framework while maintaining industry standard modeling tool used to assess the impact of the infrastructure plan. A cohort of environmental ambassadors living in the city is engaged in a series of exercises to gauge the strengths, weaknesses, and needs of the population and cogenerate a stormwater management plan that serves their community. A multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers produce a master plan that reduces CSO discharges by managing runoff through a distributed network of GI built under a green jobs program. A Hydrologic and Hydraulic (H-H) model is developed to provide quantitative metrics required of all planning efforts supporting CSO reduction goals. Results are discussed in the context of strengths and weaknesses of the stormwater infrastructure planning framework, challenges and successes of the selected engagement strategies, and the potential for stormwater management solutions that utilize an ecosystem services framework to broaden the knowledge arena and support CSO control measures that mutually benefit regulated entities and the communities they serve.