The Stormwater Blog

Proper maintenance is hands-down the most important factor in the sustainability of any infiltration system. By their very nature, infiltration systems are difficult to inspect and maintain. The selection of a cost-effective and easy-to-access pretreatment system can mean a huge difference in maintenance expenses for years to come.

Proprietary stormwater treatment systems, or stormwater control measures (SCMs), offer several unique benefits compared to traditional land-based SCMs. Perhaps best known for their space-efficient design, making them well-suited and essential tools when managing stormwater runoff in ultra-urban environments, proprietary SCMs have several additional benefits discussed in this blog post.

At first glance, it's easy to get excited over how much innovation has occurred in the field of stormwater management in recent years. A wide variety of new stormwater control measures (SCMs) have been developed and deployed for use while we simultaneously worked to refine our design standards for our tried and true practices to improve their functionality.

Stormwater quality regulations continue to expand to include treatment criteria for total phosphorus. Phosphorus is now the second-most-regulated pollutant in stormwater runoff after total suspended solids. While much has been written about BMPs used to remove total phosphorus, we shouldn’t underestimate the role BMP maintenance has on reducing phosphorus levels. More specifically, we should take into account the timing of maintenance events and the type of maintenance being performed.

As we return to work after the Christmas break, we can’t help but look forward to 2023 and what the future holds for stormwater management. We reached out to several Contech associates to get their insight. Here is what they had to say.

High-flow bioretention systems target the removal of suspended solids, total and dissolved nutrients and metals, oil and grease, trash, and debris. Components

Oil changes. Gutter cleaning. Annual doctor appointments. These are all forms of maintenance that most people would likely agree are necessary to keep our

Many manufactured stormwater filtration systems use media-filled cartridges. During a storm, runoff passes through the filtration media, which absorbs and

In the part one of this blog series, we looked at Factors That Drive MTD Maintenance Costs. These include time and equipment, disposal costs, and consumables.

Manufactured Treatment Devices (MTD's) are similar to non-proprietary stormwater BMP's in that they must be maintained so they perform as intended. However, the