The Rouge Project: Implementing a General Storm Water Permit as Part of a Watershed Approach to Wet Weather Pollution Management

摘要

Wayne County's Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project (Rouge Project) is a comprehensive program to restore the water quality and beneficial uses of the Rouge River, a tributary to the Detroit River in southeast Michigan which has been designated as a significant source of pollution to the Great Lakes system along the border between the United States and Canada. The Rouge River Watershed is largely urbanized, spans approximately 438 square miles, and is home to over 1.5 million people in 48 communities and 3 counties. Sources of pollution to the river include industrial and municipal point sources, storm water runoff, combined sewer overflows (CSOs), interflow from abandoned dumps, and resuspension of contaminated sediment. Approximately 50 percent of the watershed is served by separate sewer systems, with an additional 20 percent of the watershed served by combined sewers and the remaining area unsewered. The early days of the Rouge Project were focused on alleviating the current loads of sewage and storm water discharged from the 150 CSO locations in the river from about 20 percent of the watershed area. Additional monitoring of the river showed that the other sources of pollution, such as storm water, needed to be controlled before full restoration of the river would be achieved throughout the watershed. The lack of a defined regulatory framework to address storm water pollution and diffuse sources of non-point pollution became a major obstacle to further progress in improving water quality and restoring beneficial uses to the Rouge River. This paper describes the Rouge Project efforts to build institutional and regulatory frameworks necessary to accommodate a watershed approach to wet weather pollution management. Part of this framework is a new watershed-based general permit for storm water discharges issued under the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program. This storm water permit program was developed jointly by the Rouge communities and state and federal regulators and is based on the concept of cooperative, locally-based storm water and watershed management. The Rouge Project is demonstrating that a watershed-based pollution management program, which provides flexibility and real delegation of authority to local stakeholder agencies to decide how to achieve water quality goals, is achieving faster and more cost-effective restoration and protection of water resources. Addressing all of the sources of impairment in the Rouge River, however, necessitated strong consensus building among the 48 community governments, 3 county governments, state and federal government, industries, environmental groups, and private citizens to show that they had a stake in restoring the Rouge River and that their participation was vital. This paper also describes these consensus building strategies, critical to the success of this effort, which were used to engage numerous stakeholders, gain their support, provide them opportunities to influence decisions, and participate in actions to restore and sustain the Rouge River as a valuable community asset.