The eighth annual StormCon will take place in Anaheim, CA, August 16-20, 2009. With all that’s going to be happening in the regulatory arena in the next few months, we’d like to hear even more voices from the ESC industry-even if you don’t consider “stormwater” per se to be the mainstay of your work-participating in the discussion there, both as attendees and as presenters. Here’s why.
A major focus of the conference from the beginning has been the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System’s Phase II and how it affects the work we do-whether that work is for a municipal government, trying to set up and manage a stormwater program, or for one of the many businesses large and small that must work under the new (and still-changing) regulations. Those of you who perform ESC work in more than one jurisdiction, for example, sometimes find that BMPs that are approved in one area are not acceptable just down the road, or that the rules governing site inspections are different from place to place.
Now, add to this mix EPA’s new effluent guidelines for construction sites, which are due out soon (the draft proposal is due in December of this year, with the final rule to follow a year later). No one knows yet exactly what the guidelines will propose-the EPA took public comments up until the last week of September-but for better or worse, they will affect the way the industry works. Some believe that having a numeric turbidity limit for runoff from construction sites will simplify things, providing an unambiguous goal for construction-site operators, for the manufacturers of the BMPs they use to filter or treat runoff, and for inspectors. Others think the whole proposition is too costly and too site-dependent to work. By the time of the conference, the draft will have been out for several months, and there should be some lively, not to say heated, discussion of it in Anaheim.
There are six conference tracks for StormCon ’09:
- BMP Case Studies
- Low-Impact Development
- Stormwater Program Management
- Water-Quality Monitoring
- Advanced Research Topics
- Source Control
Many of the inspection and compliance issues fall under the Program Management track; you can see more details, and more information on the conference itself, at www.StormCon.com. Abstracts are due on December 3, 2008.
If you plan and design erosion and sediment control BMPs, consider presenting a case study at StormCon ’09. And especially if you’re involved in site inspections, or deal with construction-site compliance, this is one conference you won’t want to miss.
