NACWA Regulatory Alert (RA 06-10)

Action Please By:
January 12, 2007

Green infrastructure is playing an increasingly important role in clean water management practices across the nation. As a result, NACWA is expanding its advocacy efforts to increase public and political awareness of the benefits of green infrastructure, to encourage public agencies to consider green infrastructure as an option in fulfilling their clean water mission, and to learn more about what our members are doing in the green infrastructure arena.

As part of these efforts, NACWA has collaborated in recent months with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Low Impact Development (LID) Center to draft a Statement of Support for Green Infrastructure that outlines the goals and benefits of green infrastructure and expresses support for its use in a variety of clean water communities. A copy of the Statement may be found at http://www.nacwa.org/getfile.cfm?fn=2006-12-18green.pdf.  Both EPA’s Office of Water and Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) have been involved in crafting the Statement, and have made a number of positive contributions.

In short the Statement is:

• applicable to, and available for implementation by, cities with combined and/or separate sewers, and/or municipal separate storm sewer (MS4) responsibility;
• optional and does not mandate any particular actions.

EPA plans to sponsor a meeting in January to introduce the Statement and to begin to seek endorsement of the Statement from a broad number of organizations.

NACWA’s Board of Directors will consider the Statement at its next meeting, to be held on January 31, 2007 in the context of NACWA’s 2007 Winter Meeting in St. Petersburg, FL. Accordingly, we would like to provide NACWA members with the opportunity to review the Statement in its present form, and to share with us:

• thoughts on how it might be improved; and
• information on your utility’s current or planned use of green infrastructure.

We would appreciate your input by COB on Friday, January 12. Responses may be submitted to NACWA Counsel Nathan Gardner-Andrews by email at ngardner-andrews@nacwa.org or by phone at 202/833-3692.