Stormwater Management

Navigating runoff regulations can be tough. Let us steer.
RMA GeoScience's 3-step stormwater management plan brings the best practices in the business to your project.

Subject to increasing regulation, environmental pressures and evolving compliance obligations, stormwater management presents one of the most challenging aspects of project design, construction, and maintenance. RMA GeoScience’s 3-step stormwater management plan uses up-to-the-minute knowledge of state and federal regulatory policies, years of large-scale stormwater management project oversight and the best technology available to provide clients with the most effective long-term stormwater management plans in the industry.

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What is stormwater management?

Stormwater runoff occurs when excess water flows over parking lots, pavement, roofing, and other impermeable surfaces, collecting dirt, chemicals, and dangerous pollutants. Excess stormwater can overrun drainage ditches and sewers, leading to erosion, flooding, and infrastructure damage. Stormwater management is how we direct, contain, and treat stormwater runoff to keep it from bleeding into groundwater and harming the environment and public health.

What is a stormwater management plan?

It’s how any given project, development or municipal agency handles runoff and mitigates its negative effects. Stormwater management plans must address not only the initial design and construction phase of any project, but its ongoing operation and compliance with ever-evolving regulatory and compliance requirements.
RMA’s 3-step stormwater management plan pinpoints runoff pollution risks, details site-specific measures to reduce pollutants, and outlines all necessary steps to comply with laws, codes and permitting throughout the building process and beyond. RMA GeoScience’s stormwater management services include site mapping, BMP (best management practice) details, drainage studies, rain event action plans, treatment systems, spill reports, corrective action charting, and all related compliance.

Why is stormwater management regulation increasing, and who oversees it?

Climate change and diminishing water resources have exacerbated the effects of runoff on the environment, harming coastal and inland water bodies, decreasing water quality, accelerating soil erosion, and reducing biodiversity. To control flooding and protect our ecosystems, water resources, and public health, both federal and state agencies have continued to implement and amend stormwater management requirements. Under the EPA’s Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) was created to regulate sources that release pollutants into U.S. waters. In addition to enforcing NPDES requirements, many state water boards have additional compliance and permitting standards that municipal, commercial, construction, and industrial, stormwater management programs must meet. And after 50 years in California, we’re subject matter experts in all of them.