Stormwater Management
The Issue · Position · Status · Resources
The Issue
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has initiated a national rulemaking to establish a program to reduce stormwater discharges for new development and redevelopment sites and to make other regulatory improvements to strengthen its existing stormwater program. These regulations will impose additional stormwater controls for existing buildings, aimed at creating pre-construction hydrology flows after a site is developed.
In September 2010, EPA issued an Information Collection Request (ICR) to more than 3,000 developers and owners to survey stormwater best management practices and their associated costs. NAIOP, along with other real estate organizations, successfully lobbied to omit certain onerous financial data from the questionnaire and created an ICR guide for members that received the questionnaire from EPA.
The proposed regulations were scheduled to be released by EPA on September 30, 2011, but have recently been postponed until December 2. The final regulations are still scheduled for enactment by November 19, 2012.
Position
While NAIOP is still waiting to see the proposed regulations from EPA, we are concerned that these new regulations will be extremely costly to the real estate industry and impose new unproven technologies as mandates. While EPA has highlighted certain measures that have shown to be beneficial for certain properties, such as rain gardens, green roofs and pervious pavements, it is not realistic to impose these and other measures for all properties on a national scale.
Status
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced a two month delay before they will release their proposed rule for post construction stormwater regulations. The proposed rule is now scheduled to be released on December 2, 2011.
Resources
Contact:
John Bryant
Senior Director for Federal Affairs
(703) 904-7100 ext. 162
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