Stormwater Management -Water Quality Monitoring and Improvements

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

Richland County Stormwater Maganement has developed an innovative and comprehensive water quality monitoring program. The monitoring, which identifies the quality and condition of the County’s stormwater system, is currently being used as an effective tool and key metric to measure the success of the overall County Government stormwater program. In some instances, Richland County has gone beyond permit requirement s in order to provide quantifiable data for watershed assessment and water quality improvement projects. The primary objective of the monitoring is to identify baseline water quality data for the county’s water bodies and to continuously track the improvements and/or degradations. The other main objective is to help tailor the Richland County Stormwater initiatives and programs based on the trends and targeted pollutants. The monitoring program encompasses wet weather, ambient, sediment, macroinvertebrate, dissolved oxygen and road runoff monitoring. This application presents a summary of analysis on stormwater sampling data that was collected and trends developed to date. Monitoring trends are developed every year to create a dashboard that helps steer the direction of the program.