Urban Stormwater Retrofit Projects – reprinted from Stormwater, Sept. 2008
Complete Romtec Utilities Stormwater Pump station
The stormwater professionals interviewed for this story agreed that it’s a positive trend, and healthy for residents and the environment that municipalities are putting an increased emphasis on treating runoff in urban areas.
Manufacturers and municipal officials also agreed that this segment of the industry will continue to grow as federal treatment regulations grow ever stricter.
“The underlying mantra of ‘treat it all’ is driving the development of stormwater treatment in urban areas,” says Mark Sheldon of Romtec Utilities in Roseberg, OR. Sheldon’s company makes complete stormwater pumping systems that are often used in urban projects.
“The requirement to handle stormwater and to pump stormwater has always been there,” he says. “But there was a time when a tremendous amount of stormwater was allowed to just run off into creeks or the lake or into the ocean. That is no longer the case. Now, whenever you are building something new, or whenever you are working on a retrofit project, you have to treat all the stormwater runoff before letting it discharge into another body of water. This is a good thing, and it is making retrofit a more important part of the stormwater treatment business.”
For evidence of the growing importance of urban stormwater work to the industry, Sheldon needs only to look at his own company. Romtec has three main markets for its submersible pumps: wastewater, industrial, and stormwater.
Five years ago, the stormwater portion of Romtec’s business was about a quarter as large as was the company’s industrial sector, Sheldon says. Today, Romtec’s pump sales for stormwater uses are nearly as large as they are for industrial work.
“Whether it be rerouting stormwater to traditional wastewater treatment plants, or whether it be the onsite treatment of potentially polluted stormwater, we are now seeing it mandated in one form or another that all runoff must be treated,” he says. “The requirements to treat stormwater—in urban areas, too—grows greater and greater, and reaches all of us. Water is our precious resource.”
While the increase in business is undoubtedly positive for stormwater professionals, urban retrofit projects are not always easy tasks. Treating stormwater runoff and installing BMPs that are effective can prove challenging when projects are tackled in crowded urban areas where space is often limited.
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