Stormwater Management
Protecting water quality is critical to maintain the integrity of Cape Cod’s public water supplies, swimming beaches, shellfish, aquaculture, and recreational resources. While water pollution is often associated with industrial activities and maritime accidents, stormwater runoff, a non-point source pollutant, is also a major contributor to the problem. Excess fertilizers and insecticides and the harmful chemicals that accumulate on roofs, pavement and other impervious surfaces, are transported by stormwater to surface and ground waters. This runoff severely degrades water quality, harming the ecology of coastal waters and threatening public health.
While federal and state water quality standards require communities to treat and manage stormwater, municipal stormwater management requires an investment in trained staff, infrastructure improvements, maintenance, and management systems. Finding the funding to manage stormwater runoff to meet water quality standards is a challenge. Traditional sources of funding (state and federal grants) are typically not enough to address all of a community’s stormwater management needs.
In recent years, communities across the country have adopted stormwater utilities as a way to create adequate funding for comprehensive municipal stormwater management programs. These utilities have proven to be a successful way for cities and towns to fund stormwater programs that will bring communities into compliance with federal regulations for non-point source pollution under the Clean Water Act.
To help communities meet these stormwater management challenges, APCC and the Mass Bays Program are providing outreach workshops for municipal officials and other interested groups on the benefits of stormwater utilities. These workshops and other outreach events are offered in partnership with the Barnstable County Coastal Resources Committee, the Cape Cod Commission's Project Storm, Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, the Waquoit Bay Coastal Training Program and other partners.
