CASE STUDIES - Low Impact Development and Sustainable Stormwater Management - page 209

more to do with the building structure itself and the water-energy aspects of the
structure, although LID solutions are an important part of the water issues. The
three manuals discussed initially reflect the changing theme of NPS, BMPs, and
LID, as the designs moved into the general construction and land development
market in an organized fashion. The planning studies also reflect this transition
from theory to practice. The design case studies are similar in form but show the
application in different environments and physiographic regions, and are drawn
from several hundred built projects.
B.2 MANUALS
A manual is intended as a guidance document for practioners of a given pro-
fession to illustrate various methods of both design and construction. Since this
particular subject began from a basis of water quality concerns, and all of the
initial legislative and regulatory criteria were expressed in those terms, it is appro-
priate to illustrate how such manuals have evolved over the past 20 years. The
documents included are not intended to summarize all of the various manuals
prepared over that period, only to show how the same basic problem has pro-
duced solutions that have evolved from solving a pollution issue to building a
more sustainable site.
EPA Non-Point Source Pollution Control Manual (1992)
In the Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments of 1991, Congress directed
both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop new programs to control non-
point sources (NPSs) of pollution (Section 6217). Congress stipulated that EPA
and NOAA must give to all 30 states with coastal waters minimum guidance
to establish new pollution control programs. Cahill Associates served as part of
the nationwide team of consultants assisting in the development of this program,
specifically for urban growth-related pollution sources within coastal drainage.
The end result was a non-point source pollution management manual entitled
Guidance Specifying Management Measures for Sources of Nonpoint Pollution in
Coastal Waters (Figure B-1), a massive document that represented a compendium
of both agricultural and urban NPS.
Cahill Associates had previously performed several studies of water quality
impacts in estuarine systems along the New Jersey coast and had developed
nonstructural measures for prevention of pollution rather than mitigation with
structural measures. A technique developed for the New Jersey coastal zone man-
agement program by Cahill Associates, called minimum disturbance/minimum
maintenance land development, was incorporated in the manual. These site devel-
opment management measures required that developers plan, design, and develop
every site to:
1. Protect areas that provide important water quality benefits and/or are par-
ticularly susceptible to erosion and sediment loss.