Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the intervening years to refl ect new approaches to stormwater management
has largely not occurred.
Furthermore, the municipality suffers from two signifi cant defi ciencies
that plague all stormwater programs: inspection and maintenance. 30 It is
one thing to monitor conditions over time and require treatment levels
and quite another to ensure that existing systems are working as designed.
The Watershed Department is charged with inspecting all BMPs annually
and is responsible for maintaining systems for single-family residential
development; commercial and multifamily property owners maintain their
own BMPs. A Watershed Department staff member describes the problem:
Stormwater utilities across the country are faced with the issue of every time a
new stormwater treatment facility is built, it has to be maintained. Here in Austin,
the municipality takes responsibility for ponds and treatment systems that are
residential. If it's for a private commercial development like an offi ce building,
the developer or owner is charged with maintenance. And multi-family is included
in that too. We'll inspect these and we require them to be maintained. But we do
the maintenance for single-family residential subdivisions and there are more of
them coming on line every year. We have thousands to maintain. We don't want
to increase our budget every year but we kind of have to keep up with that kind
of stuff. 31
The maintenance and inspection issues refl ect the municipality's chal-
lenges in managing a complex and continually expanding technological
network. The current drainage network of Austin comprises two hundred
square miles and four thousand miles of drainage pipes, as well as thou-
sands of fl ood and water quality controls. 32 Municipal staff is charged
with managing the network using the latest scientifi c expertise within a
bureaucratic hierarchy. A Watershed Department staff member sums up
Austin's water quality program: “Everybody wants the image of Austin
to be progressive and innovative and certainly not lagging behind but the
reality is we're more reactive than our reputation suggests. When I go to
Portland or Seattle or the mid-Atlantic states, they're doing a lot more
cool stuff than we are. They're in a different place.” 33
The population growth issues of Austin described in the previous chap-
ter strain the administrative capacity of the municipality to fulfi ll and
maintain the ambitious goals of greening up the Promethean infrastructure
of the past while maintaining the existing system. Ultimate control of
nature requires energy and fi nances that are beyond most, if not all, con-
temporary government bureaucracies. Beyond the lack of staff and budget
available for inspecting and maintaining these facilities, a more insidious
problem is that the municipality does not even know the location of more
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