One of the most critical takeaways is that your specific obligations are dictated by a formal agreement made with the city or county during development. Depending on your region, this might be called a Water Quality Management Plan (WQMP), a Low Impact Development (LID) plan, or a Stormwater Management Plan. These documents serve as your roadmap, containing an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) guide that details exactly what equipment is on-site, how often it must be cleaned, and what your reporting and training obligations look like.
Even if you have an older property that previously had no obligations, redeveloping or improving an area over 5,000 square feet in California can trigger new requirements for stormwater filtration. This often results in a mix of old infrastructure and new, modern filtration devices that must be maintained to stay in compliance during city audits.
Watch the full video to learn how to navigate these agreements and ensure your site is prepared. If you need a hand, we offer full site evaluations, including current condition photos, site maps, and budget quotes for preventative maintenance plans. Don’t wait for an audit—get the details you need to stay compliant today!
Video Transcript
0:00 Intro
0:12 Maintenance Schedules Are Key
0:26 Redeveloped Properties
0:44 Older Infrastructures
1:12 Check Your Agreement
1:51 Maintaining Stormwater Systems
0:00 Intro
Good day, Joe Warner with California Compliance Environmental and Texas Compliance Environmental. You know, we have a lot of clients, a lot of property managers and developers, and they often ask me, “How often do I have to maintain my stormwater system?”
0:12 Maintenance Schedules Are Key
The WQMP is going to dictate how often and what needs to be done. When you develop a property, you have to sign an agreement with the city or county that is going to improve the stormwater after development. We’ll get into that today.
0:26 Redeveloped Properties
Now, when you have a property like this, it’s been developed, redeveloped, so on and so forth. So, a lot of this property wasn’t under any kind of stormwater obligation, but since they continue to redevelop it, they’re going to have more and more improvements to the stormwater system.
0:44 Older Infrastructures
Now, when you have a stormwater system, you could have older infrastructure mixed with new infrastructure. In the state of California, any improvements you make over 5,000 square feet is going to require you to make improvements to your stormwater system as well. Have an older infrastructure, you’re not required to maintain the stormwater system, but if you make improvements to your stormwater system, now you are obligated to maintain your stormwater filtration system.
1:12 Check Your Agreement
All those obligations—how often you need to frequent, what needs to be done—are all going to be found in your stormwater agreement. Those go by different names depending on different regions. Water Quality Management Plan (WQMP) is most common for Southern California. Start getting up into LA County, you start seeing LID (Low Impact Development) plans. Stormwater Management Plan is also another common one.
This was an older infrastructure that didn’t have any obligations. Now, since they made some improvements to the property, the city said, “Hey, I want to see some stormwater filtration going into place,” so these stormwater filtration devices are much newer than the actual infrastructure of the property.
1:51 Maintaining Stormwater Systems
How often do I need to maintain my stormwater system? That is an agreement between the city and the developer. So, whoever owns the property is going to come into an agreement with the city or the county in which they’ve developed their property, and the WQMP will have a list: O&M (Operations and Maintenance) guide. It’ll list exactly what is on-site, what needs to be cleaned, how often it needs to be cleaned, and the reporting obligations, the training obligations for those on-site and those managing the property.
All that can be found in your WQMP. If you do have a WQMP plan, then we’ll go exactly per the agreement. So when the city does an audit, you’ll be able to have those reports to comply.
So, if you have questions about how often you need to maintain your stormwater system or you just want more details on your stormwater system, if you have compliance, if you want to set it up on a preventive maintenance plan, give us a call, click the link. We’ll be sure to get out to your site, give you a full evaluation, send pictures of current conditions, give you a site map, and a budget quote.
