Municipal LID Regulations: What Is Important to Include to Be Successful?

As more communities look to adopt environmentally sustainable regulations, particularly with regard to stormwater management, LID strategies have been the primary methodology under consideration. Many communities have created regulatory approaches that either encourage or mandate the use of LID strategies, however the implementation of these LID strategies has not always been successful. In some cases design engineers do not incorporate LID in their designs even though the regulations encourage LID. In other cases, there have been a high number of Bioretention systems that have not functioned properly and even failed prematurely. Why are these issues occurring? A second and potentially larger issue is that many of these nonfunctioning systems are located in very public locations, so the public is given a distorted view of a Bioretention system and LID in general, which makes implementation even more difficult. As LID treatment systems are relatively simple concepts, it is concerning that something is not working right on both the regulatory and the design side. Are the regulations missing something or design professionals missing something that results in these problems? This paper will investigate by a review of LID regulations in communities where problems have occurred and those where there are no issues and determine the differences that result in success or failure. Is it simply language within the regulations? Are the approaches to apply LID strategies clearly defined in the regulations? Are design details provided for various types of LID systems that are adequate for the design community to use? Are the design details based upon the best available information at the time the regulations were written? In addition to addressing these questions, potential solutions will be discussed to make the existing LID regulations stronger and result in LID treatment systems functioning as intended.