City of Aiken Stormwater Ordinance Update & Design Manual Support
Aiken, SC
Thomas & Hutton compiled existing information and met with the City to define its existing problems and objectives for improving its post-construction stormwater quantity and quality management standards. With this information, we developed outreach materials to be used in facilitating discussions with City Council and other stakeholders. Through a series of workshops, Thomas & Hutton and the City met with representatives of the local development community, residents, and environmental stakeholders to discuss the problems they perceived with the existing standards and to develop consensus about ordinance revisions.
Based on the stakeholder and City input received, the City’s stormwater ordinance was updated to improve the management of stormwater quality and quantity through the adoption of Unified Sizing Criteria. Another important element of the revision was the incorporation of redevelopment incentives to improve watershed health in fully developed watersheds. The revised ordinance also strengthens and clarifies the City’s maintenance requirements and enforcement provisions and includes new sections to describe variances and exemptions and establish a Stormwater Advisory Committee and a citizen complaint procedure.
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Thomas & Hutton prepared a new Stormwater Design Manual, which replaced the stormwater sections of the City’s Land Development Regulation and augmented the new ordinance. The stormwater design manual provides significantly more detail and guidance to the City’s development community, including clarification on the applicability of the City’s stormwater requirements and permitting process, stormwater design requirements with detailed descriptions, stormwater drainage computation requirement sand drainage system design, stormwater easement, and best management practices (BMPs) maintenance requirements, post-construction BMP operations, and maintenance requirements, and erosion and sediment control requirements.
Thomas & Hutton took the lead in the development of design aids and provided technical review and coordination. These included a designer’s checklist, BMP operation and maintenance packets, and a design spreadsheet to assist in the siting and implementation of stormwater BMPs. After completion of the design aids, Thomas & Hutton presented the materials at training workshops for the development community and City staff.
Thomas & Hutton teamed with Brown and Caldwell for the creation of the City of Aiken Stormwater Ordinance Update & Design Manual.
