Stormwater | Retrofit Stormwater Management Navigating multidisciplinary hurdles at the watershed scale

Heavy machinery strips the land of trees and topsoil and compacts the ground. Roads, parking lots, commercial buildings, and residential housing cover the landscape with impervious surfaces. Precipitation runs off the landscape. Erosive gullies form. Trash and chemical pollutants wash into storm drains. Streams are impaired, and only the most tolerant species persist. In the present housing boom, this scene is becoming typical across the United States. Many communities are considering options to address stormwater runoff problems in already-developed areas, such as those pictured in Figure 1. However, such retrofit stormwater management is riddled with legal constraints (e.g., private property rights), economic challenges (e.g., stormwater fees not tightly linked to runoff), and social concerns (e.g., basement flooding). Although a multidisciplinary approach that directly incorporates the various legal, social, economic, and hydrologic aspects of stormwater management is therefore more appropriate, such an approach is more complicated and thus rarely undertaken. Stormwater runoff from new or existing development can be addressed using either centralized management systems, such as larg