EPA targets water runoff

Strict rules ahead for 3 Mass. towns

The US Environmental Protection Agency is set to announce today that it will, for the first time, require some big-box stores, malls, and other businesses to reduce the amount of rainwater that runs off their roofs and parking lots. Federal officials will test the new policy in the Massachusetts towns of Milford, Bellingham, and Franklin.

The EPA, using its authority under the Clean Water Act, will require large commercial and industrial landowners in these towns to steeply reduce the storm-water runoff that picks up pollutants and pours them into the Charles River, officials said last week in interviews. Storm-water runoff is rain and snowmelt that mixes with leaf litter, toxic metals, oil, and exhaust fume deposits as it washes over parking lots, rooftops, and roadways.

"Cities and towns are already investing a lot in storm water," said Ken Moraff, deputy director for ecosystem protection of the EPA's New England region. "These commercial facilities are missing pieces of the puzzle." The new regulations, he said, will help complete the cleanup effort.

In a parallel development, the state Department of Environmental Protection plans to release its own draft rules today that will expand the effort to reduce storm-water runoff throughout the 35 communities that make up the Charles River Watershed area.

The state will require that any commercial development with two or more acres of "impervious" surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt, reduce their storm-water runoff by 65 percent - the same requirements to be made by EPA in the three towns. Outside the watershed, facilities with 5 or more acres of these surfaces would need to make more modest reductions.

The state will give facilities and landowners 10 years to comply after the rules take effect. EPA officials said they have not determined when landowners and businesses must reduce their runoff, or when they will expand the requirement beyond the three test towns to other parts of New England and beyond.

"From a precedent perspective, it's very important," said Chris Kilian, director of the clean water program for the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group. "Having EPA involved in interpreting the Clean Water Act in this way is critical for getting storm water cleaned up all over the country."

Limiting storm-water runoff is not entirely new; for the past several years, Massachusetts has required that new developments and redevelopments near wetlands build features on parking lots and rooftops to help storm water filter through the ground instead of draining across concrete and blacktop into pipes that empty into waterways. The new federal and state regulations will now require many facilities built before the late '90s to retrofit their property to reduce runoff.

"I think it's going to be a shock," said Michael Santora, Milford's town engineer. "Large commercial developments that are older will be impacted most significantly."

Storm-water runoff, rich in phosphorous, fuels toxic algal blooms in waterways, such as those that plagued the lower Charles in the summers of 2006 and 2007. Commercial and industrial sites in the Charles River Watershed, even though they account for only 8 percent of the land in the watershed, contribute 23 percent of the phosphorous that runs annually into the waterway.

The vast majority of the phosphorous from commercial and industrial sites comes from the three towns that will be regulated by the EPA.

The EPA announcement comes on the heels of a National Academy of Sciences report released last month that faulted the agency for failing to protect the country's waterways from storm-water pollution.

"If you look across the country," said Thomas Ballestero, a professor of engineering and hydrology at the University of New Hampshire's Stormwater Center, "most of the big impairments to waterways are storm water related or can be traced back to storm water."

Ballestero noted that although municipalities are already regulated by the EPA, storm water from roadways and suburban subdivisions also contributes significantly to river pollution.

Businesses last week had not been notified of the EPA policy, which comes at a difficult time for many. Commercial real estate values are at record lows, and shopping plazas face declining sales and plummeting consumer confidence. Retail sales in October were down more than 4 percent from October 2007 nationwide, and stores fear a dampened holiday shopping season.

But David Begelfer, CEO of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties' Massachusetts chapter, a real estate trade association, was among a few business people who had heard of the new rules. He was not pleased.

"It's going to be pretty disastrous . . . especially [for] those who are operating on the edge right now," said Begelfer.

The costs of installing effective storm-water technology - such as porous pavement with large stones that allow water to permeate it, or tree-lined islands that sit below a parking lot's surface so runoff can drain into them - can range from $15,000 to $50,000 per acre for new developments, said Ballestero, of UNH's Stormwater Center. And retrofitting an existing development could be 10 to 200 percent more expensive. But, he added, "It's much more cost effective than letting your river or lake get contaminated and having to do remediation."

The Charles River Watershed Association, an environmental stewardship group, praised the new rules.

"The idea is to make our cities and towns mimic the way nature would have worked had we never built them," said Bob Zimmerman, executive director of the association. "And we certainly possess the technology to do that."

Bina Venkataraman can be reached at bvenkataraman@globe.com

Correction: Because of incomplete information provided to the Globe, a story in Monday's Metro section on a US Environmental Protection Agency and state proposal to require reductions of runoff water mischaracterized the reduction in storm-water runoff that is being proposed. The state would require that commercial developments in the Charles River Watershed with two or more acres of impervious surfaces reduce their phosphorous pollution from storm-water runoff by 65 percent.