Stormwater Management Plan for Warren County
On June 9 2010, the Warren County Commissioners adopted their new Stormwater Management Plan. The plan has been under development for the last several years. Although the law requiring a stormwater plan was passed back in the 1970’s, this is Warren County’s first Stormwater Managment Plan. It was generally believed that because we don’t have a lot of large scale development in the county that a plan was unnecessary. But even in Warren County it has become apparent that we need stormwater management here too.
Dan Glotz with the County Dept. of Planning and Zoning was charged with the job of coordinating the development of the plan. The engineering firm HGH was contracted to develop both the Phase I as well as Phase II of the study. Phase I was a preliminary study to determine how bad the problems are, where they are located and how municipalities have been dealing with them. Phase II is the detailed plan outlining under what circumstances stormwater mgt. is needed, what practices can be used to control stormwater and other regulations and guidelines. The county must adopt the plan but by law the municipalities must adopt the sample or model ordinance or one that is at least as conservative as the model ordinance. In other words they can make their particular township ordinance stricter but not more lenient than the model ordinance. The county plan and model ordinance set the minimum standards for controlling runoff.