Five stormwater mistakes we still find on well-run sites
Water · 2026-02-04 · William Smith
Stormwater compliance rarely fails because of the big things. It fails at the drain inlet nobody labelled and the inspection log nobody signed.
1. The plan does not match the site
A Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan is written once and then the site changes: a new storage area, a relocated dumpster, a paved yard extension. Three years later the site map in the plan is fiction. An inspector notices this in about four minutes. Review the map annually and after any material change — it is an hour of work.
2. Inspections happen but are not recorded
Crews frequently do walk the site after rainfall. They simply do not write it down, or they write it on a sheet that lives in a truck. Undocumented inspection is, for compliance purposes, no inspection. A dated form with a name on it, filed the same day, is the whole fix.
3. Housekeeping is treated as separate from compliance
Most of what ends up in runoff arrives there through ordinary operations: a leaking drum, uncovered material, tracked-out sediment, a wash bay draining to the wrong place. Stormwater performance is largely a housekeeping outcome, and the crews who create it are usually never told that.
4. Controls are installed but never maintained
Silt fence that has been overtopped, an inlet filter full of sediment, a check dam that has washed out. Each was correct on the day it went in. Controls need a maintenance trigger — a threshold in the plan that says when they are cleaned or replaced — and somebody named to act on it.
5. Nobody owns the file
When the person who understood the permit leaves, the obligation usually leaves with them. We recommend two named people, one primary and one deputy, and a single folder — physical or digital — containing the permit, the plan, the inspection log, the sampling results and the correspondence.
A short self-check
- Can you produce your current permit and plan within five minutes?
- Does the site map show the site as it is today?
- Is the last inspection record dated within the required interval and signed?
- Has anybody inspected the controls themselves in the last quarter?
- Do two people know where all of this lives?
If any answer is no, that is your next hour of work — and it is cheaper than the alternative.
Written by William Smith, Owner and Principal Consultant at Eco Sinergia LLC, Helena, Montana. Questions about anything above? Email info@eco-sinergia.org or call +1 917 480 5253.
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