Your
Community Water Quality Plan should list all of the waters significant enough to have a name and their
quality condition expressed as:
Excellent waters are fit for all human uses and can support sensitive fish and
other aquatic creatures;
Good waters can support a high number of game fish but not
highly-sensitive organisms;
Fair waters support few game fish and are not suitable for swimming;
Poor quality waters support only the most pollution-tolerant organisms.
Quality
Considerations are based on Fish and other Biological Samplings
Watershed
Land Use can be related to quality issues such as: forest covered watersheds
are usually of excellent
quality; a mix of forest and farms with good soil-water conservation practices
produces good quality waters; a mix of farms, forest
and suburban development yields fair quality waters; intense suburban-urban
development usually results in poor water quality.
Watershed
Percentage covered by buildings, streets, parking
lots and other impervious surfaces also relates to aquatic resource quality as:
excellent
less than 5% impervious area; good
less than 10% impervious area; fair
less than 15% impervious area; and poor
greater than 15% impervious area.
In addition to current quality, your plan should
show how the health of named streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs and tidal
waters will change with anticipated growth. This can be determined by
estimating how watershed impervious area changes with
future growth.
Development Driven Aquatic Resource Damage can be prevented if the runoff from all
new impervious surfaces drains with effective best management practices BMP. Waters degraded by past development can be restored if existing
impervious areas are redeveloped with highly
effective BMPs. The plan should describe the steps taken to ensure that all
future development will fully utilize these highly-effective BMPs or explain
why not. It must also set forth actions that restore fair or poor quality
waters to a good condition.
Actions may include: retrofitting existing impervious surfaces with
highly-effective BMPs, upgrading wastewater treatment plants and fixing sewers
prone to overflows. Only after these
three steps are taken should in-stream restoration or tree planting be
considered.
Frequently
Asked Questions does the plan provide:
criteria for assessing the impact of past and anticipated growth
current quality of all named waters within the planning area
the quality of all named waters with anticipated growth
recommended actions for poor or fair quality waters in terms of:
restoring the waters to a good condition and the factual basis for the effectiveness
of each action
the quality of named waters with anticipated growth
If all named waters are of good to excellent
quality both presently and with anticipated growth then the score for this
quality of life factor is 5 or A.
A
New Plan for Your Area if your current plan is about to expire or rates poorly based on the Quality of Life Growth Management
system, we can assist you in carrying out the outlined steps and/or conduct a community workshop and assist you in
formulating a planning strategy for
your community.
Connect with Tema
for
Streams Lakes Rivers and Tidal Waters Quality
Planning
Local
Knowledge – Global Reach
