‘Our goal is to educate…’
The MS4-Stormwater Department is committed to ensuring full compliance with the Clean Water Act requirements to ensure our local water resources remain free of harmful pollutants. Our goal is to educate the citizens of Saint Albans, the general public, school-aged children, and businesses (including contractors and developers) on stormwater pollution prevention solutions and techniques to protect and improve the quality of our most precious resource, water. We are here to maintain and better our separate storm sewer system and community.
What is MS4 & Phase II?
The City of Saint Albans is an MS4 Phase II Community. What does this mean? MS4 stands for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System. Under the 1987 Clean Water Act Amendments, the U.S. EPA developed new regulations to address stormwater that might impact water quality. These new “Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System” (MS4) regulations were set up in two phases dependent upon population and are enforced by the U.S. EPA.
The 1999 Phase II regulation requires small MS4s in U.S. Census Bureau-defined urbanized areas, as well as MS4s designated by the permitting authority, to obtain NPDES permit coverage for their stormwater discharges. Phase II also includes non-traditional MS4s such as public universities, departments of transportation, hospitals, and prisons.
Phase II is intended to further reduce adverse impacts to water quality and aquatic habitat by instituting the use of controls on the unregulated sources of stormwater discharges that have the greatest likelihood of causing continued environmental degradation.