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CA NEMO
Partnership Impacts
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The California Coastal Commission, which leads the CA NEMO Partnership,
has begun requiring that the state’s
73 coastal cities and counties include stormwater
management plans to
address water quality impacts resulting from development in the coastal
land use plans they must prepare. Common requirements include: siting
and designing development to preserve the infiltration, purification
and retention functions of natural drainage systems; minimizing increases
in peak runoff rates; minimizing impervious surfaces in new development
and redevelopment; inclusion of effective site design and source control
Best Manage-ment Practices (BMPs) in all developments; and minimizing
land disturbance during construction.
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One
of the partners in the CA NEMO Partnership is the State Water Resources
Control Board. The Board, which is responsible
for the regulation of both water allocation and water
quality protection, has begun recommending in regulatory
guidance and consultations with
applicants for new developments that communities
use NEMO and low impact design (LID) principles to reduce the impacts
of the new development
on water quality.
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The
California Coastal Commission, which coordinates the CA NEMO Partnership,
required a large residential/commercial
subdivision in the City of Oxnard to minimize
impervious surfaces, direct all rooftop runoff to vegetated areas and install
best practices
to treat polluted runoff before discharge to the
adjacent harbor. Also, a recent golf course project in the City
of Malibu implemented
a water reuse/recycle system and the use of biofiltration
swales onsite to eliminate dry weather runoff from the site and
reduce the
pollutants in stormwater runoff. In addition, the
El Dorado County Resource Conservation District, another CA NEMO
partner, recently
completed a gully repair project where they prescribed
rain barrels and bio-infiltration devices for runoff control.
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The CA
NEMO Partnership has been effective in including land use policies
that are protective of natural resources
in statewide
programs. For example, California’s Nonpoint Source Pollution
Control Program Plan, which
combines the state’s section 319
nonpoint and 6217 coastal nonpoint programs,
references NEMO principles and establishes
a committee to focus on urban and NEMO
issues. The
plan also creates the Critical Coastal
Areas program, which will address the
water quality impacts of land use activities
in coastal
zone watersheds in critical need of protection.
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