National NEMO Network: NEMO Programs

Rhode Island NEMO Impacts

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Regulations for Protecting Critical Drinking Water Resources

The Rhode Island NEMO Program, led by the University of Rhode Island (URI) Cooperative Extension, employs several land use decision support tools to help local officials understand land use impacts on water quality and develop strategies for addressing those impacts. These efforts have resulted in numerous changes to local planning and zoning regulations.

RI NEMO is working with the state’s Department of Health to build the capacity of local land use officials to protect drinking water. Through this collaboration, RI NEMO has completed community-based drinking water assessments of all major community water supplies in the state under the U.S. EPA’s Source Water Assessment Program. The results of these assessments were made available to residents via a website, CD and localized fact sheets complete with large format maps.

RI NEMO has also developed a series of interactive workshops to distribute and explain the assessment results and recommendations to local board, council and commission members, focusing on protection measures. The workshop series includes a presentation How Changing Land Uses Affects Water Quality (customized using local maps and assessment results), How Local Actions Can Protect Water Quality and Using Computer Generated Maps in Project Review.

RI NEMO’s watershed assessment approach is clearly having an impact on local practices. For example, the Town of Jamestown adopted a zoning overlay ordinance that integrates stormwater and wastewater management for high water table areas. The groundwater protection/high water table zoning overlay applies to designated areas within the town that have substandard lots served by private wells. Provisions of the ordinance include an impervious surface limit of 15% (calculated for individual lots and excluding wetlands), a requirement to control runoff volume using low-impact techniques to maintain pre-development infiltration for a 25-year storm and mandated use of advanced wastewater treatment technologies capable of 50% nitrogen removal.

The program is also working with the URI Onsite Wastewater Training Center on an EPA-funded wastewater initiative, Safewater, that seeks to help Rhode Island towns develop comprehensive wastewater management plans to protect, recycle and sustain local water resources. As a result of this effort, the Town of Charlestown updated its wastewater management ordinance to strengthen provisions for mandatory septic system inspection, maintenance and repair. All cess-pools will be phased out and replaced with either conventional or advanced treatment systems within five years of next inspection. Charlestown joins the two other towns in the project, South Kingstown and New Shoreham, in establishing septic system inspection and maintenance programs that include cesspool removal.

Impacts

When a new parking area was proposed at the University of Rhode Island’s (URI) Kingston campus, the RI NEMO Program, which is based at URI, provided not only assessment results that demonstrated the need to control impervious cover and runoff but also information on pervious options. University planners chose to construct two parking lots (accommodating up to 1000 vehicles) with porous pavement. The choice to use an alternative pavement was motivated by the location of the lots within the Pawcatuck sole source aquifer, within the town of South Kingstown’s groundwater protection overlay district and within the wellhead protection area (WHPA) for the University’s wells.

In partnership with the University of Rhode Island’s (URI) Onsite Wastewater Training Center, RI NEMO worked with the Town of Glocester on the Chepachet Village Decentralized Wastewater Demonstration Project. Chepacet is a densely developed, historic mill village that was facing failing septic and stormwater drainage problems along the Chepacet River. RI NEMO helped the town implement alternative onsite wastewater technologies and developed a conceptual plan for village wastewater treatment using GIS mapping.

RI NEMO published two manuals through the EPA National Decentralized Water Resources Capacity Development Project. The first of those, Wastewater Planning Handbook: Mapping Onsite Treatment Needs, Pollution Risks and Management Options, illustrates how communities can adapt GIS-based approaches for assessment programs. The second manual, Creative Community Design and Wastewater Management, became a springboard for the development of a three-volume series with easy-to-read information for homeowners, designer, installers, planners and other local officials.

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