Assistant Professor University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States
Abstract Submission: Challenges and Solutions to Stormwater Policy Implementation
Several cities in the United States (U.S.) find it difficult to successfully adopt green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) due to challenges with implementing existing policies and regulations. There are misinterpretations and gaps in communication between federal and local levels about sustainable stormwater management standards and guidelines. Thus, the goal of this research is to provide a thorough insight for understanding the gap between stormwater policy makers and real-life implementation of those policies. The research team seeks to find differences between cities’ implementation of stormwater policies and how they affect the outcome of the GSI implementation. To do so, we conducted a systematic review of relevant government documents and peer-reviewed literature. We collected stormwater annual or quarterly documents from government websites for selected cities in the U.S. and accessed peer-reviewed journal articles from well-known journals using several relevant databases including Web of Science and Engineering Village. The team used thematic coding to analyze and organize the text around key words and phrases such as green stormwater infrastructure, green tools, policy, counties, states, federal, state, and local government. The results show the gaps between the government’s guidance and stakeholders’ constrained resources and variations in the interpretation of policies. However, several solutions to address the problems also arise from the research. Overall, this work gives deeper insight to challenges and solutions to stormwater policy implementation so that GSI can be advanced to address ongoing stormwater issues.
