Actionable stormwater control measures with tangible, beneficial impacts on water quality, water quantity, and the community at large are desired by municipalities like the City of Pasadena (City). Like many cities throughout California, the City helped prepare a watershed management program to create a modeled pathway towards watershed-wide water quality goals. While these management programs serve as a key first step in providing direction for non-structural and structural solutions, they lack specificity for meaningful projects that are technically feasible. The City observed these shortcomings and recognized a need to find viable project locations within a highly urbanized footprint that tackle a range of pollutants. Deliberate, proactive steps led to strategically preparing two key plans; 1) A Risk-Based Bacteria Reduction Strategy and 2) the Stormwater Master Plan. These cost conscious and socially acceptable plans meet the various needs of the community through targeted pollutant identification and appropriate, right-sized solutions. Meticulous project identification, leveraging targeted source control where possible, and eyes on engineering created a pattern for success to conceptualize and ensure feasibility that ultimately positioned the City to secure outside funding and move the needle on improving the stormwater condition. This presentation will focus on key decisions, methods, and metrics needed to creatively tackle bacteria from a human-health risk perspective and create an implementable master plan that takes projects from modeling to reality. The modeling and engineering technical process will be demonstrated with examples from the success of the City of Pasadena with a blueprint for how this can be implemented in other areas to achieve similar outcomes.
.jpg "Brianna Datti photo")