The purpose of this project was to examine current practices in stormwater management and provide recommendations for improvement, particularly in the areas of institutional arrangements and technical support. The general objective of this research has been to establish and initiate use of state and local guidelines for management of urban drainage and flooding, sedimentation, stormwater-related land use, and the quality of urban runoff in the United States. These guidelines should provide local governments with the tools to interrelate and take full advantage of the many ongoing programs in the area of urban watershed management. It is unreasonable to expect a single set of controls to be applicable over wide areas of the nation. It is likewise unreasonable to expect local solutions in one area to be transportable to other areas without localizing changes.
Technical guidelines evolve similarly.
Direct transfer of technical control measures will not likely result in an optimum control strategy because of differences in weather patterns, soil types, topography, development densities, and institutional arrangements. Even technical issues, such as hydrograph formulation, are subject to settlement by local consensus, and different communities will decide differently on such matters. Given interactions among diverse governmental interests, conflicts in purpose, design, and operation of facilities are virtually certain to arise. To document systematic conflicts, however, is quite difficult. Design, construction, and maintenance of this system are quite site specific.