Albemarle County Water Resources Program
Albemarle County has thousands of stream miles. State and local policies require streams and their banks be protected from erosion, illicit discharges, etc., but proactively inspecting every mile is difficult.
Find a solution that enables & empowers citizens to assist in the effort to protect local streams in the county.
As reported by Stravos Carlos, Water Resources Program Engineer for Albemarle County:
The County’s MS4 permit requires reporting, tracking, and investigating non stormwater “illicit discharges” into the storm sewer system, and the County’s water protection ordinance requires preservation of vegetated buffers within 100-ft of streams on many properties. Our problem is how best to engage citizens in reporting illicit discharges and buffer violations. We would also like a technological solution to assist citizens in reporting locations of significant stream bank erosion and stormwater infrastructure problems, therefore helping to determine where our stormwater management program could make the biggest impact. Note that the County acknowledges that significant erosion exists among many stream banks. However, the County is neither able nor mandated to repair all instances of bank erosion.
We have various methods of receiving reports of illicit discharges, buffer violations, and erosion complaints, but it is cumbersome to maintain consistent records and ensure that all citizen reports are correctly geotagged, logged, and investigated. Because we are required by the state and federal government to investigate reports of illicit discharge in particular, it is crucial that citizen reports are high quality. We do not want a technological solution to “open the flood gates” for citizen reporting of all types (including low quality/erroneous reports) because the County and other local governments have limited resources available to investigate reports. A scalable solution must incorporate some type of quality control / peer review.