I just learned that my city is a MS4 community and that my water bill is going to go up.  What the heck is a an MS4?  Is the government getting out of control with all these new fees and charges they're forcing me to pay?

ANSWER 1:

First of all, we all need to understand that streets, sidewalks, parking lots, subdivisions and shopping centers do not come without stormwater related economic and environmental consequences. Manmade hardscapes are built to give us all a great place to live. I'm personally grateful for paved roads, my house, and the hotels that make my life comfortable, however these manmade structures cover up the earths surface and do not allow the rainwater to soak into the canopy of a forest or into the top soils that once were there and kept our water volume down to a minimum and also kept it clean.   Responsible, forward thinking construction is good for our economy, however the impacts from typical hardscapes we still build today and in our past, forces rainwater to act in a way that causes water volume (flooding) and poor water quality (pollution) to be too much for us to handle.   A MS4 (municipal separate storm sewer system) is Americas way of dealing with the massive increase of stormwater volume and pollution that we have caused ourselves through land development. 

Officially, an MS4 is a conveyance or system of conveyances (including roads with drainage systems, municipal streets, catch basins, curbs, gutters, ditches, man-made channels, or storm drains) that are owned or operated by a state, city, town, borough, county, parish, district, association, or other public body.  

I've attached a brief video where we walk from the top of the Suwanee Creek Watershed all the way down to  where the creek enters the Chattahoochee River.  In the "What is a watershed, Really?" video, we see just a glimpse of the storm damage and water quality impacts to our communities when it rains.  The operator of an MS4 is trying to mitigate and/or remediate the damage to our watersheds from our land development activities (hopefully in a financially responsible way).

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QUESTION 2:  

How much water hits the ground with a 1-inch rain on 1-acre in Georgia?  

ANSWER 2: 

This is 27,000 gallons/minute flow is being pumped into a river from a flooded area following a hurricane. Pretty nasty!

Buford, Georgia went through a 6-inch rain in 24-hours on May 18 2013.  We need to respect stormwater!!