Three towns share stormwater assistance

Bellingham, Franklin and Milford have qualified for $300,000 to create a plan for meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements designed to reduce pollution that seeps into the Charles River.

The federal funds will enable the three towns to create a plan that would govern how stormwater run-off is managed and regulated. The funding would cover engineering and planning costs necessary to create a regional utility in the three communities, which would make it easier for affected businesses to comply with the federal regulations.

“The EPA stepping up is huge,” Franklin Town Administrator Jeff Nutting told the Boston Globe. “Instead of 70 businesses in Franklin hiring 70 engineers to meet the standards and criteria, we can set up a system so there’s not a duplication.”

The new EPA regulations require that businesses with at least two or more acres of parking lots, rooftops and other impervious surfaces take steps to reduce stormwater run-off as a means of reducing the discharge of phosphorous, the main cause of algae blooms that mar the Charles River watershed each summer.

Reducing phosphorous, according to the EPA, can costs businesses and other private landowners as much as $118,000 per acre. Town governments are responsible for reviewing and approving the stormwater management practices of the private entities.

The EPA’s aim is to use Bellingham, Franklin and Milford as a pilot program that could be duplicated elsewhere in Massachusetts. So far, just three communities – Chicopee, Newton and Reading – have such a program in place.

In June, the MMA submitted written testimony asking that the EPA delay implementing the new stormwater run-off rules until a feasibility study had been completed.