The development and implementation of the new and re-development requirements of the Water Quality Management Plans, WQMPs for North and South Orange County Permit Areas will be presented.  In the past stormwater quality requirements allowed for some simple applications of  treatment BMPs.  Now much more thought has to go into meeting much more specific and detailed requirements that include the detailed assessment of the feasibility of limiting surface runoff discharges ("retain on site") via Low Impact Development techniques before treating and releasing stormwater and addressing hydromodification requirements (measure to protect stream physical habitat) that can also result in significant measures to address.   He will provide an overview of the history of the permit adoption and subsequent efforts to come to consensus on the permit requirements as they apply to the WQMPs.  He  will provide an overview of the Technical Guidance Document prepared for meeting the WQMPs and discuss the key changes from the previous WQMPs.  This will include an introduction to the differences between the two permit requirements (North and South OC) as well as the resulting best management practices (BMPs).  Some key outcomes of these changes is that stormwater must be considered early in project planning to avoid project delays and that City permitting agency staff as well as project design engineers will need to become familiar with the new requirements and stormwater management approaches.

Eric Strecker is a Principal Engineer with Geosyntec Consultants in Portland, Oregon.  He has over 25 years of applied research and project experience in stormwater management, including over 10 years of working with the projects in Orange County for the Public and Private sectors.  He is a Principal Investigator on the International Stormwater BMP Database, being awarded ASCE's State-Of-The-Art Award for his efforts on that project.  He is a long time ago graduate of Mission Viejo High School.