Contech® Engineered Solutions, LLC (Contech) is pleased to have an opportunity to provide comments on the Agency’s proposed action establishing guidelines for the implementation of Nonpoint Source Best Management Practices (BMP) on agricultural, residential, and urban lands. As grantees implementing these projects must use the BMP manual, it is important for the document to maintain the most comprehensive list of approved solutions. This is especially true for urban/suburban lands, where physical site constraints, such as high groundwater, poor subsoil infiltration rates, and contaminated soils, can limit the effectiveness of many of the listed practices under the urban and suburban BMP category. In order to facilitate greater implementation of nutrient reduction practices and strategies, the Department should cast the widest net possible to help localities achieve these goals and include manufactured treatment devices (MTDs) listed on the VA BMP Clearinghouse website as a practice eligible for Section 319 funding.

Contech would like to present the following for the Department’s consideration:
1. MTDs approved for use by DEQ and listed on the BMP Clearinghouse should be eligible for funding. These solutions be used for pretreatment of other non-proprietary or proprietary practices, in the case of hydrodynamic systems, helping improve overall pollutant removal performance and system longevity. Proprietary filter treatment technologies can act as terminal treatment and have pollutant removal performance on par with numerous non-proprietary practices.
2. Historically, other grant programs available through federal funding sources have allowed for MTDs to be used (e.g. NFWF)
3. In retrofit situations, existing site conditions, such as contaminated soils or high groundwater, may make runoff reduction practices reliant on infiltration infeasible. In situations such as those, flow-through MTDs are an opportunity to increase implementation of pollutant reduction practices.

Contech appreciates the effort put forth to provide guidance on this subject. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional questions. Thank you once again for this opportunity to provide public comment.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to comment on the proposed guidance document: Virginia’s Nonpoint Source Implementation Best Management Practice Guidelines – FY 2020. We believe that by working together, we can continue to improve water quality in Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay, and beyond. We want to comment on the reference to Urban BMPs in Table 2 on page 5.

We believe that the references to the Virginia Stormwater BMP Clearinghouse could lead to confusion. We believe that this guideline document is intended to allow all approved practices (1-17) currently listed on the Stormwater BMP Clearinghouse. We don’t believe that this guideline actually excluded Manufactured Treatment Devices (MTDs), or should be excluded, from this program because, in some cases, proprietary MTDs are the only practical option to treat stormwater in urban and ultra-urban areas.

Since we have already heard some confusion on this issue, we humbly request that page 3 include a comment that all practices on the Virginia Stormwater BMP Clearinghouse are eligible unless expressly excluded.

Thank you again,

Jared MacKenzie

Regional Regulatory Manager - East