The Story of the Lower One Subwatershed Advisory Group

The Story of the Lower One Subwatershed Advisory Group...

...how we came together and our plans for a brighter Rouge River future.

In 1997, the Rouge Program Office (RPO) together with representatives from the Lower One Subwatershed communities and agencies, convened in a series of meetings to discuss joining in the efforts of the Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project that was charged with cleaning up the Rouge River. Members of this cooperative group began identifying concerns about water quality and quantity within the Lower One subwatershed and developing ideas for management alternatives for the future.

The group evolved over time with an interest in Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's (MDEQ) Voluntary General Stormwater Permit. With the goal of applying for this Voluntary Stormwater Permit, members of the Lower One SWAG assembled in 1998 and extended invitations to all public agencies that were eligible for coverage under the MDEQ Permit. This group is now referred to as the Lower One Subwatershed Advisory Group (SWAG) and includes the membership listed and described on the Participating Communities page.

With its expanded membership, the Lower One SWAG began discussions on the requirements of the Permit, and by the middle of 1999, all the SWAG membership received Certificates of Coverage for the Permit. All of the Lower One SWAG communities and agencies are now beginning to implement their Stormwater Permits to restore and protect the Rouge River through their:

Public Education Plans (PEPs): Each community and county agency needed to write a PEP in order to receive an MDEQ General Stormwater Permit. These plans include activities such as increasing water quality topics in local newsletters, airing public service announcements and writing newspaper articles that would help the public understand how they could help protect water quality.

Illicit Discharge Elimination Plans (IDEPs): Just like the Public Education Plans, each community and county agency needed to create a plan to eliminate illicit or illegal discharges that ended up in the storm sewer system and in our lakes, wetlands and streams. Illicit connections can be misconnected pipes underground that can be spotted by a piped television camera, or they can be the result of poorly managed manure piles in agricultural land that end up polluting surface water that gets into our streams.

Subwatershed Management Plans (SWMP): In addition to the PEPs and IDEPs that were created to receive a Stormwater Permit, each community and county agency needed to begin Subwatershed Management Planning. This is a process that is currently underway and will be finished by May of 2001. In order to have an implementable and publicly acceptable plan, it is crucial that interested people like you get involved in the process. In order to ensure that there is a place at the table for interested people, Public Participation Plans were created to go hand in hand with the Subwatershed Management Planning effort.

Public Participation Plan (PPPs): This plan was created for the whole Lower One Subwatershed. It defines how communities and counties will encourage and facilitate the active involvement and input of the public in the long-term planning process. Click to our How to Get Involved page for meeting and workshop times.

Subwatershed Pollution Prevention Initiatives: Then, after the Subwatershed Management Plans have been created and approved by local councils and boards, it's on to an aggressive implementation plan called the Subwatershed Pollution Prevention Initiative, or the SWPPI. This is actually a schedule of discrete tasks that need to be done in a timeline that gets us to our goal of cleaning up our part of the Rouge. Communities and county agencies at this point need to decide who does what, when and how to get the management plan completed.

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Please address all comments and suggestions about the contents of this Web page to rougeweb@co.wayne.mi.us.

The Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project is funded, in part, by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Grants #XP995743-01, -02, -03, -04, -05, -06, -08 and C-264000-01.