DATE: November 11, 2014
TO: Board of Mayor and Aldermen
FROM: Eric Stuckey, City Administrator
Vernon Gerth, ACA - Community Development
Paul Holzen, Director of Engineering
Jeff Willoughby, Stormwater Coordinator
SUBJECT:
title
Presentation of Stormwater Construction Site Inspection Utilizing iPads
body
Purpose
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide an overview to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BOMA) on how City staff is utilizing technology to implement construction site compliance inspections.
Background
In response to the 1987 Amendments to the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) developed regulations for urbanized areas with a population over 10,000. The EPA's phase II final rule requires National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit coverage for stormwater discharges from the City of Franklin's municipal separate storm sewer system. Part of this permit requires the City to develop, implement and enforce a construction site stormwater runoff control program. As part of this program, the City is required to inspect construction sites at least once per month to ensure construction site pollutants are controlled onsite and prevent them from impairing our water resources. Currently, 100% of our streams are impaired due to siltation associated with development activities.
The City currently has 100 active construction site and only two inspectors. This requires each inspector to visit 50 sites per month to ensure compliance with our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. In the past these inspections were done utilizing a paper forms and a digital camera. Following the inspection, staff would return the office and prepare a formal inspection report that would then be emailed or mailed to the contractor and property owners. This procedure was very inefficient making it difficult to visit every active construction site monthly.
In April of this year, the Engineering Department acquired two iPad tablets and purchased a downloadable app for the iPads. This app allows the City to create and modify stormwater inspection reports on the iPad. In addition the user can take pictures with the iPad and attach them simultaneously to a specific non-compliance issue on site. Following the inspection the app will automatically generate a report that can be instantaneously emailed to the contractor/developer along with coworkers and/or supervisors for review.
This new stormwater inspection process allows all reports to be completed in the field, reduces confusion for the permittee, improves city staff efficiency, and provides the inspection report to the contractor and developer within 24 hours of the inspection. This process allows City staff to be more efficient allowing us to focus our efforts on other aspects of our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit and stormwater program.