For the most part, stormwater is a public issue only when the sewers are backed up and slime is running in the streets, which thankfully isn’t the case all that often. To a handful of developers, the subject is something regulators trot out at planning department meetings to give them ulcers, and rarely will you see politicians speak on the subject except during an election year, and then only if there’s the chance some effluent will end up on an opponent’s skirts. Even when headlines scream about beach closures or polluted waterways, the concern seems to focus on the effects rather than the underlying causes, an admission of sorts that the problems are so deep and so complex that it’s easier to think about throwing money at end-of-the-pipe solutions than taking a hard look at infrastructural shortcomings or - more frightening still - the way we live.
      Those tasked with dealing with water-quality issues day in and day out know that beneath the rhetoric and regulations lie real problems concerning the health and safety of our citizens. The beach closures, threatening as they are to tourist revenues, are symptomatic of deeper disorders created and driven in large part by population growth and the accompanying explosion in urban development. Few people I know are against a strong economy, rising standard of living, or the desire to provide the benefits of prosperity to our families, even when we know that each of these places a burden on nature and society. The difficulty is in accepting the fact that those burdens are real, immediate, and apply to us both individually and as a whole.
      In one of the first issues of our companion publication, Erosion Control, I spoke of the momentous changes that have taken place in our understandings of the world in which we live during my lifetime. I recall, with that special clarity given to wide-eyed freshmen, the thesis statement of my professor in Economics 101. He pronounced with tenured finality, "There are economic goods and free goods," concluding this comparison with the disdainful explanation, "Free goods are air, dirt, and water." He spent the rest of the quarter exposing us to the economically consequential portion of the world.
      That was conventional wisdom less than 50 years ago - a time that saw the transition from vacuum tubes to silicon wafers and the development of the hardware and knowledge that would take us to the moon and back - so to some, such progress in our understanding will seem fairly mundane. But I’d like to propose that in such small steps lies success. While there was nothing new in the notion that quality was at least as viable a measurement of value as quantity, the recognition that scarcity applied to all things was a radical break with the past. That’s a huge start and one that leads to what I see as the basis for a valuable partnership with our readers.
      It’s been our assumption that if one reader is having to deal with a challenge, there are hundreds if not thousands of others confronting the same sort of situation. Maybe some of the details are different, but what you or your peers learn and pass along might prove to be of inestimable value to others, and vice-versa. Thus, right from the start, we’ve looked at Stormwater as being our publication rather than a me-to-you effort.
      Bringing this to pass involves a two-prong effort melding the features of the Internet and a print medium in order to get the most from each. The value of the magazine is its permanence. It can be read, reread, passed along to others, marked up, and archived for future reference. The value of the Internet is its immediacy as a real-time forum. Each has its superiorities and limitations, but together they add up to more than the whole. You can access our Web site at www.stormh2o.com, finding there (among other features) discussion groups offering the choice of "belonging" or chiming in as you please. We hope that you will opt for the former since the more people there are to view the postings, the broader the range of discussions will be. Another button we hope you’ll try to wear out is the one titled "Suggest" since that’s the way you can make sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to subject matter for the magazine or Web site. The real trick in all of this, however, lies in the articles and article ideas you submit. It is these that will expose us all to the projects, activities, and solutions that are really employed.
      Today almost any freshman on the planet would giggle at my professor’s thesis. And when you stop to think about what an amazing revolution this represents - I mean we’re talking very fundamental thinking here - consider how much smaller a leap of faith it is for us to react to a clear-cut challenge to the environment, even if it involves a significant change in our lifestyle. Along with our energy and resolve, BMPs and structures will be part of the answer, but we’re too few and our resources too limited to fulfill the task alone. The real challenge is in bringing the public to the table, and that’s best done in an unceasing series of small steps rooted in the belief that failure is a luxury we cannot afford.

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