Stormwater | Help on the Way

Intern Sean Neely mapping a catch basin in Biddeford

Interlocal GIS internship gets students mapping municipal stormwater systems.

By Mike Landis

Since the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II stormwater program came to Maine, stormwater managers across the state have been working hard to comply with new stormwater regulations and meet each year's general permitting requirements. The work is paying off, as much has been accomplished toward cleaning up polluted stormwater discharge that previously had been contaminating receiving water bodies. Yet difficulties persist due to the ever-growing number of responsibilities given to small municipal separate storm sewer system operators and the seemingly ever-shrinking amount of resources and time available to them. The large to-do list resulting from the extensive NPDES Phase II program has led many municipalities to develop and implement innovative programs to meet these additional demands. Technological advances also have played a key role in lightening the workload and are rapidly changing the way in which municipalities manage day-to-day operations. Both new high-tech tools and creative program initiatives have been cornerstones in the launch of the first-ever interlocal GIS internship.

The Start of Regional Stormwater Collaboration
The internship program is the latest in a series of initiatives led by the Casco Bay Interlocal Stormwater Working Group (ISWG), a collaboration of 14 municipalities in southern Maine that are subject to the EPA's NPDES Phase II program. The group also includes the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District (CCSWCD), the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership (CBEP), the University of Southern Maine (USM), Southern Maine Community College, and the Maine Turnpike Authority.

The ISWG began in January 2002 with the conservation district and just six municipalities in the greater Portland area: Falmouth, Gorham, Portland, South Portland, Westbrook, and Windham. With the NPDES Phase II program looming on the horizon, the Interlocal Group was formed to pool municipal resources in tackling the Phase II program and other stormwater management—related activities, such as flood and hazard mitigation. At present, the ISWG also includes Biddeford, Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Freeport, Saco, Scarborough, Old Orchard Beach, and Yarmouth. Meetings are held on a monthly basis and are attended by municipal representatives from engineering, public works, wastewater, and planning departments. A facilitator, Jeff Edelstein of Edelstein Associates, coordinates the meetings and directs the agenda based on input from the municipalities. Regional collaboration has proven the most effective approach to meeting the new demands placed on communities and has saved each individual municipality time and money.

By 2004, the Interlocal Group was finishing the first year of the five-year Maine Phase II General Permit and making excellent progress. At this point, it turned its attention to the illicit discharge detection and elimination (IDDE) minimum control measure of the general permit. Within the IDDE section, municipalities are required to "develop a map of the storm sewer system, which ... depicts the locations of all outfalls, catch basins, manholes, pipes, ditches, and other structures." Ultimately, the map must also "depict the drainage areas for each outfall and associated drainage structures, land uses, and potential pollutant sources to facilitate the task of locating the source of suspected illicit discharge." According to the methodology, municipalities had two options when it came to mapping the stormwater system: traditional surveying techniques or GPS/GIS (global positioning system/geographic information system) technology. After seeing the advantages GIS had to offer, it was clear which direction the Interlocal Group would take.

As many stormwater professionals already know, GPS and GIS have increasingly become the most efficient and effective tools for collecting data and displaying information related to stormwater management. The number of users in the past several years has skyrocketed, from private consultants to municipal officials, and the types of applications continue to grow more diverse and specific. For those unfamiliar, GPS uses a network of satellites orbiting Earth to transmit signals to receivers on the ground. A series of split-second calculations allows these receivers to determine position on Earth's surface, in many instances accurate to within 1 meter of the actual location. These spatial data can then be loaded into a GIS, where they are stored, organized, and displayed visually. With continuing technological advances, the equipment and software needed to create quality maps using GPS and GIS are becoming more accessible and easy to use, thus making it the ideal tool for municipal officials needing up-to-date and accurate information about the location of structures within the stormwater system.

Initially, the group planned on using money from a state bond issue to hire private consulting firms to map municipal stormwater systems. Unfortunately, as the 2004 state legislative session was drawing to a close, news came that funding for municipal assistance for mapping and meeting Phase II requirements had been eliminated from the state bond issue. According to Betty McInnes, the district manager for the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District, "This really created a crunch for the municipalities. They now had the responsibility of producing this work, and they had very limited resources." Ultimately, no bonds were passed in 2004 by Maine's state legislature, and municipal projects across the state went unfunded.

"A Good Plan B"
With no support coming from the state, the municipalities of the Interlocal Group were forced to seek alternative methods to accomplish the task of mapping their stormwater infrastructure. McInnes formulated the idea of an internship program after several chance encounters and conversations. The first was with Karl Braithwaite, the dean of the Muskie School for Public Service at USM, who, after a CBEP board meeting, discussed with McInnes his general thoughts on the relationship between the university and the surrounding community. According to McInnes, "Dean Braithwaite mentioned the fact that in an ideal world, universities were in a position to really provide community services and support. It was just unfortunate that it wasn't happening as much as it maybe should or could." This conversation stuck in McInnes's mind and, with the failed bond issue, took on new significance in light of the Interlocal Group's need for resources.

Intern Zach Rawe importing collected GPS data to Cumberland's GIS

At about this same time, McInnes was contacted by Steve Niles, the program director for several AmeriCorps programs in Portland. Niles asked McInnes if the conservation district had any projects that AmeriCorps could help with, as AmeriCorps had several slots available and had a history of working with the district. According to McInnes, after hearing this, "Everything just clicked into place—the conversation with Dean Braithwaite about the connection between the universities and the community, the need on the part of the municipalities for assistance with GIS mapping, and AmeriCorps in need of a project. It just seemed like all of a sudden these players could come together ... so the idea was born to bring on an AmeriCorps member who would then coordinate a service-learning project, bringing in students from the university GIS program and placing them with municipalities to assist with mapping. And the rest, as they say, is history."

McInnes presented the idea to the Interlocal Group in the spring of 2004. "I presented it in an Interlocal meeting as a proposal. They seemed to think that this was a good ‘plan B,' since the bond wasn't going to happen. So they agreed to allocate the funds to AmeriCorps, and also, of course, the cost for the summer intern." With all the municipalities on board and funding in place, McInnes was able to move forward with the project and begin recruiting for the position of internship coordinator.

AmeriCorps Assistance Is Called In
The AmeriCorps program, started in 1993 by President Clinton, is a nationwide network of more than 2,100 nonprofit organizations and public agencies. The purpose of AmeriCorps is to engage its members in direct service and capacity building to address unmet community needs. AmeriCorps members also mobilize community volunteers and strengthen the capacity of the organizations in which they serve. In 2004, approximately 240 volunteers were serving in Maine and working on a number of social and environmental issues. The district had worked with several AmeriCorps volunteers in the past, mostly in the area of environmental education, but this was the first time an AmeriCorps volunteer would be working at the district as the interlocal GIS internship coordinator.

The internship coordinator was hired and began work in January 2005. The first step was to get in contact with all the municipalities of the Interlocal Group and identify those that would host an intern for the summer. Despite the fact that all municipalities had agreed to fund the position of the internship coordinator, not every municipality would be hosting an intern for the summer, either because of a lack of funding and other resources necessary to support an intern or because an alternate plan for mapping was already in place. After a series of individual meetings with the internship coordinator, seven municipalities committed to working with an intern: Biddeford, Cumberland, Falmouth, Freeport, Portland, South Portland, and Yarmouth. It was then necessary to determine where each community stood with regard to mapping and GIS, as each municipality varied in the amount of GIS mapping completed and level of GIS capability. This information would prove extremely valuable for the coordinator when placing interns in specific municipalities to ensure that the community's needs matched the skills and abilities of the intern.

An aerial photograph depicting Biddeford's major outfalls along the Saco River

The specificity of the project largely influenced the methodology behind recruiting students for the internship: Candidates needed a strong working knowledge of GIS and familiarity with handling a GPS unit. Additionally, the interns needed to be self-motivated and dedicated students, due to the significance of the project for the municipalities. Although the idea for an internship sprang out of a desire to connect USM with surrounding communities, the decision was made early to cast as wide a net as possible and recruit students from all over the country, guaranteeing a competitive applicant pool. Recruiting was done in three ways: (1) directly contacting the college and university departments that offered a GIS program; (2) contacting career centers, which could distribute information to interested students at a college-/university-wide level; and (3) posting information on several GIS-related listservs, such as the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education. Nearly 50 students applied, and 20 students were asked to interview. Ultimately, seven applicants were offered positions in the first-ever interlocal GIS internship.

Training the Interns
A three-day workshop and training session was organized to ensure that the interns had a baseline knowledge of how municipalities can utilize GPS/GIS and to give the interns sufficient background on the NPDES Phase II program. The first day started with a GPS seminar led by Jim Thomas, a GIS consultant based in Freeport. Thomas covered the ins and outs of data collection and management and gave specific instruction on the use of the particular GPS units that many of the interns would be using in their respective municipalities.

A two-day GIS workshop followed, led by Karla Hyde, USM's GIS lab manager, and Rosemary Mosher, the Geography-Anthropology Department's curriculum coordinator. The interns received specific instruction on the use of GIS in a municipal setting, and the open format of the workshop allowed for the creation of a dialogue between the trainers and the interns. Kristie Rabasca of Aquarion Engineering, a Portland-based environmental engineering firm that had been contracted to work with the ISWG on various Phase II—related projects, also gave a presentation on the overall impact of the NPDES Phase II program, which gave the interns the larger significance of the mapping project. Rabasca also discussed stormwater outfall inspections, which interns would also be performing for the municipalities while collecting data in the field. Lastly, Jeff Edelstein helped the interns understand the makeup and role of the Interlocal Group and how regional collaboration has aided municipalities with Phase II compliance. With training complete and placements determined, the interns were ready to head into their municipalities and begin mapping.

The Internship Begins
South Portland
Before the summer began, South Portland's Division of Water Resource Protection (WRP) had no GIS capability. Will Gove, a senior at the University of Maine—Orono was placed in South Portland because of his strong background in information technology. As an information systems engineering major, Gove had experience with various types of computer software and data systems management. This knowledge would be crucial when implementing and building a GIS database for the city. What was necessary first, however, was getting Gove up to speed on the structures that make up a stormwater system. Says Gove, "The first few days I was here they explained how catch basins and manholes and the whole sewer system infrastructure works. So I got a base understanding of what exactly I was digitizing. And every day is a new lesson in outfalls and manholes and these different features."

Intern Moriah Bedard mapping an outfall at a beach in Freeport

Before Gove's arrival, the city had nearly 400 data points that had been collected with a GPS unit several years earlier. In addition, WRP had an extensive amount of CAD (computer-aided design) data, which depicted the city's extensive combined sewer overflow system. With a newly purchased ArcGIS license, Gove got the GIS up and running; the first step was to process the previously collected GPS data and turn them into usable information. What was most satisfying for Gove was the knowledge that the city would be using the data. "I've already had to use the pipe structure that I've created and connected all the catch basins. In some circumstances Dave [Pineo, an engineer in the division and Gove's primary supervisor] has asked me to put points together and give him some information so he can do his projects."

As for the difficulties Gove encountered, "The hard part is going in and connecting all the features together. If you don't have a working knowledge of the system already, deciphering the paper maps and trying to translate it into a digital map is a very, very arduous task and time-consuming." Commenting on the overall experience, he says, "I learned a lot about geographic information systems and using the software to create them. And at the same time understanding how to collect data in the field and bring it back into the system and then get some sort of working system where you can actually use the data."

Cumberland
Zach Rawe came all the way from Grantsville, MD, to participate in the internship program. A senior geography major at Frostburg State University, Rawe saw the internship as a great way to gain more GIS experience while providing a valuable service to the community. According to Rawe, "I thought it was great—a great experience, hands-on learning you can't beat—and we are actually contributing to the community, which is good for AmeriCorps." He also saw it as an excellent addition to classroom GIS work. "[I learned] more than I had learned in the classroom—stuff that you can't learn inside the classroom."

With GIS already in place in Cumberland, Rawe and Public Works Director Adam Ogden tackled the project by focusing attention on completing the maps of the entire urbanized area of town. Rawe's efficient work allowed him to achieve this goal and map 100% of the stormwater system.

Rawe also notes the internship's benefit to the municipalities: "Towns that don't have GIS experience or GIS employees can see it as a good experience for their workers to benefit from the intern because of the experience they bring to the job."

Freeport
For intern Moriah Bedard, work in Freeport focused more on "maintaining and updating, rather than building," as the town contracts with Jim Thomas, who had already built a working GIS database. But for Bedard, a senior geography-anthropology major at USM, the internship was still a great learning experience. This was due to Freeport's use of ArcView 3.x, as opposed to ArcGIS 8.x and 9.x, with which she was more familiar. "It was interesting to work in a different version of ArcView. It's good to have those tools under my belt," says Bedard. With data points for many of the town's outfalls already collected, Bedard's task was to focus on catch basins and "connect the dots" by figuring out the pipe structure that connected them all.

Freeport's town engineer, Albert Presgraves, is very pleased with what this internship has allowed the town to accomplish. "The fact that we got the intern has allowed us to get a lot of mapping work done that we would otherwise not have gotten done. And it has been very cost-effective for the results that we have gotten." Also important for Presgraves was the Interlocal Group's decision to allow for a certain amount flexibility in the specifics of how each community mapped its system. "One thing we discussed at the Interlocal Working Group meetings was the need to come up with protocols for all this data, and standard table formats so that we all do the same exact thing, so that it will be interchangeable. But there's not really a big need to put all this into a single database, so let's just share information and we can learn from each other. We don't need to spend all the time and effort to make sure that everybody is doing it exactly the same way. That's too much work for the value; there's no value in that."

Falmouth
The Town of Falmouth was also fortunate to have a substantial GIS already up and running prior to the summer's internship. The task given to intern Marisa Sowles was to expand the database by adding "open features" of the stormwater system, particularly detention ponds. The emphasis on fieldwork was extremely beneficial to Sowles. "I definitely learned a lot. I was really excited to connect my fieldwork to my computer work. In the past I've only used downloaded data and wasn't really aware of what I was looking at on the computer in relationship to what I saw in the field." Sowles, a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, adds, "I've learned a whole bunch of tricks, tactics, methods in ArcMap that are really going to help in the future."

As for what she learned about municipal stormwater systems, she says, "The system is complicated in some aspects and very simple in others." Sowles paid most attention to detention ponds on several golf courses in town and found that the most effective method for mapping them was to create a polygon feature with the GPS unit, which continuously collected data as Sowles walked around whichever particular detention pond she was mapping. Commenting on the internship, Tony Hayes, director of public works, says, "It's enabled us to move forward with some additional mapping and using organization and technical skills that we don't have internally."

Portland
Dan Bowe's internship with the City of Portland allowed him to work with one of the most developed municipal GIS databases in the Interlocal Group. He spent the first several weeks of the summer in the city's extensive map vault, where he used site plans and topographical maps to research outfall locations in new developments. Because of the sheer size of the city and number of new developments, Bowe focused on the Capisic Brook and Fall Brook micro-watersheds.

The second half of the summer was spent cashing in on his extensive research, and Bowe collected the location of nearly 400 outfalls, with the help of Doug Roncarati of the city's parks and recreation department. Although it was difficult at the time, Bowe appreciates the initial map research. "There's absolutely no way we could have found half the outfalls we did if we didn't have the sewer map or any construction maps to look at." Although Bowe, now a senior information systems engineering major at the University of Maine—Orono, does admit to "the difficulties of data collection and how time-consuming it can be," he says it was a very worthwhile experience.

Biddeford
The Saco River forms the city of Biddeford's northern border. This initially posed a slight problem to intern Sean Neely, a senior environmental science major at the University of Southern Maine, whose job was to locate outfalls along the steep and heavily vegetated banks. "Figuring out how to get to all the outfalls was an issue, but having the boat there was a good solution," says Neely. Thanks to the city's fire department, Neely was able to get onto the water and visually locate outfalls along the banks of the river. Neely's plan of attack was to patrol the river in two main sections—upstream and downstream of a major dam. "The first trip on the river, we went from the dams at midtown up past I-95 and basically just patrolled it using visual identification. The second trip out, we started on the downstream side of the dams and went out to UNE [the University of New England]. We were able to get a lot doing that. On the downstream side, that's a tidal area. There were parts that we couldn't access with the boat because the tide was a little low, but we did get them on the turn-around trip."

Greg Copeland, the city's wastewater manager, supervised Neely's work. As for his management style, Copeland says, "I had the hands-off approach with the ways things were done. I treated Sean as if he were no different from any other employee. He got a project that he had to do; periodically we sat down and discussed things." As for Copeland's thoughts on the work that was completed on the city's maps, "I think we got a pretty good start. When he [Neely] went out into the field, he was coming back with a pretty good day's worth of work; the database is really starting to build."

Yarmouth
For the Town of Yarmouth, the internship was a great way to get a limited amount of GIS updating and editing work completed. Dan Jellis, the town engineer, had worked with a student the previous summer and had a good percentage of the municipal stormwater system already mapped. Yet Jellis knew that a strong GIS requires frequent attention, which in this case amounted to about four weeks of work. This need worked well with intern Tim Bates's schedule, which included studying abroad for the first half of the summer. Although the time was short, Bates—a senior geography major at Macalester College—and Jellis were able to perform much-needed edits to the town's GIS, while affording Bates a hands-on learning experience.

Innovations in Service-Learning and Future Plans
Looking back on the summer, McInnes sums up the project's significance by saying, "At this point we're just beginning. The Phase II program is a burden. It is an unfunded mandate, and it's very difficult where municipalities are already stretched thin as far as resources go to find a way to meet the additional regulatory burden without having received any federal funding to carry it out. That's always the case. The trick is to try and find ways of meeting the requirements without it having to be financially a burden. By working together, sharing the load, they have been able to accomplish quite a bit just in the last two years."

Intern Zach Rawe collecting data on an outfall in Cumberland

With a successful summer completed, the Interlocal Group is looking to the future direction of the interlocal GIS internship, and the prospects are hopeful. For McInnes, this past summer's internship is also important because of the new ideas and thinking that went into putting it together. "What I see as the innovation in this project is the service-learning aspect that brings the university and the communities together on a joint effort," she says. When asked if the internship will take on different projects related to NPDES Phase II, McInnes responds, "The possibilities are endless. You're only limited by your imagination as far as where we can go from here. But at this stage the need is to get the mapping done, so I see the focus being on that."

As for the overall impact the Interlocal Group is having on improving stormwater, McInnes says, "It takes time. We're just at the beginning of shifting the cultural attitudes with regard to stormwater, and that will take time as well." Just recently, all municipalities in the group voted to fund the internship program for next year, meaning a new batch of interns will be called on next summer to pick up where the others left off and will continue helping the municipalities better manage their stormwater systems.

Mike Landis is an internship coordinator with the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District in Westbrook, ME.

SW January/February 2006

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