INTERVIEW with John Mathews, Stormwater and Stream Specialist, Division of Soil and Water Conservation

What do you do to support sustainable development in Ohio?

I develop guidelines and standards for practices that help protect streams during and after construction projects. These practices include stormwater management facilities, erosion and sediment controls and practices to establish better stream conditions. I provide training to local government officials, contractors and consulting engineers regarding these practices and I review local development and stream mitigation plans. Most importantly, I assist communities in upgrading their stormwater or development standards so that good practices will be required in construction project planning.

How can development affect streams?

Development of roads, houses, businesses, parking lots and sidewalks creates areas impervious to rain water, which increases the amount of storm water that runs into our streams and rivers. This additional runoff can also increase flooding and stream erosion as more water runs off the land quicker. In the photo to the left I am measuring the characteristics of a stream, including stream size and shape. This data helps us understand the impacts of storm water that may change stream characteristics as land urbanizes.

If best practices are not followed, stream ecology can be adversely affected. Sediment can overload a stream’s gravel substrates, smothering natural areas where fish and aquatic insects live and reproduce. If streamside areas have been filled in, or if streams have been altered or channeled in the construction process, the new channels may lack the healthy self-cleansing processes that support clean water and good habitat.

Water Quality Pond

Grass Filter Strip

Wetland

How can streams be protected during and after construction?

During construction, development site planners can work around the stream system and its natural floodplain areas and apply practices to the landscape that reduce pollutants and runoff before they reach streams. This can be done by limiting earth disturbances, seeding bare areas and by initiating practices to catch sediment before major construction begins.

Post construction practices include draining large impervious areas into stormwater or water-quality ponds and developing new valleys, wetland setbacks and floodplain areas near streams.

Simpler methods such as constructing bioretention areas using soil, mulch and vegetation can be used where less run off is expected. Another useful practice is reducing the size of parking lots and sidewalks and adding grass filter strips near them.

Considering which of these methods to use requires careful planning and design as explained in the post construction practices in our Rain Water and Land Development Manual.

How can streams be protected from pollution?

Wetlands with their great variety of vegetation, algae and bacteria filter and absorb toxic pollutants reducing their effect before they reach streams and waterways. The more wetland-type features can be incorporated into stormwater ponds and developed near streams that have been damaged by construction or altered by channelization, the more natures own self-cleansing processes can be utilized to mitigate pollution.

What is most challenging about your job?

Historically we’ve been more effective at altering streams, floodplains and wetlands during development than recognizing their tremendous capacity to provide us with natural services such as flood control, sediment and pollution control, and wildlife habitat. Our challenge is providing educational opportunities, design tools and better examples that show how stream protection can be integrated effectively on new development sites.