Protecting What We Love: Why Stormwater Maintenance Matters
Have you ever wondered what happens to our beautiful Southern California coastlines after a heavy rain? I recently shared a photo I took at Huntington Beach while out with my daughters—a place we visit every chance we get. It serves as a powerful reminder that our actions on land directly impact the waterways we love, from our beaches to our flourishing lakes, rivers, and creeks.
In our latest video, we dive into the “why” behind maintaining storm systems. It is about more than just checking a box; it is about being a good steward of the environment. When we develop land, we change how nature handles water. For example, a vacant eight-acre dirt lot naturally allows about 80% of water to infiltrate the earth. Once paved, that flips—resulting in 90% runoff.
This runoff picks up everything left on the pavement: brake dust, tire residue, oils, trash, and dirt. Without proper maintenance, all of that flows directly down the channels and into our ecosystem.
Beyond the environmental impact, there are practical reasons to stay on top of your systems:
- Compliance: Meeting agreements with cities and counties is essential for any development.
- Preventative Maintenance: Protecting your investment ensures your tenants can keep operating.
- Avoiding Emergencies: Proper care means you won’t get those midnight phone calls about flooded loading docks or inaccessible buildings.
Watch the video to see how we can work together to keep our investments safe and our California waterways clean.
Video Transcript
0:00 Intro
0:09 Why Maintain Your Storm Systems?
0:20 Compliance
0:44 Preventive Maintenance
0:00 Intro
So this is a picture I took in Huntington Beach. I take my girls out to the beach every chance I get. This wasn’t staged; this is exactly how it was.
0:09 Why Maintain Your Storm Systems?
So, why maintain your storm systems? Well, because we love our waterways in Southern California. You know, one of them is you want to be a good steward of the environment. You protect our waterways. We want the beaches to be nice and, you know, our lakes, rivers, and creeks to be flourishing.
0:20 Compliance
Compliance. We do have agreements with the cities and the counties that we do work with, that we build in and maintain in. So they want to see if you’re going to develop like this lot. This is a big eight-acre lot. It was just all dirt, and all that water infiltrated into the earth—80% of it. You had about 20% of it running off. Well, look how much pavement you’ve got down now. You have about 90% runoff and 10% infiltration into these small landscape areas, right?
0:44 Preventive Maintenance
So they would say, if you’re going to develop this, we want to make sure you give us clean stormwater because now you have all these paved surfaces. It’s going to send a lot of brake dust, tire residue, oils, trash, and dirt down the channels. You want to make sure that’s cleaned up. Preventative maintenance. You want to protect your investments and keep your tenants operating. You don’t want to get those phone calls in the middle of the night: “Hey, our loading docks flooded,” or “We can’t get into our building because of this, that, or the other.”
