History of SWMA

This story begins in 1972 when Congress passed significant amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act or CWA) which provide that the discharge of any pollutant to navigable waters of the U.S. from a point source is unlawful except through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. At the onset of the program in 1972, industrial process discharges and municipal sewage outfalls were easily identified as being responsible for poor, often drastically degraded water quality condition. However, as pollution control measures were developed for these discharges, it became evident that more diffuse sources of water pollution were also major causes of water quality problems. Many recent studies including National Urban Runoff Program (NURP) from 1978 through 1983 concluded that the quality of urban runoff can be adversely impacted by illicit connection, construction, industrial site runoff and illegal dumping. Also these studies have shown that runoff from urban and industrial areas typically contains significant quantities of the same general types of pollutants that are found in wastewaters and industrial discharges and often causes similar water quality problems. These pollutants include heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic organic compounds such as fuels, waste oil, solvents, lubricants, and grease. Removal of these discharges presents opportunities for dramatic improvements in the quality of storm water discharges. The Congress was examining the storm water issue in the course of the reauthorization of the CWA. The CWA was amended on Feb 4,1987 when congress passed the Water Quality Act of 1987 (WQA), which is what the current law is based on. EPA was to have the final storm water regulation in place by February 4, 1989. Because this did not happen, at 10:21AM on April 20, 1989 EPA was served with intent to sue. A suit was actually filed July 20, 1989.

 On October 20, 1989 EPA entered into a consent decree, which stated they would act on this regulation no later than July 20, 1990. This date was later amended to October 31, 1990. On November 16, 1990 EPA published the NPDES permit application regulations. Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham, with 22 other municipalities, were required to comply with WQA regulations. In order to gain required legal authority, reduce the redundancy, and reduce cost a storm water act was introduced to the legislature. In July 1995 both houses of the Legislature passed a Legislative Act, which was signed into law by the Governor, giving the storm water program the ability to do many things. One of these things was the authority to develop a funding mechanism for the program. This Act also gave the twenty-three cities and Jefferson County the ability to form a Public Corporation. The Public Corporation, the Storm Water Management Authority, Inc., was created on March 13, 1997. This is the entity currently in existence, the Storm Water Management Authority, Inc., which we refer to as SWMA (swim-ma).