1.1.2 Facilities Maintenance

Stormwater management facilities, whether conveyance or treatment facilities, must be properly maintained in order to operate as designed. Unfortunately, most communities in Florida cannot keep pace with the maintenance demands and this "deferred maintenance" dramatically reduces the operational capacity of their stormwater systems. Although many of the chronic drainage problems are a function of basic design limitations, routine maintenance deficiencies are evident in the condition of the drainage systems and the problems, which occur in many communities. Local drainage problems resulting from a lack of maintenance exist in some areas even during moderate rainfalls. The facilities maintenance problem is long-standing and can be categorized into nine general classes of problems.

Routine maintenance is generally defined as those activities that are accomplished on a continual basis within the annual work program and these activities can be categorized as proactive and reactive activities. Proactive work tasks, such as inlet cleaning and ditch mowing, are scheduled and form the basis of the routine work program of the community. Reactive work tasks, such as removing conduit obstructions, are generally necessitated by storm events, inadequate proactive maintenance and citizen complaints. Insufficient routine maintenance has been repeatedly shown to contribute to major and nuisance flooding problems which crop up during the wet season and, in less obvious ways, to water quality degradation, ecological impacts, and loss of natural aesthetics within the community.

The ability of many Florida communities to routinely maintain their stormwater management systems at levels that prevent problems is hampered by limited funding and insufficient staffing. In many cases the need for aquatic plant control and remedial maintenance of major structures to prevent outright failure currently takes precedence over routine maintenance activities.

Routine maintenance needs have grown steadily since the mid-1970s due to changing regulations, population growth and changing citizen tolerance of minor and nuisance flooding. Maintenance focus has expanded to include yard and roadway swales, local collection and treatment/attenuation facilities, and detention/retention ponds. Unfortunately, maintenance budgets have not been able to keep pace with this growth and stormwater managers have had to reduce and/or eliminate certain maintenance activities in order to balance their annual budgets.

Euphemistically referred to as "deferred maintenance," this strategy becomes a slippery slope in many communities that rapidly leads to degraded performance of the stormwater conveyance and treatment facilities. An insidious aspect of the deferred maintenance strategy, when routine maintenance is deferred for too long a period, is that the facility degrades to the point where it frequently can not be restored to its design capacity through maintenance efforts. The community is then forced to spend substantially more money to undertake a capital improvement project for facility rehabilitation/renovation.

The resulting performance degradation increases the incidence of minor and nuisance flooding events for typical storms and can dramatically increase the extent and duration of major flooding for larger storm events and hurricanes. As development continues, the likelihood that routine maintenance will be increased enough to stem these problems is relatively low. This results in an increasing level of deferred maintenance and further aggravation of existing stormwater problems within the community.

Delegation of maintenance responsibilities for certain types of stormwater facilities is another approach that has been adopted by many Florida communities to cope with inadequate funding for routine maintenance. The maintenance of many minor swales, ditches, and detention/retention ponds is left to homeowner and condominium associations, and private property owners who are poorly equipped in terms of knowledge, skills, and equipment to properly do such work. Field investigations in Florida indicate that these groups are poorly organized, marginally motivated, and often fail to properly maintain on-site stormwater management facilities except where visual impacts or aesthetics are important to the homeowners or condominium residents. Private maintenance of drainage systems, which serve more than a few properties, even small ditches and swales, has not been very effective.

Most of the secondary and neighborhood drainage systems that have been delegated to homeowners' associations and similar groups for maintenance are simply conveyance systems offering a relatively low level of service and are not designed to attenuate or control peak flows or reduce pollutant discharge into receiving waters. At the local level the failure to maintain the facilities results in frequent nuisance flooding, short-term traffic blockages, and rerouting of emergency services. However, continuing lack of maintenance in these sections creates both upstream and downstream problems during storms, when brush and other debris may lodge at inlets or against control weirs and other obstructions in the channels. These local maintenance deficiencies/failures are likely to continue to increase each year and tend to be cumulative over time.

Remedial maintenance requirements are generally defined as the repair and reconstruction activities, which are required to forestall or correct failures. Remedial maintenance includes corrective repairs, replacement, and reconstruction of sections or components of inadequate and deteriorating stormwater management systems, short of total replacement of a system. Routine maintenance done at less than a preventive level contributes to accelerated aging/deterioration of physical facilities and increases the level of remedial maintenance required to keep the stormwater management facilities operational. Both the efficiency and effectiveness of normal operations and the life of the physical systems are compromised when drainage facilities age prematurely due to a lack of preventive routine maintenance.

Deficiencies in remedial maintenance are fostered by funding and staffing constraints. Structural systems are rarely replaced or rebuilt prior to at least a partial failure, vandalism, and/or obsolescence. Sections of minor secondary swales and ditches that do not receive regular routine maintenance will eventually deteriorate to the point that they will require reconstruction to re?establish a channel profile and flow capacity rather than just routine cleaning. Over the long term, failure to maintain systems will lead to the need for extensive remedial action, not only on those specific facilities, but in other areas as well.

Standards of design for stormwater management facilities have evolved over the years to include provisions for access that facilitate periodic maintenance activities. However, many segments of drainage systems, especially detention/retention ponds, ditches, smaller canals and swales, are physically inaccessible for proper maintenance. Many of the smaller drainage systems are not effectively maintained because extensive portions are on private property where easements and rights?of?entry are lacking. Generally speaking, only the larger, primary conveyances in most community drainage systems were designed for periodic maintenance.

Many communities do not have accurate mapping of their stormwater management systems and facilities, or complete and accurate inventories of the public and private drainage systems, their operational condition, and associated easements and rights?of?way. Without such information, it is practically impossible to develop, carry out, and refine a maintenance program capable of preventing rather than reacting to stormwater drainage problems.

Another problem in many communities is the lack of inspection or an inadequate inspection program for stormwater facilities. Periodic inspection of facilities identifies problems and provides valuable information regarding the adequacy of maintenance activities. Communities with no inspection program are forced to rely on citizen complaints as a primary source of information regarding the condition of their facilities. The inherent problem with citizen complaints is that most citizens simply do not complain and the information derived from complaints is incomplete, inaccurate and generally unreliable.

Cost effective maintenance of stormwater management systems and facilities requires a management approach that schedules weekly work activities based on seasonal conditions, adopted systemwide maintenance frequencies, availability of specialized manpower and equipment and other similar concerns. Many Florida communities have not had the funds available to analyze their work activities, to evaluate alternate means and methods of work, to develop focused management programs, or to implement performance monitoring systems that are necessary to optimize their dedicated operating budgets.

All of the preceding problems are related to the capital and operating funding that is allocated to stormwater management activities. If the community intends to effectively operate and improve its stormwater systems, it must assemble the resources to do so. In addition to a need for more operating staff and system improvements, a community should expect to acquire costly equipment to replace/supplement existing units, to maintain existing facilities in proper condition, and to acquire land ownership and/or rights-of-access to facilitate both capital improvements and routine maintenance.