King County's Current SWMP

King County operates under a Phase I National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) General Permit for Municipal Stormwater (the Muni Permit) issued by the Washington State Department of Ecology under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) and the State Water Pollution Control Act (WPCA). The permit establishes a framework for municipalities with populations of 100,000 or more (as determined by the 1990 census) to further CWA goals by controlling pollutants from stormwater to the maximum extent practicable. The CWA goals include restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of our waters (rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands, & marine waters. The WPCA also aims at the protection of groundwater.

The Muni Permit requires the County to develop and implement a Stormwater Management Program (SWMP) that describes what the County will do to meet substantive permit requirements. The current SWMP was developed for July 5, 1995 through July 5, 2000, the Muni Permit term. This permit, and the SWMP created under it, is being continued administratively until Ecology issues a new muni permit, which will likely not occur before 2004.

The King County Stormwater Management Program:

• Summarizes the process King County used to identify and implement high priority stormwater management actions;
• Explains the important challenges that shaped these priorities;
• Describes the stormwater management actions to be implemented over the permit term; and
• Highlights additional stormwater management needs that could be addressed at a later time.

The report text and figures are all provided in version 4 of Adobe Acrobat. For help using Acrobat, please see our Acrobat Help Page.

The complete document is nearly 400 pages long and it contains over 20 color maps and graphics. It has been broken down into sections to reduce download times.

The table below contains links to the individual sections, and it includes a brief description of the contents of each section.