Sustainability board recommends City Commission adopt 2025 stormwater facilities plan with equity, climate and reuse considerations

The Sustainability Advisory Board on March 12 voted to recommend that the Bozeman City Commission approve the draft 2025 Stormwater Facilities Plan, while asking the commission to explicitly consider environmental justice in project prioritization, to incorporate forward-looking climate modeling where feasible, and to explore stormwater reuse in future plans (and to fund dataset development if necessary).

Adam Oliver, stormwater program manager for the City of Bozeman, presented the draft plan and described its scope: an asset inventory, condition assessment, operations and maintenance recommendations, capital improvement project prioritization, and regulatory compliance steps to meet the city’s MS4 permit. “We have replaced 5.6 miles of pipe since 2012,” Oliver said, and he summarized operations results, including mechanical separator and vacuum-truck removals: “We’ve picked up 478 tons of sediment from water quality treatment units,” he said.

The plan catalogs areas of the system that currently lack treatment and models…