Board recommends council adopt revised public storm drain standards, delegates future updates to BPU

City planning and public works staff presented a comprehensive revision to the City of Santa Rosa’s public storm drain standards and asked the Board of Public Utilities to recommend City Council adopt the updates and delegate future revision authority to the BPU.

Cleve Gurney, Deputy Director of Development Services, and Flannery Banks, supervising engineer, said the standards — last updated in 2005 — were revised to reflect two decades of changes in design practice, regulatory alignment, operations and maintenance needs, and development community input. Banks described several technical updates and clarifications intended to improve field performance and reduce ambiguity for designers and inspectors, including a reduced maximum cleaning reach between structures (from 400 feet to 300 feet), clarified low‑impact development components (examples: trench grates), reinforced concrete pipe collars and caps for shallow pipe protection, and a shortened time of concentration from 7 to 5 minutes in some calculations to reflect urbanization and faster runoff.

Gurney said the city charter already delegates stormwater authority to the BPU and asked the board to recommend the same delegation precedent used for water and sewer standards: future non‑substantive revisions would be approved by the BPU rather than returning to council. He explained a 30‑day effective date delay to allow development applications already in the pipeline to proceed under the prior standards.

Vice Chair Arononi moved adoption of the recommendation to City Council and to delegate future approval authority to the BPU; Board Member Wright seconded. The roll call vote was 6 in favor, 0 opposed, with Board Member Bartholow absent. The board’s motion recommended City Council adopt the revised standards, set the effective date 30 days after council adoption, and delegate future revisions to the Board of Public Utilities.